Evangelization Campus in Haiti

Fall 2009 Project Trip:

Evangelization Campus

Arachaie, Haiti

At the end of September, I spent another week in Haiti for a project trip. We went to design a master plan for a ministry that supports various churches north of Port-au-Prince. They had purchased about two acres of land to construct a base for their ministry in Haiti, including a church building for the local church in that area that currently meets in a thatch-roofed space.

The church building will be the first building built on the two acre site. It will be followed shortly by a basketball court.  Then will come a home for the missionaries that also includes team housing.  As the ministry grows, they hope to build a Bible college in order to train pastors, and, finally, some small homes for Haitian pastors who may need them. 

The week started with attending church with the congregation that will benefit from our design. What a blessing to meet the pastor, the people, and especially the children of this small, very poor community! There was a joyous contentment among all of them that challenged me and that which is so engrained in me as important in life. These kids may not have even had shoes, but they were content. Their bright teeth smiling out of their beautiful dark faces proved a fitting analogy for their bright and happy souls in the midst of such a dark place.

The week continued with hot days in the sun surveying and doing other site assessments. After that, it was hunkering down in the heat of the missionaries’ home to tune out the roar of the generator and to do the design. The classic EMI image of a group of people clustered around a small table that holds more computers than people was a common one. But it was often interrupted with jokes, or an odd mix of voices singing (some in English and others in Creole), and even an all-out totally-drenching water fight one night. Despite the distractions and the heat, the team accomplished a lot in such a small time, and by the end of the week, we had a mostly complete design to present to the missionaries.

Haiti is a difficult place to be and a challenging place to minister. Therefore, I have great respect for every missionary who has the endurance to serve the Lord there. In this case, it was Bill and Marylin Fair. They began their life together as central Missouri farmers. Then they took a short term mission trip to Haiti, and ever since, they have devoted their lives to follow God’s call there. They have several churches in different cities that they support in various ways. They do everything from training leaders and providing financial assistance, down to physically building the benches for the churches. Their work there and the joy with which they do it left me (and the rest of the team) with a great excitement for this project.

One team member I would like to spotlight is Jean-Claudy Lamontagne Junior (or just Junior for short). Junior is a Haitian civil engineer whose wife introduced him to EMI, and when he found out about our project, he was excited to sign up for it. He took a week without his family and without work (and thus without pay) to help us on our trip. And while he was a great asset as an engineer both to Mike, our environmental engineer, and to Micah, our structural engineer, his greatest value came to the whole team as a guide to Haitian culture. He spent hours and hours talking with us as a group and me individually, patiently enduring our incredulous looks as he explained the culture of Haiti, its spiritual climate, the challenges and blessings of being a Christian there, some of the language, and much more. There are a few people I have met in my life of whom I think back and think, “it was a special blessing to know him or her.” Junior is one of those.

My baby...

... isn't really a baby anymore.  He is 20 months old, and so interested in everything, is learning so much, and is picking up new words in both English and Spanish so quickly these days.  There are times when I look at him and think, "How did he get so big!?"  Even so, he's still my baby.  Yesterday night, he was sitting on my lap on the couch, and he snuggled down into a rock-a-bye baby position in my arms, and said "baby" very contentedly, as if to say, "I'm still your baby, Mommy."  And, this morning, he started yelling "baby! baby!" and patting the rocking chair, which is what he does when he wants to snuggle for a little while.  When I picked him up, he wanted to snuggle like a "baby" again.  It is so sweet!  Here is my "baby" drinking his leche from a cajita... like a big boy:

just some every day fun

Making do with what we have is a constant theme here that comes up almost daily, and I definitely see that I've grown in this area.  At times, the need to make do just allows us to be more creative than we would need to be if everything was as it was for us in the States and it ends up being fun!  Here are some examples:

What do you do when your little guy loves play-doh, coloring, and other crafts and so far you haven't found a little table and chair set that's in your price range?  Well, fortunately, the stairs in your house are still unfinished and make a great craft table (and a toilet paper roll makes a great play-doh accessory when you don't have any cookie cutters)!

 

Or, here is another scenario.  What do you do when your hands are all muddy from working outside on the plumbing, but there is no running water in the house that day?  Well, fortunately, the combination of the rainy season and the fact that your house has no gutters makes a  great makeshift outdoor shower!

Or, what should you do when you are too hurriedly trying to put the clean dishes away and the glass cover of your electric skillet slips from your hand and breaks into millions of itty bitty pieces of glass that are still being swept up two months later?  Well, just get out your roll of aluminum foil to use as a makeshift lid each time you use the skillet... and be thankful that you have one less dish to wash!  (This definitely beats buying a new expensive skillet to replace the now coverless one you inherited from another missionary last year.)

Photo Friday: Beautiful Haitians

We haven't been able to find the time to write any posts this week, not even the previously promised update on Dan's most recent trip to Haiti.  So, we'll offer another sneak peak of his project trip.  Here are some photos of the beautiful children Dan met while designing a church building there:

"... Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven." 

Isn't it cool to think that someday these precious kids will be able to go to church and Sunday school in the building that Dan is designing!? 

Photo Friday: el carrusel de caballitos

We may not be going on hay rides at pumpkin patches this October, but Timmy did get to enjoy un carrusel de caballitos last weekend when there was a celebration in the central park in honor of our town's patron saint, San Rafael.
 

taking a break

"I need to wash the dishes... oh, the water's out... well, I guess I'll take a break."  That was my sequence of thoughts earlier today.  I like days like today, when not having running water in the house is a welcome opportunity for a break from laundry, cleaning, and dish washing.  Timmy and I had a great time playing together all day, which I was glad of because tomorrow we won't get to play together much at all.  I'm going to have my first experience with surgery in Costa Rica.  Thankfully, it's nothing serious, just the removal of one little wisdom tooth that's been causing me a lot of pain for months.  Still, it will be a whole day event, driving from our little town to the center of San José for the hour long procedure, then driving back for a couple of days of a chubby cheeked recovery.  But, I can think of it as another opportunity for a break, a time of rest and plenty of fruit smoothies!