HAITI UPDATE

Monday, November 7

We had a good flight from the US, except that Ron’s bag was lost at the airport in Port-au-Prince. He filed a claim with the airline, but not much hope that we would get it back by the time Ron leaves on Friday, if at all. After checking in at CMBH, we headed out to the big Lowe’s-like building supplies place, MSC, over by the US Embassy, where we bought a generator and a chop saw for cutting rebar and cement blocks. Then we headed back to CMBH. Later in the evening Ron got an e-mail from a group from Compassion International staying north of us that they had picked up his bag at the airport by mistake! We made arrangements to meet them half-way Tuesday morning in Bon Repos to get the bag before continuing on to the orphanage. Praise the Lord that the bag was found! In the future we have decided to put an even more visible identifying object on all our bags, including e-mail and Haitian cell phone numbers just in case something like this happens again, and we will alert the people meeting us to keep an eye out for anyone but us leaving the airport with any of our bags.

Tuesday, November 8

After meeting with the folks from Compassion and getting Ron’s bag, we went on to the new orphanage construction site and met with Pastor Edmond. As we were looking around and talking about the need to build a bridge from the main road across a ravine onto the property, Pastor Edmond mentioned that there were some UN soldiers just down the road with heavy equipment working next to the Clinton Foundation housing site. We went down and met them, first some Jordanians we couldn’t communicate with, then the Japanese construction crew who had the biggest tracked backhoe we had ever seen. One of them spoke a little English, so we explained our situation to them, that we needed a little cleanout of the ravine, without much hope that they would help us, when to our astonishment they fired up the backhoe and brought it right down to us! They worked about 30 minutes digging a large hole at one end of the ravine to drain the water away from where we needed to work, and cleared and firmed up the bank before they left. What an awesome God we serve! That they were there and we were there on the same day, and that they were moved by our building an orphanage and wanted to help, was no mere coincidence!

After that we met with Pastor Edmond and went over all the materials and expenses needed to build the bridge, and he agreed to start on it today, and have it finished by Saturday. This is a huge milestone for the construction, because now we will be able to get large trucks onto the site to dump and unload materials instead of them being up on the road and having to move it all by hand.

After lunch we met with Pastor Edmond again at the old orphanage to discuss the December closing on the property, the drawing up of a Memorandum of Understanding on how we would proceed with the construction, how his Foundation and the Children First foundation would interact to provide support for the orphanage, and a whole lot of questions we had for him following the Lexington meeting. During this conversation we learned that the children were again in great need of food, that the resources left by the previous group had run out. Until we get a regular support mechanism set up and running this will be a continuing problem.

Wednesday, November 9

On arrival at the construction site this morning, we noticed that there was a huge UN backhoe trailer waiting at the main road and saw that indeed the window we had had to get this work done by them had been very small. But God has plans we don’t even know of until He answers our prayers. We saw that Pastor Edmond already had his people out digging the trenches and cutting and forming rebar for the bulkheads needed on either side of the ravine. Not only that, the UN backhoe had come back after we were gone and dug another big hole at the other end of the ravine to help out with the water. We immediately went down and again expressed our appreciation to 2^nd Lt. Noda of the Japanese SDF, on assignment with the UN, and his backhoe crew. We have even more confidence now that the bridge will be done by Saturday!

We again met with Pastor Edmond in his office and provided him with the resources to finish the bridge. In addition, after consultations with the Kentucky folks, we gave him enough to provide for the kids until the next group comes in December. Praise the Lord again that we were on hand just in time to provide this help to them.

This afternoon we went back into Port-au-Prince and visited several stores to check on the availability of supplies and their price with respect to what we would pay in the States. Then back to CMBH to finish up our paperwork and get the document translated for Pastor Edmond. We can hardly wait to see how much progress has been made tomorrow morning, and what miracles God will have worked for us. Praise His Holy Name!