Haiti April 16, 2012

Yesterday was Sunday, so after breakfast Chuck G and I went to church. As we were sitting there listening to Pastor Do, two chickens came in the front door and walked around a bit. One of them stopped and stared at me for a while, and it reminded me how good chicken sandwiches are. After they hung around us for a while, they went right down the center aisle as if they were going to the altar. Finally, one of the ushers got up and showed them the way out the side door. No one seemed to care, and Pastor Do never missed a word of his sermon.

After church, Chuck and I came back to the mission house and had a sandwich for lunch – no, it wasn’t chicken! Then Chuck said he thought he would take a nap, and I thought that was an excellent idea. I think he got up around 1:30, and I got up about 2 p.m. We had talked about building an extra table for the Rocky Bayou Christian School team that is coming on May 30, so we decided to do that. Everything here is a process. First, you have to fill the generator up with gas. Then you take it outside and start it up and plug in your extension cord. That seems easy enough but, as usual, things self-destruct here. The generator kept throwing the breaker, so we checked all the breakers in the box and saw nothing wrong. Then we got a ladder and checked all the ceiling fans, thinking maybe a wire had come loose, but again we found nothing. Then Chuck reminded me about some wires outside that we hook the larger generator up to that one time were grounded out. Praise the Lord – that was the problem. (I guess some kids had twisted the wires together.) We now have them taped up really well. To make a long story short, we were able to start working on the table about an hour later. We finished the table, made another for the kitchen, then made all the tables we already had more sturdy. It was a good afternoon, and it was late evening when we finished. We ate some cereal for dinner and hit the bed.

On Monday we got up and had our coffee, then Pastor Do came and asked Chuck to pump water for everyone in the area. While he was doing that, I started to wash some clothes – it seemed really strange washing clothes in a real washing machine! I washed three loads and hung them outside on the retractable clotheslines I had brought over. Chuck pumped water for people for over two hours, and I can tell you he enjoyed every minute of it. I have seen few people come to Haiti who love the Haitian people the way Chuck does!

When we finished our morning chores, we drove up to Soto, where there are waterfalls. We went to see if it would be good to take the Rocky Bayou Christian School Group there; we both decided it would be. It is amazing that, just an hour away, they have all the water they need, and here the people are still hurting even though it has been raining.

Tomorrow we will be going to Port to take the Ford for an oil change, and we have some running around that we will do with the help of Jojo, who will be our chauffeur. Tomorrow night we will be showing the Jesus film in Daniel’s voodoo village, God willing.