Bonjou, the peace and joy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ be with you all. The Haiti 2003 Mission Team arrived at Port-au-Prince airport around 7:45 a.m. after an early start in Miami. The team was happy to see that all of the bags had made the flight and were safely in the terminal. The team was tired but all seemed healthy and happy that they had reached Haiti and were ready for the next part of their mission. Pastor Revenel Benoit met the team and they loaded up all of their bags and bodies into one Montero, Jay's Mitsubishi pickup and a rented Dodge conversion van and headed to the ELCH (Kim: Evangelical Lutheran Church of Haiti) Headquarters for breakfast. Following breakfast were devotions by Pastor S T and the Haitians sang "How Great Thou Art" in Creole. The team left Petionville and headed on what usually would take 3-1/2 hours to rearch Gonaives. The trip took five hours as the conversion van didn't take the rough rough between St. Marc and Gonaives very well. The women and S T rode in the van and the men rode with Joy in the truck. It was a very hot day and it was clear. The team arrived in Gonaives around 4:15 p.m. and had dinner with Pastor Revenel at his house. During dinner a very strong rainstorm hit filled with a lot of thunder and lightning. The drive back to the hotel took us through some torrents of rain water coming down off the mountains and provided for some excitement as people walking in the deep water scurried to get out of our way. Aldo and Pastor S T had devotions at 7:30 p.m. and it was reported that the latest anyone stayed up was 9:00 p.m. as most reported falling asleep before 8:30 as it had been a very long day.

Bonjou, the peace and joy of the risen Lord Jesus Christ be with you this day. If there was ever a hot day in Haiti, today was probably twenty degrees hotter than that day. It was so hot that the sand was popping like popcorn. The team went to breakfast at 7:15 and dined on scrambled eggs and ham, Haitian bread, peanut butter, passion fruit juice and lime juice, tree-ripened bananas and guava jelly. We left for the church and organized the VBS supplies and headed for the worksite which is just a short distance from the church. The men helped with the medical clinic construction in the morning, pouring the brown cement and later, Doc helped to form reinforcing steel that would be used for the walls. The children really enjoyed the VBS lessons and JJ Mustard reported that they had 49 children there. In the afternoon, Christy and Susan played some soccer with the boys from the orphanage and some of the neighborhood children. The team stopped working around 4:00 p.m. and several went swimming in the pool and then Pastor Revenel came to take several for a sightseeing trip around the Gonaives downtown. Following devotions that night, each of us reflected on something that had really impacted our day and the answers were awesome. Howard commented on how surprised he was that several of the little boys still remembered his name when he arrived. Christy mentioned about how the kids were so patient with each other, not fighting like kids do back in the states. They really all live in the same room at the orphanage with none of the conveniences we have come to expect in our lives. The night was just beautiful, a cool breeze, clouds with lightning in the east and fellowship by the pool. As you stare up at the sky tonight, think about us in Haiti, looking at the same moon, stars and know that we are all thinking of you. God be with you.

Bonjou, the peace of the risen Lord be with you all. Greetings from Gonaives, another hot day here and another day of serving our Lord in Haiti.

We had our usual breakfast at Chez Frantz, the same as yesterday and then walked back to the hotel and loaded up and headed to the worksite. The VBS had slightly over 100 children hear the message today. Howard spent many hours of the day working with the four men that he is grooming to sing barbershop quartet music and several people commented on how nice it was to hear them practicing and the keyboard that Howard brought could also be heard in the their room.

Doc, Aldo and I did some running around in Goniaves, looking for tools, bolts and washers and were fortunate to find the last eight washers in the whole town. We erected the backboard on the south end of the basketball court and there will be a tournament there on Friday and Saturday. We will try to get the backboard for the north end installed on Friday morning, God willing.

The construction on the medical clinic is going very well as the Haitian crew has nearly six courses on most of the outside wall in place today. Howard, Doc and I loaded the pickup bed with concrete blocks from the District block factory and delivered them to the work site, twice. Tomorrow, we will need to get another twenty five bags of cement delivered.

Susan and I went to do the email this morning and it was good to see her feeling better. She went to the orphanage around noon and spent the afternoon there and she seemed to get stronger as the day went on. The team left the worksite at 3 p.m. and headed back to the hotel to do some more sorting for VBS and several of the group went on a field trip with Pastor Revenel to a Church in the country north of Gonaives, that is located in Poteau.

The congregation there worships in a small building constructed of palm branches woven into walls, a metal roof and a dirt floor. They have around 120 children who attend school and also have a feeding program that is run by Trinity/HOPE. The congregation began to build a new church and have the foundation wall nearly complete. The new sanctuary will be approximately 42 feet by 84 feet and is located on the side of a hill, facing south and the view is really awesome.

The foundation has been sitting for approximately seven years now and the vodou priest has said that the God of the Lutherans is not very strong as their church is not finished. We pray that the sanctuary will be completed in the coming years and that another victory for believers will be won for the risen Christ.

The evening was blessed with another rain shower. We were told that they hadn't had rain for two months before we arrived and now they have received two rainstorms and one light shower. IF we can do nothing more, we can bring them rain.

Several of the team bought telephone calling cards tonight and will be calling some of their families, as they miss them. I am still having some doubts about my email messages getting through, the A drive on the computer at the cyber cafe didn't work today and I don't know if the journal from Wednesday ever did get posted. As I keep telling Doc, "welcome to Haiti."

I pray that this journal will find you all in the best of health and spirits, please continue to keep us, the people of Haiti and all our efforts in your prayers. God be with you.

Bonjou, the peace of the risen Lord be with you this Saturday morning. I am unable to use the "A" drive on this computer and wonder if any of the ten computers in this cyber cafe had drivers that do work. I have been on four different computers and none of them work.

It was just another hot and humid day in Gonaives yesterday. The VBS group saw another 100 children and there were a lot of smiles in that room. Susan was back to work at full speed and drinking a lot of Gatorade. Doc and I tried to get the second backboard installed at the basketball court by the holes in the metal rim had a different bolt pattern than the ones in the metal support, and we needed a welder to attach the one we had, so the basketball tournament will be half-court.

After the defeat of the basketball backboard, Doc and I hauled a few truck loads of blocks and then Howard joined in that fun and after lunch, JJ and Annette got to share in the adventure of hauling the last of the blocks from the block factory to the medical clinic site. The clinic now has most of the walls complete to the point where they will begin to place the windows.

Doc, Howard and Pastor Revenel drove to the Material store in a distant suburb of Gonaives to pick up twenty-five bags of cement and delivered them back to the storage room at the orphanage. It is amazing how extra heavy a ninety pound bag of cement can get in the hot afternoon sun.

The basketball tournament began in the afternoon around 4:30. There were six three-man teams that had signed up for the tournament. The team that Aldo was playing on won their first game and will play again on Saturday. There was a very heavy rain shower around 6 p.m. and that stopped the game. The Mission Team returned to the hotel and ate dinner at 7 p.m. and all seemed very tired. Doc was the tired one today who had gotten a little too much excitement as he seemed a little under the weather by nightfall.

We ate breakfast on Saturday at 7 a.m. and were to the worksite by 8 as there was supposed to be a game by 8:30 a.m. The team that Aldo played on lost their game so there will be an all Gonaives area final game. After lunch today, Pastor Revenel will take us on a tour of all the different operations and businesses that his district is doing and we are looking forward to a little sightseeing. Tomorrow will be church and then rest and pool time in the afternoon. We are planning to leave Gonaives on Monday between 4:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. and will hopefully be to Port-au-Prince and the Hotel Kinam by 9:00 a.m.

I will not write you until then, God be with you all. Your team members seem to be in very good spirits and are beginning to show signs of being ready to go home. Please keep us in your prayers today, tomorrow and next week as we travel on Monday. I have been doing all of the driving to this point and today Pastor Revenel's Montero developed a leaky gas tank. Please pray for safe travel for us on Monday.

Serving the risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,

Jay

Home | Facts | Map | Purpose | Daily Schedule | Personnel | Songs | Photographs | Journals | Contact Page