Back in Haiti!

As of this past Sunday, we are back in Haiti until the middle of June.  This will be the longest Sophie and Elijah have ever been in Haiti so we are a little nervous about how they will do down here.  Sophie loves it in Haiti, and every time we come with her she just walks around the house with a smile exploring everything that she remembers from the last time.  Elijah is pretty much the same here as he is in America and I’m not 100% sure he knows we even left other than it is a little hotter here.  But, as parents, we worry more about clean water, adequate food, mosquitoes, sun, etc. and so we could use your prayers for that aspect of life here.  We have really already settled in and our first team arrived today, and I wanted to share just a few of the positive things that have already happened in the first 3 days of us being here:

• We got to see the kids, and they are doing great.  Also Sophie got to see Herbison (Gorby is his nickname) and she has not stopped talking about it since then.
• We have gotten to spend a lot of time with our employees.  Elijah and Sophie really like Lener and Madam Beni a lot.
• Our first team arrived today and it has been a blast already spending some time with them and getting to know them a little better.  They are here to spend time with our kids and to really focus on getting to know our girls better (it is a group of 9 and they are all females).
• We have already had a meeting with Natcom (the local Internet provider) about installing Fibre Optic Internet to our home.  This would be a huge blessing and help to our ministry.
• We have 2 other teams coming with Clearview Chapel in LaGrange on Saturday and FBC in LaGrange on Monday.  We look forward to spending time with them and especially my parents, sister, and brother in law.

On the other side of that, we have had some not so good things happen as well in our first 3 days here:

• We arrived home to 4 of the kids’ goats in our backyard because, in the words of our security guard, the kids said “This is our house too.”3  There are no longer any goats in our back yard.
• Son Son’s goat actually broke the water spigot in our back yard which is the first point of exit for all of the water coming from the well.  Basically, we had to fix that first thing for us to have any water in the rest of the house.  
• We found out our black truck has been “producing a lot of smoke” lately and that it needs to be fixed.
• The battery was stolen out of the white truck (it was less than a year old) at some point fairly recently, and we are just now trying to get it running again.
• One of our 2 employees that we allow to drive our black truck (not Lener) actually forgot to press the breaks when pulling into our house and rammed the side of our house pretty hard.  There is a dent, the fender is coming off, and the headlight is not working.

The truth is, after almost 2 months in America, I had almost forgotten how different everything was here.  I drove to Leogane today and just marveled at how almost everything here is different than almost everything in America.  We are definitely back in Haiti, and we are excitedly looking forward to how GOD is going to move here.  Please be in prayer for All Things New, for our kids, for the teams coming down, and for our family as God continues to develop our ministry here.