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).