Each (early) spring the OMS Haiti staff gets away together for a retreat in the Dominican Republic. Over the last few years, it seems to work best to schedule it over the days leading up to Mardi Gras - when things can get a little wild in the streets of Cap Haitian and very little work can be accomplished anyway.
This year, because of some political rumblings, we decided as a group that it would be wise to get across the border a day earlier than our reservations allowed and spend one night at a hotel in Montecristi. The CHIC Hotel.
I can only conclude that "chic" means something entirely different in Spanish than it does in English.
But it was a place to spend the night - restlessly. The motorcycles were zooming past our open windows LATE into the night.
Still, we were with friends and family and ready for a break together.
On Sunday, it was only about 3 miles to our final destination, the El Morro, a hotel in the shadow of the local Mountain by the same name.
It was definitely more "chic", but also a whole lot more restful.
And remote. It really felt like "getting away from it all".
It was Super Bowl Sunday and, although I could have found the game on cable TV in the room, I had no desire to even watch the commercials this time around. Our kids wanted to swim and that was quite alright with Melissa and me.
Mega kudos to the Heckmans and Ayars, our friends from Emmaus Seminary, who had found this location on a DR trip earlier this school year and suggested it would be a perfect place for all of us to gather for retreat. It WAS.
El Morro had everything we could have asked for, and we were pretty much the only people there.
Here's the screened in dining hall - that was just big enough to seat our whole group for each breakfast and dinner.
It turns out, we were actually on a little island, only connected to the mainland by a small bridge - a truly unique environment with mangrove swamps and a lone mountain, El Morro.
I looked up "el morro" on Google Translate - it's Spanish for "the nose". From this angle, I guess that makes a lot of sense.
Here it is from another angle.
The location is known for harvesting sea salt. The mangroves filter the sea water which is then channeled into little square fields to foster evaporation. The salt is later shoveled into wheelbarrows and stored in this type of shed.
Not as natural, but with its own sort of beauty, Montecristi is also home to actual grocery stores.
And an ice cream shop!
At its core, though, our retreat is intended to be a time of spiritual renewal, for both kids and adults. We adults were challenged each day by this year's speaker, Dr. Charles Lake. Melissa and I were already familiar with Dr. Lake, knowing him as the founding pastor of the Greenwood church which later birthed our home church in Columbus, Indiana. We knew he was a gifted preacher, but we had no idea of the depth of his wisdom or the extent of his personal history with OMS over the years.
From the 4th chapter of Ephesians, Dr. Lake challenged all of us to "put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness."
We had a lot to chew on.
Dr. Lake brought along some friends, Michael and Brenda, to work with our youth and children. Here's Brenda allowing Sarah and the other girls to cover her legs with marker "tattoos".
Outside of our Bible study times, we enjoyed activities from shell hunting ...
To mountain biking ...
To early morning runs ...
To wave jumping at the beach...
Or just hanging out with friends.
One afternoon, all 30 or so of us piled into two boats for an up-close tour of the mangroves.
I don't know how it could have been a more perfect day.
Our tour guides gave us a chance to explore the mangroves first hand.
Everyone got a kick out of handling a sea cucumber that Phil Heckman had discovered.
And just when we thought the tour was ending, the boats swung us out to a small island to explore.
This picture taken from the center of that island cracks me up - looks like it should be entitled "Ethan Heckman and his Entourage".
As Melissa and I are more aware than ever of just how quickly our kids are growing up, we truly appreciated such great family time all around. The retreat was an amazing few days.
We felt rejuvenated by the time we were ready to cross back into Haiti.
The day after our return, we had the great pleasure of picking up our friend, Kelly, from the airport. She came in for a week to help Melissa juggle the kindergarten class with her usual third grade obligations while our lead kindergarten teacher is out for a few months on maternity leave. Kelly was such an encouragement to our entire family.
We put her to work right away making some Valentine's Day cookies to share with Daniel's neighborhood kids on Sunday morning.
As always, Daniel's place was packed out with eager kids - standing room only.
We brought 70 cookies and barely had enough to go around.
When Monday morning came, we put Kelly right to work at Cowman. The kids LOVED her. And she LOVED the kids!
We thank the Lord for the time of rest and for meaningful work to come back to. We thank Him, too, for good friends like Kelly and YOU, who come alongside us.
We are blessed beyond belief!
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