The past few days have been very full!
Good News: We met with people from the Mission of Hope and we are going to visit their facility on Tuesday. They are affiliated with Love a Child and are going to try to help us get more food for the kids at Good Rest. We are also trying to set up more meetings and to coordinate with other organizations that have more resources than we do. Everyone that we have met here is really friendly and helpful, it is an amazing sense of community to meet people who have the same life calling as us and who have great advice for us.
This morning we got to go to a "missionary" church here in Port-au-Prince with songs that we know and lots of neat people to meet.
Yesterday we got a ride to a local restaurant and got to order our first chicken nuggets on the island! Yay!
Tonight we are invited to have dinner with the missionaries down the street, Josh and Amanda. They have a two year old daughter and Amelia is excited to have someone to play with.
Thank you to Joel, April, and Jessica, to Josh and Amanda, to Marie, to Esther King, and to all of the people from Mission of Hope. You have given us rides around town and advice that is priceless. You are all amazing!
Not so Good News: Since Robert left, family dinners have not been nearly as organized. The people living at Good Rest are very resistant to change, even the small changes that we propose seem to threaten them and their way of life. We need wisdom to know which issues are the most important to push for change, and which ones are just cultural differences. I refuse to allow kids to go hungry, so I hope that we are able to keep the family dinners going this whole week and that the setback was just temporary.
We discovered a voodoo center just across our street and a short ways down. We have been hearing them drumming, chanting, and screaming from about 11pm -3am for the past few nights. A couple nights ago, at midnight, a pig met its end and the squealing was loud and disturbing. It is hard to sleep when this is going on, I lie awake nervous and a little freaked out!
Amelia is still not feeling well. She had a fever for three days then threw up last night. I hope this is just a virus like the nurse said yesterday and that she will soon feel much better. Poor baby.
In spite of all of this, we still feel the joy of knowing that we are doing something that is making a difference and is not for our own gain. It is an incredible feeling!
Dumb American story: We have been running our generator more the last couple days, something we had rarely done before because of the cost of gas. However, with Amelia's fever we have to have a fan on her to cool her down. Last night around 8:30pm, we were ready for bed. It was hot and was our third night in a row without electricity. Darkness falls quickly here, and it was windy last night, with thunderstorms lighting up the sky to the south of us. We decided to all sleep out on our porch. We had 2 mosquito nets, 3 mattresses, and 8 pillows set up on the porch. A knock on our gate! Who could it be? We were nervous, but when we went to the gate it was our landlord with his friend who is a handyman. Apparently when we hooked our generator up to our house, it worked in such a way that it sent electrical current out into the neighborhood and several neighbors had gotten shocked! They fixed our power setup and were kind enough not to say anything about the mess of bedding in the way of the power box that they needed to get to. We apologized. How embarrassing! I really hope we didn't shock any of the voodoo people. So much for keeping a low profile in the neighborhood!
Good News: We met with people from the Mission of Hope and we are going to visit their facility on Tuesday. They are affiliated with Love a Child and are going to try to help us get more food for the kids at Good Rest. We are also trying to set up more meetings and to coordinate with other organizations that have more resources than we do. Everyone that we have met here is really friendly and helpful, it is an amazing sense of community to meet people who have the same life calling as us and who have great advice for us.
This morning we got to go to a "missionary" church here in Port-au-Prince with songs that we know and lots of neat people to meet.
Yesterday we got a ride to a local restaurant and got to order our first chicken nuggets on the island! Yay!
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| Epi d'Or ... is Haitian style Subway, plus they have crepe sandwiches! Yum! |
Tonight we are invited to have dinner with the missionaries down the street, Josh and Amanda. They have a two year old daughter and Amelia is excited to have someone to play with.
Thank you to Joel, April, and Jessica, to Josh and Amanda, to Marie, to Esther King, and to all of the people from Mission of Hope. You have given us rides around town and advice that is priceless. You are all amazing!
Not so Good News: Since Robert left, family dinners have not been nearly as organized. The people living at Good Rest are very resistant to change, even the small changes that we propose seem to threaten them and their way of life. We need wisdom to know which issues are the most important to push for change, and which ones are just cultural differences. I refuse to allow kids to go hungry, so I hope that we are able to keep the family dinners going this whole week and that the setback was just temporary.
We discovered a voodoo center just across our street and a short ways down. We have been hearing them drumming, chanting, and screaming from about 11pm -3am for the past few nights. A couple nights ago, at midnight, a pig met its end and the squealing was loud and disturbing. It is hard to sleep when this is going on, I lie awake nervous and a little freaked out!
 |
| The local voodoo center. Today the doors were closed, hopefully they won't open and we can get some sleep tonight. |
Amelia is still not feeling well. She had a fever for three days then threw up last night. I hope this is just a virus like the nurse said yesterday and that she will soon feel much better. Poor baby.
In spite of all of this, we still feel the joy of knowing that we are doing something that is making a difference and is not for our own gain. It is an incredible feeling!
Dumb American story: We have been running our generator more the last couple days, something we had rarely done before because of the cost of gas. However, with Amelia's fever we have to have a fan on her to cool her down. Last night around 8:30pm, we were ready for bed. It was hot and was our third night in a row without electricity. Darkness falls quickly here, and it was windy last night, with thunderstorms lighting up the sky to the south of us. We decided to all sleep out on our porch. We had 2 mosquito nets, 3 mattresses, and 8 pillows set up on the porch. A knock on our gate! Who could it be? We were nervous, but when we went to the gate it was our landlord with his friend who is a handyman. Apparently when we hooked our generator up to our house, it worked in such a way that it sent electrical current out into the neighborhood and several neighbors had gotten shocked! They fixed our power setup and were kind enough not to say anything about the mess of bedding in the way of the power box that they needed to get to. We apologized. How embarrassing! I really hope we didn't shock any of the voodoo people. So much for keeping a low profile in the neighborhood!
It is a good thing to be a light in darkness,
it is not so good if you are accidentally zapping your neighbors!
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