hawaii to haiti: Back From Jeremie!

Aloha everyone !

Well, the Jeremie team came back to Port-au-Prince last Tuesday (the 1st) and headed back to the USA. I flew out on Monday to celebrate the completion of the church/orphanage structure. There is still tons of things to do before it's ready for the children or to use for worship services, but we are 75 % of the way there. And it's making it's mark on the community already. Most all the neighbors are so happy about the church being built and spent much of the two weeks the team worked just sitting and watching it all happen. One man came up to me on Monday afternoon and almost couldn't control himself - saying over and over "Bel Travay, bel travay" (beautiful job !). He was so excited about the building. It may not look like much yet, but when you see the photo of the existing church, you can see why they are so excited. Pastor Casamajor is also thrilled and can't wait to get the children moved in to the orphanage. The building will be a church downstairs and orphanage upstairs. We hope to stucco the outside in the next few months if we can come up with the money. For now, it will be like it is and we'll probably paint it to protect the wood.

Monday after the construction team packed all their tools up and got ready to go, we met with the pastor, the team, some of the children from the orphanage and prayed over the building, the land and the light for Christ that this church and orphanage will be in the surrounding community. Last week our next door neighbor to the church came down to our base camp and wanted to talk to me about buying his property with a partially completed house on it. I said no since we don't need it and I suggested he finish his house that he started on the property and then attend our new church. When I came back on Monday he was working on the house and I heard his wife wants to attend our new church that's only 100' from their new home. The church hasn't even opened yet and it's already making an impact ! Praise God for that !!

When we got ready to go to the airport, we couldn't get the tap-tap truck we expected, so we hired 8 motorcycle taxis to take us all to the airport. Pastor Casamajor and a couple church leaders went on two other motorcycles and we headed off. You can't imagine how funny we looked ! Ten moto-taxis driving down the gravel road to the airport with huge heavy baggage on the front, on the back and in between the driver and us ! And half way there I think a few of the drivers decided to race. I know my driver got our motorcycle up to 60 mph trying to catch the others - bumpy, loose gravel and even streams to cross - not to mention the kids, goats, chickens and other motorcycles we passed along the way. What a riot !! One motorcycle we passed had a driver, a passenger and a fish - the fish was at least four feet long strapped crossways on the back of the motorcycle ! What a site !!

Back at Base Camp we received new teams from the US who are here to build, minister in the orphanages, tent camps and churches. Saturday we took a team over to a little school run by a young Christian man who runs his school completely on faith. His name is Jonas and he's been teaching "underprivileged" children in Haiti for years. I say underprivileged because these are the poorest of the poor and would not be able to attend school at all if it weren't for Jonas. He receives no money, no payment for his classes and asks for nothing. Currently he meets with the children in a small room of a house close by our base camp. We are building him a small school building in the tent city next to our church. We dumped some gravel there a few weeks ago and a team, along with numerous Haitians who walked up and volunteered, raked the gravel and spread it out flat for the new school building. More on that later this week.

Love you and God bless,

Mark

This is Pastor Casamajor's current church building. Children's Sunday School is outside on the left.

And this is the new building we built over the last two weeks. Like I said, not much yet, but it's light years ahead of the current church building - even if it IS unfinished !!