I Am Spoiled

I am spoiled rotten. I thought that I would never ever say that I am spoiled in a 3^rd world country. Since arriving in Haiti, I have not made one meal for myself. We have Madame Remmann who cooks every single meal of the week.  I don’t clean my room, bathroom, or change my sheets. We have Rosandre who does that for us every day during the week. She even hangs our clothes once they are out of the washing machine. We just have to let her know there is a load in. We don’t take care of the kids, help with their food, or change their diapers. There are wonderful ladies who help with that at the Mission all the time. We have a driver who drives us everywhere we need to go. This is a good thing because NO ONE wants to drive here. It is crazy! Honking means you are passing/on the wrong side of the road (even in blind areas) and honks back mean don’t do it because I’m coming straight at you. Dago has unbelievable driving skills that we cherish every day we make the 20-30 minute drive to St. Marc. We are so lucky. Who would have thought that in a 3^rd world country we would do less cooking, housecleaning, childcare, laundry, and driving than living in the States. I’m not sure what I will do when I come back.

God Moment: At church today a nice young Haitian lady let me borrow her English bible to read. I thought it had come from someone in our group but when I asked who it was from, she took it back with a smile. My hope is that she is learning English. It was just so sweet of her to let me borrow it.

Word/Phrase of the day:

Mwen bezwen...dlo suple: I need....water please (something the kids at the mission ask all the time)

Maybe Some Background?

I realized that I should probably give everyone some background information so that my blog makes a little more sense and I don’t have to explain my living situation and who I am here with in detail every time I blog.

I live in Montrious (Mowee—that’s how you say it here in Haiti), Haiti. I arrived Sept. 2 and will be living here until May 15 with a break to see my family in December. We are about 1½ hours north from Port-au-Prince (I will be referring to it as Port) along the ocean and 20-30 minutes from St. Marc. I am working for New Vision Ministries which is run by Kerry and Joy Reeves, and their 9 kids, Logan, Megan, Luke, Jaycie, Josie, Judah, Jaxon, John-Patrick, and Justice. Check out their blog at the bottom of my page. They have been living in Haiti for the past 2 years and are doing an amazing job running 9 ministries at this time. That is why we are here to help!

They own a crush (one step up from an orphanage and people are able to adopt the kids) called The Mission that has 14 kids at it right now and also where all of us live. There are 8 girls total, 6 from Impact Santa Barbara (Me, Shala, Kelsea, Amber, Nikki, and Elise), 1 from North Carolina (Liz), and 1 from Guadalupe (Elisa). We make up a team of teachers and helpers for Kerry and Joy to run a more impactful ministry to the people of Haiti. There is also a couple, Stephen and Autumn Byxbe, who help take care of the kids and make sure the Mission runs smoothly while Kerry and Joy take care of all their kids. Hopefully this will help you and not confuse you even more!

Shala is doing office work for Kerry and helping him with the fishing village and creating jobs for the refuge women. Kelsea is helping with the Celebration Kids Club feeding program, helping Shala with anything she needs and working part time at the school as an administrator. Liz is helping Shala and Kelsea and taking pictures for our school’s yearbook. She is only here for 3 months. Now on to the teachers. We have a school in St. Marc that used to be ran by YWAM (Youth With A Mission). We took over the school this year because they couldn’t find any teachers to teach this year. Our school is called Liberty Academy. It is an English school but we are accepting basically anyone who would like to go to this school. Third grade is the cut-off for Creole speaking students but there are some exceptions. Joy is teaching kindergarten. Elise is teaching 1-2 grade, primarily reading and writing English. Amber is teaching 3-5 grade. Bring on the learning! Nikki, Elisa, and I are sharing the Jr. and High schoolers (6-12 grade). Nikki is teaching English and History, Elisa is teaching Bible and French, and I am teaching Mathematics and Science. We will teach curriculum Monday –Thursday and have extracurricular activities on Friday. Friday is also half day J.

On the weekends we will all be involved with outreach in any way possible. It could be helping at the fishing village, doing an eye clinic, building houses, running a camp for kids, ect. Basically whatever comes up we will do it. Everything is tough right now because we don’t know very much Creole and can’t really communicate with the Haitian people. We are learning as fast as we can but it doesn’t seem fast enough.

Please pray that Creole comes quickly so that we can communicate efficiently with the people and show them that we care and are interested in what they have to say.

God moment: i was coloring with the kids at the Mission. Alinda wanted me to color for her but I asked her to help me (ede mwen) and she did! It feels go to start speaking a little bit of Creole!

Word/Phrase of the Day:

Bonjou! Koman ou ye?:  Good Morning! How are you?

Mwen tre bien avek Jezi.: I am very good because of Jesus