Bonswa (good evening) !!
This week closes with the second base camp almost ready for missionaries to stay. We are also almost ready for our first experimental chickens. We will raise baby chicks to get our "friers" and "layers". There's an entire science behind chicken farming that I don't have a clue about, but I'm learning. The "frier" and "layer" part I can get, but not much more than that !! This last team finished enough of our chicken coop (more like a chicken condo - but it's beautiful !) so we can now buy our chicks. We'll do that this coming week.
President Preval (the Haitian president) will make a very important speech on Monday and so we are being a little more careful with security. He may not step down as the constitution requires and this may cause some more unrest with the people of Haiti. The UN has troops with guns and heavy armored vehicles stationed all along the roadways in anticipation of some trouble - but they all seem pretty relaxed. I think they're there mostly to persuade people to keep calm. Hopefully this will only be for a couple more days and then things will settle back to normal. In the meantime, we are very safe and secure in our area, but traveling to the city and airport requires a little more care. Pray for the nation of Haiti that God will make another breakthrough during this political transition.
The next teams arrive in two weeks so we have some time to rest, but mostly it will be to plan and prepare. After that teams will be constant for many months. And with Base Camp # 2 open, we can house nearly fifty people. Please pray with us for more full time base camp staff. Staff can come for a couple months or a couple years - or anything in between !! If you know anyone who has a heart for Haiti and able to give some time to serve, please let me know !!
This past week we also received a container with 500,000 seed packets for planting gardens. We are intending to start many "Promise Gardens" at our orphanages and with the local Haitians. The Promise Gardens will be a great Bible lesson opportunity as well as for growing vegetables for the people. The container also has shoes, school books and many other things to take the next step in rebuilding the nation of Haiti. We started unloading the container yesterday and will finish next week.
I want to introduce you to our Base Camp Haitian staff. We have four wonderful ladies here who clean and cook for our teams. They are all great and some of them have been here since base camp was set up after the earthquake. Linda is married with three children and is the head cook for lunch and dinner. Muela comes early to cook breakfast for us and then walks up to the corner where she has a little grocery / meal stand (just some tarps on poles !) and sells sandwiches and other things to the workers who come by. Louisetta and Ebenese both go to our church and are such a blessing. Louisetta understands english better than the others and has learned a lot since she started working here in May. She has always wanted to go back and finish high school and recently earned enough money working at Base Camp to purchase her school uniform and start attending school again. She was so excited about the uniform the first day she wore it - like a little girl with a new dress ! Ebenese is a very devoted Christian and recently sang a beautiful solo for the church a few Sundays ago. She comes to work at 6 am every day and cooks over a charcoal fire on the ground next to our storage container - preparing lunch for the school children at the church. When that is done, she comes over to the base camp house and works the rest of the day there. The other day I walked over to the storage container and Ebenese was there reading her Bible (while the meal was cooking) inside our storage room doorway - where there was a little shade from the 90 degree heat. Made me a little ashamed as I need my coffee and table and chair with the fan blowing on me in the morning before I feel comfortable enough to do my devotions.
That's it for today. God bless you all.
If you're interested in seeing more of what we are doing in Haiti, visit the Foursquare Haiti website at http://reliefandcompassion.org/haiti/home/
Uncle Mark
Louisetta in your brand new school uniform
Ebenese on the left and Muela on the right
Linda (left) and Louisetta (right)
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