A VAGUE UPDATE

 Many people have contacted Melissa and me after seeing Cap-Haitien Christian School's Facebook and Instagram posts naming our friend and co-worker, Kacie, as "interim director" of the school. 

Natural questions arise: 

"Why the change?"

"What does 'interim' mean here?"

"What will Melissa's role be next school year?"

"Are you guys planning to return to Haiti?"

"What's going on?"

For now, Melissa and I find ourselves in the midst of a period of discernment regarding recent years of ministry as well as the future. Some day I will be able to speak more freely about this season in our lives, but for now we need to be restrained. 

Some things we can currently say with certainty:

- If it is God's will, we will happily return to Haiti in the next few months for an 8th school year at Cap-Haitien Christian School, as COVID-19 allows.

- Our hearts' desire - for the rest of our earthly lives - is to serve the Lord however and wherever He directs. 

- The Lord has been speaking to us during this season and we are learning a lot. Praise God, we can count on challenging times leading to new growth. 

- We are 110% in support of Kacie. She is an amazing young lady. The directorship of CHCS is one of the most difficult and stressful jobs on this planet. (I've had a front row seat and speak as one who is in the know!)

- We could use your prayers now more than ever. And, as always, we appreciate everyone who has supported our work in Haiti so generously in the past and those who continue to do so. (The virus has made finances tight as we need to continue paying rent and utilities in Haiti even as we have extra costs with our extended stay in the States.)

When this season has played out, we will look forward to sharing what we have learned and satisfying your curiosity as we are able.  For the time being, we are in our old house in Columbus, Indiana and more than willing to catch up with friends and family in the coming days and weeks. 

(If you want to contact us, I can give you current phone numbers if you shoot me an email at sgross@teachbeyond.org.) 

CHANGE OF PLANS

Like you, our plans have been altered repeatedly over these past few weeks. I've been pretty quiet on social media (I tend to process things in silence) and so much has changed that now I don't even know where to start. But here's a basic timeline:

Early March - COVID cases reported in the Dominican Republic next door, but nothing in Haiti yet. 

Thursday, March 12 - Haiti shuts its borders with the DR. Knowing our school could be shut down at any moment, we begin making plans: grade school teachers make take-home packets and junior and senior high teachers prepare to jump back to Google classrooms (as we did in September during all the unrest). Students are encouraged to take home all their textbooks on a daily basis. 

Thursday, March 19 - In the evening, the Haitian President announces two confirmed cases in country and declares the airports closed.

Friday, March 20 - Our good friends, Kacie and Mikken, go to the airport in Cap for a Missionary Flights International plane to Fort Pierce, Florida. The plane is allowed to land, but no cargo is allowed off and no passengers are allowed on. This leaves Kacie and Mikken dejected, and the rest of us very nervous!

At this point, Melissa and I and others spent several days:

• Pursuing information about possible upcoming flights
•  Preparing to possibly leave our home
•  Getting things in order at school (arranging an early pay day and finishing photocopying, etc.)
•  Debating whether we would be safer to leave or to stay
•  Imagining all sorts of terrible scenarios
•  Stocking up on non-perishable foods in case we weren't even allowed to leave

Meanwhile, OMS, TeachBeyond, and our School Board (as well as the U.S. government) were all urging us to leave Haiti for the U.S. if and when at all feasible. A few flights were allowed by Eastern Airlines (??) for $1,200, one way to Miami - over four times the normal cost - and these were only out of Port-au-Prince (a dangerous drive even under normal circumstances). 

We kept the faith that Missionary Flights International would continue to work with the Haitian government to get a flight arranged out of Cap Haitien. 

Tuesday, March 24 - We received a phone call around 8:00 pm from MFI offering a flight out at noon the next day. At this point we didn't question whether we should be on that flight.

Wednesday, March 25 - We spent a few hours at the airport, surrounded by longtime friends who were also headed out. (Our friends from Emmaus, the Edlers, brought their three little boys in an attempt to get to Northern Ireland, but they were snagged by bureaucratic red tape and denied departure. Fortunately, they were able to ultimately make the journey within the next couple of days.)

Once we arrived in Fort Pierce, we rented a van and grabbed sandwiches at a Subway before driving toward Orlando, where a board member had graciously and generously offered her rental home.

We figured we'd stay put in Florida for a few weeks. Our usual stop in Indiana - Melissa's mother's house - isn't really an option in these strange days: Trudy works in the emergency room at the local hospital. Her house is not going to be the best place to avoid exposing our family to the virus! 

So here we are currently. In a very nice house with its own pool. Near grocery stores. With dependable internet. Bikes in the garage. Quiet neighborhoods to walk. Continuing classes online. 

Oh, and our good friend and co-worker Janeen is here with us too - which makes things a bit more fun. She's heading up to Erie, Pennsylvania at some point, but like us, she's just playing it day by day for now. 

Praises:

• Safe Travel
• Great Place to Stay Temporarily
• Our Kids have been Troopers
• Good Health
• Caleb is Safe and Continuing Classes while at My Brother's House

Prayer Requests:

• One of our teachers, Austin, and some new neighbors, Mike and Hope, are planning to ride out the virus in Haiti. We're glad that there's someone around to watch over our house and Ginger, but we are concerned for them and pray safety and perseverance for them. 

• And, of course, our friends and co-workers and students are heavy on our hearts. Please pray God's protection over Haiti. This virus has the potential to absolutely devastate the nation.

• Logistics, wisdom and provisions as we plan next steps for our family and also for our school.

FIGHTING THE FUNK

Last weekend I worked myself into a true funk after Sarah's (belated) birthday party ended.

It just struck me as the passing of an era. An era I have greatly enjoyed. 

She had been so excited beforehand about her Harry Potter theme for her party. (She has just started reading the books in the last two months and she hasn't yet completed the series of movies.) But when the party actually took place, Harry was all but forgotten. 

There was an entire bowl full of fun Harry Potter glasses and a stack of temporary tattoos in the style of his infamous zig-zag forehead scar. 

None of it was touched. 

(I guess at 13, your friends are too mature (haha!) for party favors.) 

Worse than that - boys were invited to the party. 

BOYS!!

When it was time to call everyone in for lunch, I found Sarah had climbed a tree in the front yard (Yay! So reassuringly like "the good old days"!) … except this time there was a boy with her. A non-brother boy.

I don't mean to imply that Sarah is now boy-crazy. She is not. (Thank you, Jesus!) It's just that these things strike me as ominous shadows of realities-yet-to-come. And the main problem with new things coming is that old things first must pass away. 

I'm noticing that these era changes are most difficult when they involve the oldest child or the youngest. Six months in, Melissa is still not recovered from sending Caleb off to college. She can hardly eat a taco without getting all wistful over how Caleb was able to eat 5 or 6 at a sitting, often before the rest of the family got seconds. (A fact that, at the time, none of us found nearly so endearing.)

So, the party just left me fighting the funk.

My memory often fails me now, but one moment at the end of what must have been an unusually harmonious night ten or eleven years ago (!!) sticks with me: Sarah was still a little one in diapers, just recently arrived at the really fun stage of toddlerhood, and Melissa and I had put her in her crib for the night and had now turned our attention to getting the older three kids to sleep. Samuel, four or five at the time, sat on his bed in his pajamas, fighting back tears. 

"What's wrong, Sammy?" we asked. 

His reply caught us totally off guard: "I'm sad because I don't want Sarah to grow up!"

I'm totally with you, dude. 

But there's no stopping it.

So goodbye, footy pajamas.   Goodbye, Lalaloopsy.   Goodbye, bedtime stories.

A birthday pic from the good old days ...

Hello, boy problems. Hello, driver's license. Hello, growing independence. 

I will do my best to embrace this new era, especially since I already know that this era, also, will too soon be "the good old days". 

GETAWAY

My family and I have only recently started taking advantage of a generous offer that was first made a year and a half ago when we moved off the OMS grounds and relocated up the mountainside. Our new landlord told us from the start that we were welcome to use his family's beach house for occasional getaways if we desired. 

That sounded like a GREAT idea to us, but most free time - and spare energy - during our first six months were spent getting settled and doing projects around the house. Then came the civil unrest and for most of the past year we have often felt "under house arrest" - leaving home only to go to work (when possible) and then returning straight home. No unnecessary trips into town, rarely eating out, no travel after dark. 

Praise God, the unrest began to settle finally in December and the peace has held so far in 2020. Over Christmas break, Melissa pushed for us to finally check out this beach house we had seen from a distance but never visited. After a successful day outing to the site before Christmas, we decided it wouldn't take too much effort or budget to do overnight visits there on a semi-regular basis. With a bit of the money we weren't spending on a trip to the States or even the Dominican Republic over break, we bought a couple of air mattresses, a little gas burner for cooking, and a few kitchen supplies, and we were good to go.

(So far we have enjoyed a three day stint with Caleb the first week in January and an overnighter this past weekend.)

The house is a beautiful structure in an idyllic location. It's on the backside of the mountain we live on. I'm sure if there was a tunnel, we could walk there in twenty minutes or so:

The approach from the water:

Looking up from the water's edge: 

A spacious veranda wraps all four sides of the house:

Looking to the right from the front railing, a great view of the village of Labadi:

Looking straight across the bay, you're likely to see a Royal Caribbean cruise ship docked for the day:

But there's no tunnel or even a road to this beach house - you have to drive through Cap Haitien, past Cormier and the cruise ship property, and park at the end of the road ... then hire a water taxi, like this one, for a short trip across the bay: 



Ginger stays home and fends for herself when we have gone so far. Sugar, on the other hand, would survive maybe 90 seconds unsupervised, so we have to bring the little beast with us.

She doesn't mind. Sugar was made for beach life...

Sometimes the water is calm enough for the taxi to pull up right to the house when coming or going. Other times, we have had to use the village pier.

Kayaking and snorkeling provide some good exercise.

Caleb tried to build a campfire one day, but most of our cooking is done on our little outdoor stove top. 

We've also found some excellent rice and beans and pates for sale in the village during lunchtimes. 

There's plenty of nature to enjoy. Sarah loves tracking down hermit crabs.

It's a good spot to sit and think.

Or read a book:

(On a side note, Melissa and I are so grateful to see Sarah enjoying some recreational reading. We were beginning to think it would never happen. Thanks, Mrs. Johnson ... and Harry Potter!) 

Nightfall comes early. By 6:00 pm it is DARK. We bring a little portable generator, but we haven't needed it a whole lot. Solar-powered lanterns and candles suffice for most of our needs. 

Nights are breezy and cool. Yesterday morning it was 71 degrees. In the background you can see Samuel bundled in a blanket on the hammock! Our blood has thinned a bit since moving to Haiti ...

We need to leave by 3:00 pm in order to get home for dinner. Theoretically, we could make it home in under an hour, but that depends on the traffic in town and whether or not there is a cruise ship around. Cruise days slow us down because the ship leaves all sorts of meat, fruits and cheese behind before departing. That food gets sold and resold, starting just outside the gates of the Royal Caribbean beach. This means Melissa MUST SHOP.

Yesterday we scored apples, kiwi, grapes, hamburgers ... and a real rarity: Pork Chops!! We grilled them up for dinner as soon as we got home. A good way to end the weekend.

That's it. No spiritual application here but the need for rest on a regular basis. We are so thankful to Karl and his family for their willingness to make this great space available to us. It's just what we were needing.