Praises Big and Small

You'll have to forgive me, those of you who have been praying with us for a solution to our house problem, because the Lord has taken care of it in His time and I was so busy with the start of school and then so relieved to have a solution that I forgot to pass along the good news to you!

It actually started the last few minutes before the opening bell of the first day of school - Labor Day Monday - when my mother-in-law, Trudy, Skyped with me to say that she had just come home from showing our house to a potential renter.  Why was she showing our house at 7:00 am?  Well, when her overnight shift at the hospital ended, she took a nurse friend of hers to see our house.  In the next few days that friend confirmed that she liked the house; we then negotiated with her via Skype a bit, sent a lease and she started moving her stuff in.

I can't tell you what a relief it is to know that our house is in good hands.  Also, it is on a two year lease with a possibility of being occupied for the next four.  So, God willing, it will be a long while before we need to concern ourselves with finding new occupants again!

Thank you all again for your prayers concerning the house.  Although sometimes it bothered me to think of leaving Indiana without the house issue settled, we can actually testify to enjoying a "peace that passes understanding" throughout the last two months, knowing that God had a plan for the house.

Other Praises:

Temperature Relief:  As I write this, rain has started to fall and it is a beautiful sight!  I have to admit that the heat is getting to me a bit, especially during the mid-afternoons.  I just drag myself around from about noon to 4 pm or so and feel like I accomplish very little.  So I take encouragement from this rain - it's a reminder that more comfortable days are coming.  People assure us that August and September tend to be the hottest months of the year and October starts a cooling trend. 

Rain Water Pouring from the Front Gutter

Natural Beauty:  We're starting to see posts on Facebook about mums, cool mornings, and pumpkin flavored this-n-that.  Everything is still pretty green around here, but there is ONE tree that has leaves which are turning orange - and it's right outside our bedroom window.  This morning we enjoyed watching the leaves drop from the branches one by one. I can't tell you how many times a day I am stopped in my tracks by the beauty of this country.

Our Autumn Tree

Banana and Coconut Trees are Everywhere You Look

No Mums, But These are in Bloom Right Now

And These Are ALWAYS "in Bloom"

Love from Home:  We have been the grateful recipients of a couple of care packages from friends and family back home.  It was apparent that even the kids have been missing some of the simple conveniences of their former lives when we opened a box from Grandma Trudy and one of the kids squealed, "Bacon bits!!"  I thought, "They never used to squeal when we came back from Kroger with a bag of bacon bits."  When chocolate chips and candy and tortillas and breakfast cereals are in short supply, you appreciate them quite a bit more. 

The same goes for friends you haven't seen for a while:  The kids get equally excited to Skype with folks from back home.  For instance, today we finally had a much-anticipated call from the Combs family and the kids were overjoyed.

Power:  Our Field Director, Brett, was able to find some extra batteries for our invertor and our friend Bud stopped by Thursday evening to connect them together properly.  The invertor charges these big old batteries throughout the day so that when the electricity goes off at 9 pm, the batteries are able to power a few outlets throughout the house and some overhead lights. 

With four batteries, we were sometimes running out of juice before morning came - which meant the fans suddenly stopped in the middle of the night.  And then when Melissa and I would get up at 5 am to get started for the day, we were operating in the dark.  Furthermore, the refrigerator was not one of the appliances wired into the invertor and with it going dead each night, a lot of food has been spoiling much too quickly.  We are excited now to have doubled the batteries and we hope it eliminates some of the power-related frustrations.

Kids are Adjusting Well:  One of my biggest prayer requests before our actual move was for extra grace for the kids as they said goodbye to the familiar and learned a new lifestyle.  Those prayers have certainly been answered.  Yes, they sometimes long for their grandmas, their old friends and Oreo the Dog.  And there have been a few tears shed on particular nights, but the sun comes up on a fresh new day and they take it head on. 

A big part of the relative ease of this adjustment has been having built in friends living right next door.  The Bundy kids have been wonderful companions to ours.  Brett and Angie's four kids are roughly the same ages as ours and each has a unique and fun personality and our kids have to be coaxed and cajoled back into their own house at the end of each day.  We are truly thankful for the way the Lord has brought our two families together.

I finish with a few pictures from the other day.  Not sure where the idea originated but lately our kids and the Bundys' have been seeing who can run the highest up the side of the large tree in front of our house.  They get forty feet of a running start ...

... and then run straight up the side of the tree. Shoes are optional.  The tricky part is the dismount - you need to push away at the top to avoid leaving bits of skin on the bark of the tree on your way down or breaking your ankle by landing on the roots!

Caleb got the best height out of our kids, but ...



Nobody even comes close to Brianna Bundy!



She's a tree running ninja!

Thanks again for all your prayers!  God hears and He has been so very gracious to us.  I was impressed by the reality behind a single verse from Psalm 3 this week: (v.4) "To the Lord I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill."  Our prayers - though often weak and feeble - reach to the very throne room of heaven!  AND then God answers!  Both sides of that verse are absolutely amazing if you stop to think about it...

"I Love We"

Within the first two weeks after our arrival in Haiti, a young man named Johnny started hanging out in the grassy area in front of our house with Caleb, offering to swap Creole lessons for English lessons.  Caleb gladly accepted the arrangement.

A few days later, another young man was hanging around the yard - and then later around Cowman as we were busily making preparations in our classrooms for school to start.  He introduced himself as Ruysdael and, honest to goodness, one of the first things he said to me was "You are like a second father to me"!

I have to admit, I was more than a bit suspicious of motives and kept my distance at first.  But along the way I decided that maybe this was one of those divine appointments that pop into one's life from time to time. I didn't encourage the friendship, but I didn't discourage it either.

This was the day before school started and, in typical Haitian style, Ruysdael refused to smile for the camera.

So I made faces and blew raspberries until he cracked a smile.

It turns out that Johnny and Ruysdael are both around 15 and the best of friends as well as longtime next door neighbors in a neighborhood up the hillside a fair way from the mission grounds.  They have a number of things in common: both are lanky, friendly and fairly proficient in English.  They also both lack fathers. 

Over the past month, as I have gotten to know Johnny, Ruysdael and now Ruysdael's cousin Miken, I like them more and more with each visit.  Ruysdael, in particular, has started calling me "Daddy Steve".  So how could I refuse them when they invited us to come visit their homes last weekend.  On the contrary, I was eager to make the hike.  So last Saturday afternoon, Caleb and I walked out the mission gates with our three new friends, trotted along the main road for a little ways and then turned onto a dirt road heading up the mountain.

At one point, they took us off the beaten path and we started squeezing around various cinder block buildings and through metal sheeting corridors.  By the time we reemerged into the open, we were quite a ways up the hillside - where motorcycles were the only vehicles able to navigate the steep incline of the roads and the deep ruts cutting this way and that. 

First stop: Johnny's house, where several young people were enjoying a spot of shade along the outside wall.  We were surprised to find that Johnny has a twin brother ... named John.  And a little brother ... named Johnson.  I'm not kidding.  They offered Caleb and me a couple of chairs and we got all the introductions and even listened to John play a bit of music on the guitar.  Their mother wasn't home but Johnny showed us a colored pencil portrait of her created by John, an excellent artist.  (The drawing is leaning against the house in the pic below.)

A few steps further up the hill took us to Ruysdael's house.  His mother was home and sitting on a bed, looking like the heat was sapping her energy.  We met Ruysdael's siblings too, and I may have the spelling off a bit but I am not making this up: there was his brother, Ruysdaelin, and his sister, Ruysdaeline. 

I'm getting Ruysdael trained to smile for the camera!  This corner of the house was his bed which he shares with his brother.  I noted the TV sitting to the left of his bed and asked its purpose - in a house with no electricity - and he told me that sometimes they have use of a generator.  His mom has a refrigerator in her room, but I guess that it serves to keep food out of the reach of varmints rather than to keep it cool. 

A bit further up the hillside the three boys wanted to show us a shallow stream which provides water for washing, but not for drinking.  Drinking water has to be brought up from town, they said.  There was a huge round boulder up there that made me think of the opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.  I kept my eye on it.

The guys willingly posed for some silhouette pictures with Caleb before we headed back down the hillside.  I was glad they were willing to show us the way back to our house, even though it meant another hike for them.  I was lost. They took us by a different route on the way home, past a historic church building, now in ruins. 

As well as a more modern church building...

Which is not likely to weather time quite as well.

Once we arrived back at our house, Melissa greeted the guys with chocolate chip cookies and some ice water before they headed back again to their own neighborhood. 

The next day the guys weren't ever out in our yard, but Johnny texted me with a message that evening: "Jesus said to him, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. say your wife that, and say hello with your children. its johnny good night." I texted back a "thank you" and said that I had missed seeing them that day.

His reply choked me up a bit: "me too. i love we." 

 I didn't know how to respond.

It's starting to feel like maybe it really is Jesus who brought us all together - who else could tie a middle-aged Hoosier and his family together with three teenage Haitian boys?

And I think I'm beginning to love we too.

Jezi Renmen Tout Timoun Yo!

"Jesus loves the little children."  We got to sing these words with the orphans at The Potter's House in both English and Creole this morning. 

And it's true, you know?

This was the first time that Melissa and Hannah and Samuel and Sarah got to see the orphanage and meet the kids.  The occasion was a Saturday morning "Bible Club" that Miss Jane was starting today.

 

The passage of the morning was Mark 10:13-16:

And they were bringing children to Him so that He might touch them; but the disciples rebuked them.
 But when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and said to them, "Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. "Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all." And He took them in His arms and began blessing them, laying His hands on them.

After working to memorize the Scripture passage, the kids made little name cards ...

And they were so proud of them!

We ended our time together with some banana cake that Melissa baked before we left home, and the kids were excited to get some homemade sweets. I was impressed with how they waited so very patiently until all were served and a prayer was offered before they had permission to begin eating. 

When we were finished, Jane found out that the neighbor who usually provided the orphanage with their only source of running water - a hose snaked through their back wall - had decided to conserve her water and, thus, the kids had no water to bathe in.  Caleb and I offered to help drive their barrel down to the nearest pump to collect some water and bring it back in order to save them the trouble of going down with a wheel barrow to do it later.

A couple of the boys were eager to help and gladly jumped into the back of the mission pickup truck I was driving.

We drove down to the main road and found the pump and started filling our five gallon buckets, dumping the water into the barrel and then repeating.  Caleb got a workout at the pump!

Teamwork!

By the time we got the water back to the orphanage, Caleb and the other boys were a bit damp from sloshing water.  By the time we got the barrel off the pick up, one of the little guys was quite ready for his bath.

And Caleb had a bit of extra time to play tag with the kids in front of their house.

Indeed, Jesus loves the little children!

ALL the children of the world!

Jane is planning on doing the Bible Club every two weeks and we are hoping to be involved on a regular basis. We're looking forward to getting to know these little guys and girls on a first name basis!

Here are just a few more:

P.S. Caleb's "old friend" Enel was there, helping Miss Jane with translating some of her English into Creole and it was so good to see him again.

In the Last 24 Hours ...

... I've been on both ends of the language learning spectrum: from student to teacher.  Yesterday we went as a family straight out to Emmaus Seminary after school.  The kids were happy to play with the Heckman kids and the other children around the campus while Melissa and I met with Simeon, a recent graduate who is now working at the seminary.  It was our first time to meet Simeon, a tall, lanky young man who enthusiastically shared his knowledge of Creole with Melissa and me. 

Thankfully, we are not entirely unfamiliar with Creole, as our Haitian friend in Indiana, Storly, did a great job over the past year in giving us at least a foundational knowledge of how Creole works.

Storly and Simeon have this in common: they both assure us that Creole is EASY. SOOOO easy! 

And, in relative terms, it definitely is.  For example, there's no such thing as an irregular verb. (Sarah at six and a half is still learning that in English not every verb's past tense is formed by simply adding "ed" to the end.  "She teached." "They speaked.") And in Creole, the spelling is all phonetic - so once you know how to pronounce various letters, you can read the language fairly accurately.  Still, my brain at 45 says ANY language is going to take a long time and a lot of effort to learn.

Simeon went over pronouns and verb tenses and the days of the week.  All good, solid, foundational stuff.  And our heads hurt a bit by the time we finished, so he did his job.

This afternoon then, after classes ended at Cowman, it was time to flip language learning roles for me.  I stepped into an old classroom - that coincidentally used to belong to Emmaus Seminary before it moved to the new campus - now as a teacher.  My students were 35 Haitian men and women who want to learn English. 

Deluxe accommodations!

They were all so attentive and earnest - teachers, businessmen, mechanics and students, all looking to improve their English skills.  They've all been through "Level 1" already and I am teaching "Level 2", so thank goodness I'm not required to explain things in Creole!  It was intimidating enough to look at the unfamiliar names on the sign up sheet: Lunel, Margareth, Sulvestre, Simalia, Jiloucie, Andrise, Celestin, and Luckner.  Just taking attendance could have eaten up the entire hour and a half if I hadn't thought to call on a nearby student to read off the names!  I would have come nowhere near pronouncing half of them in any way recognizable to their owners. 

So by the end of class, I had just one person's name memorized: the guy who helped me with attendance.

Jeffery!

It's a start.

Just before class ended, I told the students that I wanted to pray for them.  And even though I felt exhausted by that point and in-way-over-my-head, I felt a deep gratitude toward the Lord for bringing me to this place.  This IS where I am supposed to be.  This course will stretch throughout the rest of the year and into next May, so these folks will not be strangers to me for long!  I am anxious to see how God works through me and this Bible-based curriculum in the coming months.



I close with a couple of pics from the old seminary classrooms that just sort of made me laugh a bit: 

Heh. What do you do when the only logical place for the chalkboard coincides with one of the few outlets in the room?

This seems like an easier solution: just put the chalkboard on blocks!  ;-)

First Week of School

Having transitioned from youth ministry eight years ago into full-time teaching, I grew to expect the hectic pace of the opening of a new school year to leave me feeling unprepared, a bit anxious, and completely overwhelmed. 

BUT at least THOSE beginnings had the virtue of being somewhat predictable.  We'd stock up on fast and easy foods for lunches, set our alarms early, get all the kids up, dressed, fed and out the door to the van.  On the very first morning, I would always make sure we got a picture of our kids outside and ready to hit the road.

Once at school, I could count on the bells to ring every 50 minutes or so, ushering in a new group of high school students to whom I would explain the very same concepts and procedures as I had to the kids during the previous period. 

Melissa and I tend to work hard, especially that first week, but there was never much literal sweat involved.  Ever. 

This year: profuse sweating.  And that's just ONE of many differences. 

For example, no easy grab-n-go lunches this year.  I'm missing the "Lunchables"!  Melissa has to start the lunch planning  the night before.  Fresh fruit needs to be cut.  If the kids want peanut butter sandwiches, bread needs to be baking.  Water bottles need to be filled and chilled.

One morning Melissa realized that even though we had no mini bags of potato chips to throw in the lunches, she could bag up some popcorn.  So she popped some on the stove ... working by flashlight.

And why flashlight?  Well, school starts at 8:00 am and our goal is to leave the house at 7:00 am. To have time for prayer and Bible reading and finishing lunches and making breakfast and rousing the kids and getting dressed, we've been getting up a little after 5:00.  Which is actually not all that different from the past few years in Indiana, except here the power doesn't come on typically until 6:00.  A few fans and a few overhead lights are powered overnight by the "inverter" - basically big rechargeable batteries.  Sometimes the inverter runs out of juice before the generators get turned on at 6:00, so you do what you can by flashlight.

Another big difference that is tough to get used to as an American: we don't have our own vehicle.  The mission owns several trucks and vans and they are USUALLY available to us for sporadic use. But between break downs and the transportation needs of various projects going on elsewhere throughout the day, we don't have a vehicle to call our own and leave parked on the school grounds all day.  So we have been hitching a ride with Angie Bundy - our next door neighbor and our principal - who has graciously invited the six of us to SQUEEZE in to her family's Patrol with her and her four kids!  Pile in lunch boxes, computer bags, book bags and water bottles, and it gets a bit tight.  On the plus side, the Patrol has an AWESOME air conditioner!

Once at school, Melissa and I have both had to adjust to some major changes.

For Melissa: She's dealt with non-English-speaking students before, but this year she has 18 students between her first graders and her kindergarteners and Melissa is thinking that 10 of her 11 kindergarten students speak little to no English.  The first day of class ended with Melissa nearly in tears.  She was distraught over the thought that several of her students were quite naughty and nearly uncontrollable.  Many completely ignored her even when she called them by name.  But over the next few days, it dawned on her that the majority HAD NO IDEA WHAT SHE WAS SAYING  TO THEM OR ASKING THEM TO DO.  And the fact that they didn't even respond when Melissa called them by name?  Maybe because she wasn't pronouncing their names correctly!  (It turns out, for example, that Hans is pronounced Ahnz!) 

The second day, a sharp young lady who speaks English, Creole, French and a bit of Spanish was hired to work as Melissa's aid.  It's a trial run and there's question as to whether the school can afford to employ her long term, but Rose was a huge blessing to Melissa throughout the rest of the week.  We're praying that God provides a way to keep her on!

For me: I have been used to teaching high school English classes.  Now I have 5th and 6th and 7th graders for multiple subjects.  I need to brush up on my math skills and world history facts!  My students are great so far, though, and have lots of personality.  And they have surprised me with the depth of discussions we have managed in class already. 

Also new for me: having my own kids in class.  Caleb is in the 7th grade this year, Hannah is in 6th and Samuel is in 5th.  The 6th and 7th graders are with me for everything but History and I have Samuel's class for English and World History and then Samuel as an individual joins my 6th grade math class.  Hannah is taking 7th grade math and Caleb is taking pre-algebra with a couple of the other 7th graders.

Bonus challenge for both Melissa and me: the power has been going out for an hour or two at unexpected times about every morning.  If you need to make copies, access the internet, or charge a computer, you're just out of luck.  In Melissa's classroom, there are so few windows that when the power is out it gets quite difficult for students to see the work they are supposed to be doing.  And, of course, FANS are also missed when the electricity stops flowing!

 

My students - ready to work!

Samuel sits at the picnic table to do some of MY homework after school.  Got to keep the water bottle handy!

Hannah coming in from lunchtime recess.

 

The younger kids love the swings and monkey bars before the school day starts.

Principal Angie addresses my students during chapel on Friday.

Squeezing into the Patrol.  This was the end of a school day and Sarah looks like she's been through the wringer!

In the midst of all the inconveniences, we have the energy that the Lord provides and we are feeling quite at home and very blessed.  We are constantly aware of ... and in awe of ... the fact that we are here and getting started with the work God has called us to do in Haiti AND that it's only possible by His provision through wonderful, supportive brothers and sisters in Christ like YOU.  Thank you so very much!

I would appreciate your prayers for us during Week #2 - this week I add a significant duty to my schedule.  I will be teaching English as a Second Language to a group of 30 adults twice a week.  So, starting this week, on Tuesdays and Fridays I will have to hurry out of Cowman at the end of the day and catch a ride back to the main mission grounds where I will hold class from 3:30 to 5:00 pm.  It's a Bible based curriculum and the students will be from all walks of life.  I'm very excited about the chance to share God's word with them, but a bit nervous about taking on this new role!