Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

Today, the St. John's Lutheran Church Haiti Servant Team was thrown a curve ball (a snowy one) thanks to the wintry weather to the north.  Just prior to our departure to the airport, we learned that we would be staying yet another day.  The excitement on Bert's, Roberta's, and Debbie's faces was underwhelming.  This is the first time in 10 years this has happened, they said.  We filled the time with small projects around Hope House, a trip out to the Health Center, and another trip to the grocery store.

In the late afternoon, a rousing game of dominoes was played.  Apparently Debbie W. is quite the dominoes shark, taking 3 out of 4 games.  She's still on probation status - we're not sure she'll be allowed to return with us!  We also got creative with the libations.  One of the female members of our team was the instigator (not Sarah!).  She bought mango flavored rum that we mixed with mango juice, pineapple juice, and fresh citron (like key limes).

Tomorrow we are going to do it all over again - minus the staying in Haiti part.  We have the same flights scheduled for tomorrow as we did today.  We appreciate any and all prayers for a safe and uneventful trip home.

The kitchen crew - Ken, Tom, Bert, Scott, and Richard - with their new upper cabinets.

Yvette, Christine, Ken, Linda, Richard, Sarah, Liz, and Saron - the meds packaging team.

Christine, Debbie, and Sarah in front of the veranda they painted.

Greer, Jim, Debbie, and Liz in front of the freshly painted depot.

Our fearless leaders - Debbie, Roberta, and Bert.

playing dominoes

Cheers!

Day 6 - Finishing Strong

Wow.  What a change.  Today we visited the Little Children of Jesus (Home for the Disabled) first thing in the morning.  Our experience was significantly different than years past where we mostly interacted with the children of LCJ through touching, dancing, playing with balloons, and other activities that focused on entertaining the children.  This trip, however, we actually transformed that experience into being servants.  The LCJ was really divested from Food for the Poor and taken over by Missionaries for the Poor, an organization umbrella of the Catholic Church.  They are brothers dedicated to a life-long service to the poor.  The rules for the visit needed to entail being servants to the children of LCJ.  Part of our team was responsible for feeding the children and another part of the team was responsible for cleaning the dormitories.  For all of us, this was a totally different experience.  Today at LCJ, there are 90+ children, most with physical and mental handicaps, ranging in age from 2 years old to 40.  Those of us that have been there before enjoyed seeing some of the same children.

Today we finished strong on all of our assigned tasks, completing all the cabinetry work in the kitchen, the plumbing, and the painting of the depot.  God really blessed SJLC's servant team.  Many of us are feeling the aches and pains of several days worth of work, feeling many muscles that we forgot we had.  Some of us were not needed for painting so we packaged more meds for the upcoming mobile med group and counted socks. We were all very excited about what we were able to accomplish with the projects and with the opportunities we had to interact at the Village of Hope, the health center, church experience on Sunday, LCJ, and the ride we took to experience being out in the countryside.

Tonight, during devotions, we shared in the Lord's Supper and following that, Debbie B. shared her Haitian funeral experience involving that of her late husband.  Some of the funeral rituals were certainly unique to Haiti and we appreciated that Debbie was willing to share this experience with us.

Our team gelled as a servant team and strengthened existing friendships and made new friendships with the newcomers.  This year's experience is no different than that of years' past because our focus always remains the same - serving God.  We thank you for following the blog and we hope that some of you might considering joining us next year with boots on the ground in Haiti!

Scott

Liz feeding "Kiki"

One of the older children feeding the youngest and one of the Brothers administering medication.

Linda, Saron, Christine, and Yvette counting socks

Scott and Ken finishing up the cabinets.

Debbie B., Richard, Linda, Christine, and Yvette counting and packaging meds.

Day 5 - Christ Driven Leadership/Service to Others

Today we attended a worship service with a local congregation headed by the housekeeper at VoH health center and her husband.  Esther and Luke have been friends of Bert and Roberta for many years.  The church is celebrating their 8th anniversary on March 1st.  It started in a vacant lot and now there is a structure to worship in.  God is blessing this growing congregation.  The service today aligned well with our mission trip as the sermon focused on Christ Driven Leadership which is to love and to serve others.  While none of us understood Creole, we were fortunate enough to have a congregational member who spoke English and was able to convey to us the sermon message.  Plus, the message was one we are familiar with which is to praise God.  This service, like others we've attended in Haiti, included vibrant and passionate singing which really amazed our team.  Most of what they were singing was from memory.  We all were a bit surprised that in the front rows were the children of the congregation while their parents sat behind them, which isn't the case in the U.S.

After the church service, we then headed for a brunch at the Visa Lodge which in a nice location overlooking Port-au-Prince.  Many of us have eaten there in the past.  We ate on the open-air patio with a pool as a backdrop to the city of Port-au-Prince and the mountains in the distance.  It was buffet style and the main course included goat meat, guinea hen, rice, beans, couscous, salad, mashed potatoes, and pickalese (spicy cole slaw).  Needless to say, the food was excellent and we probably ate too much.  We enjoyed the lively music from the band and they played for us at our table.  Did we mention it was another beautiful, sunny day in Haiti (something different...haha!)?

We went out to pay our respects at the earthquake memorial.  Unfortunately, the memorial was cordoned off as they are still in the process of building it, and we were unable to really view the memorial.  Therefore, Bert took us to the top of a local mountain where we were able to view the entire valley towards Port-au-Prince and the Dominican Republic.  There were many breath-taking views and we enjoyed seeing more of Haiti.

Tonight, Jim and Sarah, your blog authors, will be leading devotions.  That should be very interesting!  Tomorrow will include a visit to Little Children of Jesus and finishing up projects around Hope House.  More to come tomorrow!

Lunch at Visa Lodge

Haitian countryside with mountains

View from the mountain overlook

Church service

The preacher

The church we attended this morning.

Day 4 - Happy Valentine's Day from Haiti!

First off we want to thank Nilah for the delicious Valentine sugar cookies, Retha for the Hershey's kisses (Richard shared), Saron for the Valentine cupcakes, and Sarah for the Valentines she made for everyone.  

Today was another full court press in being a servant.  The painting teams made good progress with the veranda team finishing their project and the depot team is 80% done.  We've gone through 25 gallons of paint.  The kitchen experts removed the old island and installed the new and did major plumbing work to replace the drainage pipe from the kitchen sink.  They had a very interesting discovery of a lizard fossil under the old island.  The depot crew encountered the first snake (just a little garden one) and Liz was attacked by biting red ants.  Debbie also survived painting the eaves of the veranda a midst many daddy long legs.  We've been wondering about her - she's been spinning a lot of webs.  There was also a friendly gecko who watched her intently as she worked.  No Geico commercials were filmed, however. We continue to shock and awe Bert on our ability to accomplish great tasks.  We've already exceeded  his expectations.  God has truly blessed our team!

We had a chance to go to the local market today.  The road to get there was like a motor-cross road. Jim was wishing he had his GS1200 BMW.  Tom had previously said you could lose a small Fiat in the "puddles." We bought Haitian vanilla, almond, coffee, rum, treats, and Cuban cigars.  

For all the painters whose muscles were aching, Saron shared her gift of massage with them.  She worked out our aches and pains, joyfully.  

Tomorrow we will attend a Haitian church service.  The pastor's wife is the housekeeper at the medical center and friends with Bert and Roberta.  We are all looking forward to this unique experience despite finding out we will be sitting in the front row.  After church we will have lunch out and then visit the Earthquake Memorial.

See you tomorrow!

Below are some photos from the day!

Jim and Greer painting the depot.

The motor-cross road.

Debbie battling the spiders to paint the veranda.

Saron, Jim, Tom, and Debbie by the depot.

Jim and Debbie painting the depot.

Tom and Scott repairing the broken drain pipe.

The lizard carcass.

Saron sharing her gift of massage with Jim.

Day 3 - 100% Servanthood

Today was designated 100% Servant Day which included a number of projects to which the team divided and conquered.  First team which included Tom, Scott, Richard, and Ken, took out the old kitchen cabinets and replaced them with new kitchen cabinets.  Team Two - Sarah, Debbie, and Christine - painted the exterior of the veranda and the trim.  Team Three - Jim, Liz, and Greer - undertook the painting of the depot.  Finally, Team Four - Linda, Yvette, and Saron - inventoried and packed medical supplies for an upcoming mobile med team, as well as school supplies.

Our work day started at 8:00 and ended at 4:30.  The weather was unusually overcast and cool which certainly made working conditions far more tolerable than years past (sorry to hear about the cold weather for those of you in Virginia, Maryland, and Minnesota).  The kitchen project and the painting will continue tomorrow.  Hopefully our bodies will recover overnight to allow us to continue working!

We continue to have a lot of fun and enjoy each other's company.  We are all very glad to be contributing to this particular ministry of the Lazarus Project.  The Lazarus Project, for those of you that don't know, include the Village of Hope School, the health center, and Hope House.

For dinner we had pumpkin soup.  Pumpkin soup is pureed pumpkin (pumpkin here is not like pumpkin in the U.S.) with potatoes, spinach, pasta, and beef.  When there were slaves in Haiti, the slave owners did not allow the slaves to eat pumpkin.  Upon Haiti's independence in 1804, the slaves began eating pumpkin stew on New Year's Day and Independence Day (January 2nd).  They had the last laugh!

Tonight's devotion was based on John 13:1-17 where Jesus' washed the feet of his disciples demonstrating the importance of service and love to others.  At the end of the devotion, feet washing was performed by Saron and Liz while Debbie prayed over those having their feet washed.  Saron shared with us that this was a custom in her home country of Eritrea as visitors came to their home and when her parents returned from work each day.  The experience of feet washing became a part of many unique devotions that we have had in Haiti including the imposition of ashes and communion.

Thanks for following the blog.  We love seeing comments (hint, hint).  See you tomorrow!

Day 2 - Village of Hope

The bad news is, breakfast was at 6:00 a.m.  The good news is, we had blueberry pancakes.  We were loaded on the 21st century new vehicle that fits 15 people and has air-conditioning at 7:00.  Gone are the days of riding in the open truck with the wind in your face and your body coated in Haitian dust.  We were all very energized by today's events which included opening devotions with the kindergarten classes (ages 3-5), arts and crafts with second graders, and handing out Valentines to the kindergarten classes.  After we gave out the valentines, they made valentines for us and presented them with words of thanks.  This year, of great benefit for this event, we had a translator named Pierre with us.  He was so helpful in telling the classes what we were doing and why we were there, as well as, leading the children in song while we did our crafts.  Those on the team that were not participating in the classroom headed over to the medical center to complete some small projects, one of which was packing medical bags for an upcoming mobile-med team.  This effort of packing the medical supplies allows for the mobile-med teams to hit the ground running upon their arrival in Haiti.  For the veterans on the trip and those of us that sponsor children at the school and otherwise contribute to the VoH or the health center, all the good works that are being accomplished for our students and the community surrounding Ganthier.  In a country like Haiti, that is challenged politically and economically, the good things that are being done at the Village of Hope School and medical center, are making a difference.  This is why we keep coming back and continue to support the Lazarus Project.  The newbies in the group were struck by how well-organized the school is, how well the children behave, and how functional the medical center is.  We enjoyed eating in the cafeteria with the children.  Linda discovered how good Pringles are and was so energized by them that she joined a small group of the team to hike up the hillside to the water cistern.  A rendition of the "Hills are Alive" (from the Sound of Music) was sung while they enjoyed the grand views.

After leaving the Village of Hope, we headed for the metal works and supported the local economy.  The metal workers village continues to be upgraded.  The sidewalks, trash bins, shop signs, and paved roads are a vast improvement over the rugged conditions we experienced our first few trips.  The quality of artwork is exceptional considering the working conditions and materials used to create the metal works.  There are too many things to choose from, yet we managed to buy our fair share.

We are getting ready to start our evening devotions.  And yes, we had more mangoes today!

And yes, Paul, we do miss you (and the rest of our past team members)!

Day 1 - The SJLC Servant Team Returns to Haiti

We have arrived in Haiti after a safe day of travel. Our team is already working well together as we successfully performed all the logistics associated with transporting 26 suitcases, equivalent to 1,300 pounds, of education, hygiene, medical, and office supplies were brought with us.  Thank you to everyone for their generous donations.  All of these supplies will be greatly appreciated by all who receive them.

In Haiti, we once again learned that nothing happens fast and we need to have a lot of patience!  It took us almost as long to go from the airport to Hope House as it did to fly here from JFK in New York.  Despite the length of time to arrive at Hope House, we are thankful that we were even able to be picked up at the airport since over the last two days the city has been shut down due to a strike by the tap-tap (taxi) drivers over the cost of gasoline.  Whereas in the rest of the world, the prices of gas has been going down, in Haiti, they have been rising.  The Haitian government is very dependent on the revenue from gasoline.  More strikes are planned, but hopefully it will not impact our mission.  Don't worry, we are all safe and will continue to be so.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon recharging our batteries from a long day of travel and getting to know one another.  Our team consists of 13 people from four states and eight different congregations!

Everyone is excited about our planned activities for the week which include time out at Village of Hope School, spending time with school children, performing tasks at the Health Center, and the big project will be remodeling the kitchen at Hope House.

Liz laid out our plan for devotions for the week to which we will all share leading each evening.  Liz indicated that she also has planned a washing of the feet so that will be interesting.  We all feel very energized by being in Haiti and the enthusiasm we all have to serve the Lord in fellowship together.

More to come tomorrow!  Believe it or not, it's time for bed!

Almost Ready!

In just a few short hours, the 2015 Haiti mission team will be gathering at the airport to begin our journey to Haiti.  Our team is comprised of 13 members from many different churches in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Minnesota.  Those of us making the return trip are looking forward to another memorable experience.  Our new members are excited about making many new memories of their own.

Thank you to everyone for their donations.  I think we have set a new record for donations!  We are taking 24 suitcases with over 1,000 pounds of soap, crayons, toothbrushes, toothpaste, office supplies, etc.  Wow!

Please keep our team in your prayers as we travel tomorrow, as well as those who will be greeting us upon our arrival.

Part of the team (l - r): Greer, Tom, Scott, Debbie, Ken, Jim, Liz, Sarah, Yvette, Saron

Twenty-two of the suitcases ready to go!

Toothpaste and toothbrushes galore!

Lots of crayons!

More supplies!