Prayer Requests

Please pray for safety for Richard as he drives around town. He did a special meeting this morning with the leaders of an IDP tent camp that is going to be disbanded soon. The people need wisdom and help with people getting resettled. Thank God for a church in Pennsylvania who is partnering with the church at this site to pray for, to have a partnership with them and help in whatever way God leads them.

Please pray for Ronald and Sylvain who are up north (again) conducting training.

Pray for the YABT training that will continue this weekend at Young Life.

thanks!

What is she doing?

"Madame, Emmanuel told us he saw you walking on a thing in a room and you didn't go anywhere! We want to see this thing!" Francelaine & Geovania asked me.

No, I didn't let them watch me walk on the treadmill. And, no, no picture of me on it. ;) But seeing how silly it seems to them, since they have to walk just about everywhere and wouldn't if they didn't have to, makes me think & pray about whether we're really getting anywhere as we put out effort in our ministries.

In fact, our recent CrossWorld retreat was a all about evaluating what we spend our time doing and what effect it has. We read the book "Live Like You Mean It" by T.J. Addington and spent time clarifying what we think God has us here for, what we need to do to accomplish that, etc. It has been challenging and refreshing.

If you would join us in prayer about this, we'd appreciate it. And, I think I need to use our "most used word" of the retreat to ask specifically for prayer...."intentional." Pray that we would be more intentional about all that we are here to do. Thanks

Training in Cabaret in the North

Here are some pictures of the training that went on up in Cabaret on Saturday.

Each team was given some equipment to start with.

Reorganizing the "Soccer Depot"

Working on the depot. We call it "the soccer depot." It's where we keep the donated sports equipment, first aid materials, training materials, Bibles, books, and equipment for showing films.

BEFORE:














AFTER:


And, yes, there's Jean-Paul again. Ronald and others also helped on this project.

Before there were only a few shelves and mostly there were cardboard boxes piled on top of each other. The contents was scribbled on in marker, for example "shirts." This time we have uniform labels on each box that fit into plastic sleeves so we can write on each box exactly how many we take out or add to it. This picture was actually taken before we completely finished the job.

We are setting in place a more organized method of tracking all this "inventory" as it comes in and goes out to the (over 70) teams our 10 regions around the country. We hope to replace the cardboard boxes with plastic tubs over time, but that' the next step. It's good to have the time to do this so that things will be more streamlined throughout the year. And it was really nice to be able to find the tools to work on this project because of Kevin Belmont who helped us clean out and reorganize our personal depot!

Jean-Paul graduated from seminary!

By the grace of God, one of our AIS-Haiti workers, Jean-Paul Pierre Noel graduated from STEP seminary last week. Here's a picture of him with his fiance, Christelle Francois. They are planning to be married in December, 2011.

Jean-Paul did an internship with AIS-Haiti after his second year in seminary. He has been faithful in volunteering and recently started working in a part time position with us. He is a gentle, gracious Christian who is a joy to work with.

When I say that he graduated "by the grace of God" I'm not implying that we weren't sure of his capabilities. Although he may say that in all ways he needed God's grace (I think that's true for all of us), but I say that because Jean-Paul did not have enough money to attend STEP. God graciously provided, even in the last week of school, a donor from our home church, Crossing Community Church, gave a very generous gift that allowed Jean-Paul to pay off all his debt! We praise God for this.

For the time being, Jean-Paul is still working with us part time in Port-au-Prince where he plans to live after he is married. Please pray that God would provide funds for us to increase his hours with AIS and that he will be able to help us lead AIS into the future.

Training this weekend

Ronald William just arrived this morning up north where he, Sylvain, Debreus and Orvil will be conducting a training session for a group of 24 young men in Cabaret in the Northwest department who are interested in volunteering with AIS-Haiti.

Ronald had to get up very early this morning to take the bus up to Port de Paix and we were glad to get the call that he arrived there safely. Now, to get to Cabaret where they will hold the training day, Sylvain will be working out transportation for them which involves crossing (through!) several rivers, some of which are at flood levels. One especially is quite difficult right now. Please pray that they get safely there and then for Sunday when they will return.

A CrossWorld missionary who works up in that area has asked us to be in "serious prayer because there is so much potential" Also, the area is very heavily influence by voodoo.

Some of the participants will be trained to be coaches, some to be chaplains, and others to be administrators of the teams.

Ronald took a big bag of equipment with him to help 8 teams to get started. These teams will be associated with UEBH Christian schools in the general area.
Here are some pictures to show you what it's like crossing the rivers up north.

Here's one taken from a side window looking at a very full river.

Storm Damage

While we were away at a retreat with our CrossWorld colleagues, Port-au-Prince was hit hard by a storm this week.
Week before last, our friend, Kevin Belmont came and put in a nice, sturdy "staircase" made of discarded car tires filled with dirt so that Francoise could get up and down from the ravine to walk anywhere she needs to go and to tend to her garden that she has planted on the side of the ravine. You can see what looks like a big boulder next to her is actually the ground (the property she is renting to own) where she had planted some corn. Her house is up on the left and the blue tarp is her outhouse, which is now slanting down toward the ravine.


Sadly, many poor people live in ravines or on the edges of them. People like this were hit hard. Of course, certain sections of tent cities were also washed out. Thankfully our friend, Francoise was fine, but the water carried away earth, stones,and some of the "tire stairs". Please pray for the people of this ravine (Puits Blain & Vivy Mitchell) and another one on the other side of our neighborhood in the Delmas 75 area.


The picture below shows the lower tires that got washed away.


There is a good side to this, in that the path where Francoise's neighbors used to walk to get to anything outside of their "neighborhood" is gone--taken away by the water. So now lots of people are appreciating the tire stairs that Kevin built and at the bottom, they hop over to the "earthen boulder" and then hop to other chunks of land or rocks to get to or from their houses.
The down side of this is that something was stolen from Francoise this week and she's concerned that more things will be stolen.
It's interesting to me that her garden doesn't need to have a fence around it. She says that as long as people see her tending the garden, they won't take her produce, only if they think she doesn't live there anymore would they take it.
Another point of good news is that Francoise says that people who had lost everything were going around asking for sheets and clothing and we just received some sheets and towels that were intended for earthquake relief but sitting in customs for about a year. The reason for that was that the person they were sent to went back to the US because of health problems. So, now we have these available to give out.
In the picture below you see Francoise's next door neighbor's house. There used to be vegetation on the side of the ravine and it went gradually down to the bottom. Now it's cut away. The neighbor said that it would cost a huge amount of money to try to fix this.

Water Project inaugurated just in time for a rash of new cholera cases

Highlights from this week:

We finally got to "inaugurate" the water project in Verrettes. When we went out there, we heard that with all the rain we've been getting there has been a new wave of cholera victims. All the cases at the Verrettes church were treated and the people recovered, thank God.

Please pray: Our friend, Venita's two children, Sara and "Louch" (Gaeton) are sick with cholera-like symptoms and are currently on IV at the General Hospital. They are being told it's not cholera, but hopefully they are being treated as if it is.

I'm going to have to finish this post later....stay tuned...