Haiti Bake Sale THIS Sunday!

Aloha Hawaii to Haiti friends,

We are going to do a final push for 'Long Term' Haiti missionaries this coming Sunday, January 30th!

As most of you know, Haiti is on hold for just a bit longer for Sarah Wiggins, but Ms. Jara Jones is leaving us on Feb 7th and Aaron Harris is already in Haiti!!!!

We could really use your help to step this bake sale up a notch and have a goal of raising at least another $1000!

To donate baking goodies of any kind or spam musubi, to help man the table after any of the 3 services or to help with set up and/or breakdown please email sarahjwiggins@yahoo.com.

Thank you so much for your continued love and support!

Blessings, Team Hawaii to Haiti

Water for the Community!!

Well, the first week of official mission teams comes to a close. A team from Beaverton Oregon left yesterday morning and another team from Washington arrived in the afternoon, so we are back at it again! Beaverton focused on getting Base Camp # 2 almost done to be able to handle more mission teams this coming year. But we are most excited about the new well and water distribution system on the church property. It is now complete and ready to serve the community with Free CLEAN water. We will have a blessing ceremony with our local Pastor Guy in a couple days and begin distributing water twice a day to as many people as can come to the well. This will have such an impact here – Clean drinking water and the living water of Jesus Christ - both at the same location !!

Aaron and I are getting to know our Haitian labor team pretty well. They are very hard working and committed to what we are trying to do here. Friday we stopped the construction work near the end of the day to pray for the Haitian people, this project and for God to move in our local community. The Haitian laborers joined right in and prayed with us. Even though they understand very little English, they know what prayer is !!

We also received our first container of donated "Mana-paks" - 280,000 complete meals in packets - dried, sealed and ready to distribute to the community. We are going to take many of them to the orphanages we work with and also distribute to the local community. This container has been held up in customs for months, but God finally "broke it free last week" !!

We have one "tent city" just a few hundred yards from the church property that we will connect with soon and distribute meals to them as well. A tent city is a large group of people who lost their homes in the earthquake and are now living in tents to survive. This tent city is very new as they were originally in another location, but the land under them was sold and they had to move. Hardship on hardship for these people !! - lose their homes to the earthquake and then have to move again when the land is sold !! It's hard to imagine, even seeing it in front of my eyes. But there is hope here as well. Many people finding Jesus as the local Christian community shows them God's love. We (the Americans) are a partner and assistant to the local church (not the answer or the "savior"), helping them to recover from the earthquake devastation and continue to do the work God has called all of us to do.

God bless and thanks for your prayers and support.

Mark

ABOVE: One of two water storage tanks for the new water system - almost in place !! In front of the water tank is a cross that one of last year's teams erected and signed. Mackanson (one of our Haitian labor team) is holding onto the cross (something we all need to do !!)

BELOW: Unloading the container of Mana-paks. Three of our Haitian laborers and one man from the Beaverton team working together. The Haitians are Blanc (in front) which means white, then Johnny and in the back left is Emanuel (one of our laborers and also does some translation for us).

Many Hands

Making more space for mission teams. Built half the new bunkhouse for 24 short term missionaries. But the most exciting thing is that we now have well water on the church property with a storage tank! Starting to distribute Free CLEAN water to the local Haitian community next week!! Also received 280,000 meal packs for our orphanages and community. God is good!!

First Trip to Les Cayes & Celebrez la Vie

Monday and Tuesday Aaron and I went to Les Cayes on the southwestern side of the island (five hour drive). Four wheel drive the last few miles on very rough dirt road. We have a Foursquare church there in a tiny building with thatched sides and tin roof. Pastor Jerome was so hospitable to us. We stayed in the future base camp building which is basically a masonry building with nothing inside. We will be sending "hardy teams" (guys who can really rough it for a few days) to make this place livable for future teams to come and work for a week at a time. Needs a kitchen, sleeping bunks, etc. (besides some source of power, drinking water, etc.). Eventually we will be helping the pastor and local community develop the same Talapia farm and egg production / chicken coop that we are doing on the National Church property by our regular base camp. The children in Cayes were so interested in the "Blanc" (white guys) that had come to visit. They are so warm and loving and don't seem to care that we have no idea what they are saying to us ! At night all you can hear is the roosters crowing once in a while and a few stray pigs grunting and dogs barking. Other than that, it's pretty quiet.

Wednesday was an entirely different deal! Pastor Gee took Aaron and I to the Celebration of Life (Celebrez la Vie) on the street next to the collapsed National Palace in Port-au-Prince. It was a memorial service on the one year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. There was at least 20,000 people there, singing, worshipping and just praising God for life. Seeing the collapsed palace made me cry. It's so different seeing it in person versus in photos. The Palace looked to me like a symbol of the nation of Haiti that was "crushed" by the earthquake. But having the Celebration of Life right next to the Palace was so appropriate - symbolizing the resurrection of a nation that is possible by the power of God.

First short term mission team arrives this Saturday. Today we are cleaning the house, buying water and other supplies, organizing, etc. to make final preparations for them. Then it's pretty much 24/7 for the next few months. Not hardly any breaks between teams - but it will be great!! We will continue to see the Lord's work here grow during this coming season!

Mark

Les Cayes photos:

Our Les Cayes welcoming committee.

Our next door neighbors in Les Cayes.

Pastor Jerome in from of his church.

Celebrez la Vie photos:

The collapsed National Palace of Haiti.

The stage with a local choir.

A small piece of the crowd.

A Year Ago Today

A year ago today, an earthquake rocked the nation of Haiti and all that once stood. Today, we commemorate those who lost their lives and remember that there is so much to still be done. There is debris to be hauled, homes to be built, food to be distributed and thousands of little children who have been orphaned to love. Please join us in praying for this nation today and in the future, that God’s mercy and provision will continue to spread throughout this land, that this tragedy would be used as a new beginning for our Haitian brothers and sisters and that hope in Jesus will prevail. Hope can take on many different facets but today in Haiti it might look something like this…

A Glimpse of Life in Haiti This Past Week

Aloha ! - Just wanted to give everyone an update on what's happening here in Haiti

Aaron Harris arrived Thursday afternoon. Good to have him here working with me. Church this morning was great ! (again). This afternoon did laundry - dirty laundry in a large pan with water and soap, stomp around on it for a while with bare feet and then rinse - works great !! And you also have the cleanest feet in town !!

Tomorrow Aaron and I head off early to a recently started church near Les Cayes (about eight hours drive from here). We will be preparing projects for teams to work on when they go there over the next few months. Access requires a four-wheel drive vehicle and there is NO internet (what will we do ?!?! Ha !) We will be back very late Tuesday. Wednesday (the 12th) there is a huge church gathering in downtown Port-au-Prince that we are attending with Pastor Gee (our pastor here). January 12th is the first anniversary of the Haiti earthquake and many churches have combined together for this memorial service. It is a very somber time here, but also a time to thank God for life, and move ahead with continued relief efforts, rebuilding and bringing Haiti back to where it should be. I have included a few photos for you and also the Foursquare Haiti Relief Effort Communique that was sent out from Base Camp here at the beginning of December. Even though a month old, I thought you would like to see what was done this past year and what is being planned for this year of 2011.

God bless

Mark

Aaron and I showing our new friends the partially built chicken coop. Dressed out in Sunday Best !!

I'm standing in the partially completed Talapia ponds looking back over the Foursquare National church property. On the right (behind Aaron) is a large tent to house some of the future mission teams and a new set of "temporary" bathrooms and showers for workers. In the background is another recently erected building that is currently used for storage but possibly to use for our new bakery next month !

"Home Sweet Bunk" - pretty simple, but comfortable ! I love it !

I'm here!

Just wanted to say Happy New Year to my family. I arrived at 9:30 am this morning, got picked up by our local Haitian translator and drove to base camp. As we drove down the dirt road by the church building site, I was greeted with the view in the attached picture. If you can't see the photo very well, the logo on the top says "New Hope Diamond Head" ! What a blessing to me !! Felt just like home already. This tent is the tent that our church (thanks to Pastor Fernando) donated to the Haitian project last April, but it took until late November to get here. (things in Haiti go SLOW !!) The team here set it up in early December, but I didn't know they had received it until I arrived this morning. It's now part of the temporary church until the new one gets built and is absolutely perfect for their need right now ! God bless NHDH and Pastor Fernando for your generosity ! And I thank God for the timing to make my arrival so special and giving me the feeling of home in such a unique way !! And for those Levites among you, the local crew set the tent up pretty well ! Maybe I'll give them my Levites T-shirt !! Ha !

Have a wonderful New Year's celebration. May God richly bless you all in this coming season of your lives.

Mark