Crayons

How much changes in ten years? Good question. If you live in Haiti…not much! I’m being a little facetious, but only a little. In my post two nights ago titled ‘Decade’ I talked about reminiscing, but now I’m actually reliving part of my first family trip ten years ago. Our trailer is still in holding at customs. We have paid the fees, the paper work is complete, but the voice of a man in Port is the only way our trailer comes out of the dock. We were told in the morning, we will see, we were also told that yesterday. Krystle bet me this afternoon it wouldn’t be out today, optimist vs. realist… she won. In the meantime,...we have had to make many adjustments to accommodate our schedule. Today was our big children’s service at the church, and all the crayons are in the trailer, as well as food, tent, new engine for the Toyota, new generators, and a long list of other necessities for this visit. So, we dug around a few left behinds from other trips and found 2 boxes of Cracker Barrel crayons, we started loading the 500 craft bags and when the last verse and coloring page were loaded into the bags, there were about 10 packages of crayons left over. It felt like the loaves and fishes all over again. Also, we started the daunting task of loading the plastic bags for the service with about three of us and before we were done, we had a room full of young Haitian men helping us, it has been amazing to be a part of their lives these 10 years, and to see the impact of our ministry on them. Are they making all the right choices, likely not, but then who is? In the critical moments, they know how to show up, and how to help, how many know how to do that? Last night was a bright and cheery reunion, with lots of hugs and a few tears. We had the orphanage repainted, (we do this yearly now) and the guys were wrapping up the outside today. We did a lot of sorting and organizing today, I’m still terribly under the weather and my voice is not returning. A very frustrating circumstance to say the least. When we arrived at the current church property this afternoon, we found a lot of our benches for seating in desperate need of repair, so we contracted our welder and carpenter to get them fixed, and before we left the facility crews were already hard a work to fix them. Lee and her acting team did a great job with the story of Adam and Eve, Rob pulled me away for a few minutes to diagnose a well in the neighborhood that was broken. We will have our resident up and coming well driller fix it in a day or two. While we are here there is a storm of activity and people visiting, coming to say hi and catch up. Did I mention I can’t talk? Honorable mentions today are Sean playing ‘God’ in the Adam and Eve story because he’s such a ‘godly man’, Ray riding a motorcycle taxi in Haiti for the first time with his grandma nearly having a heart attack. I mentioned our newbies doing well in last night’s post, on their first full day in Haiti, they are rocking it. The weather has been kind so far, and our first day is just about a wrap. The team is doing very well together, and we are confident we will achieve what we are meant to achieve this trip. Pray for Deloris and I to get our voices back, and that no other team member suffers this plight this trip. I have managed all of my trips to Haiti to date without being sick, this is a first for me. But others are stepping up, I feel like the priest Zechariah who was made dumb just after he received improbable news that his wife would bear a son, such great news and couldn’t speak a word of it to anyone. LOL Well, that’s me right now, but my team is filling in the gaps well, as perhaps is now due! We are tired and weary, so we will finish early tonight and try to rest everyone in hopes of a trailer of goods to manage through tomorrow. Blessings to all from St. Marc.