The New Plan...Moving Our Kids to Ti Goave

After a lot of prayer and deliberation, we have decided to move our kids from Gressier, their home of the past at least 11 years!

That was a much more difficult sentence to write than I imagined. Gressier has been our home and our kids' home for as long as I can remember. 

We will be moving our kids to Ti Goave, another city on our side of Port Au Prince, just further down the coast. This is also the city where Raymond and Gina live and, if you have ever been to the beach with us in Haiti, it is close to that as well.

Before I get into the reasons for moving, I do want to communicate some additional needs that this move will create for us as follows:

• Rent. In the long run, this move will save us approximately $12,000/year. In the short term, however, it will cost us $7,000 up front. We will be renting two smaller homes, one that will be used for transitional housing and the other for our younger kids.
• Beds/Mattresses. We were not able to get our beds and mattresses from the old house. Our mattresses were left behind initially and are no longer usable while our beds are too difficult to move as they have been welded together into bunk beds. We estimate the cost of this to be between $3,200 and $4000.

These are the only initial expenses that we foresee, and if you would like to give towards these expenses, we would be very grateful! Click here or click on the "Donate" button at the top of this page. 

These costs are easy to quantify and describe, but there are deeper costs associated with this move. Our kids are leaving the only home they have known. They are also leaving friends and, in some cases, family. Most of those people have long since fled Gressier, but the permanence of this move is difficult for everyone.

Stay tuned to another blog soon detailing the reasons for the move, but I am sure that you can probably guess why it is happening!

This is a huge change for All Things New, but some of you may be wondering about the general future of the orphanage as well. A lot of our kids are older, and as difficult as things are in Haiti right now, we are still praying about their future.

The bottom line is that we are in the planning stages right now of what our future will look like and we will be communicating that consistently over the next few months. We have 8 kids who are going into their final year of high school! That would bring our total to 10 graduates and will also usher in a transition to All Things New. 

The bottom line for now...Pray and Give if you have the capability to help us through this time of moving from Gressier to Ti Goave.