Special Day

Today is a very special day for 2 reasons.

The first reason is that it is Noah’s 12th birthday.  He has been excited for this day for over a month now, and has been counting it down.  We will be heading in to Port-au-Prince to do some special things and get some ice cream!  HAPPY BIRTHDAY NOAH!

The second reason today is special is, it was 1 year ago today that our bags were packed, we boarded our flights and arrived in Haiti to serve with Mission of Hope, Haiti.  It was so exciting to begin a new journey with our family.  I had so many emotions that day, excitement, sadness, nervousness, just to name a few.  Excited for what was beginning for us, sad to leave family and friends, and nervous about the unknown.

So much has happened in this past year.  Many buildings have been built, 175 homes for people whose homes were damaged in the earthquake or never had a home, a building to house teams that come down to serve with us, a new office addition for our ever-growing Haitian staff,  8 school rooms that will school over 300 children this fall, a depot for all the sports equipment donated for the orphans to play in the gym, a new 3 Cords building where many amputee ladies work, a new 37,000 square foot warehouse so we can expand our feeding program, a hospital that will be open 24 hours that will open in the Spring.  I hope I’m not forgetting anything.

We are doing well here, and are now moving into our second year of serving.  Many of you may or may not know that in order to serve the people of Haiti, we have to raise our own funds.  While much has been done over the last year, there is still much to do.  In order to keep serving, we need to raise our second year budget.  Would you consider being a monthly partner along with all the other faithful partners we already have?  Together we can continue to make a difference in the lives of the Haitian people.  To become a partner, click the ‘Donate’ link on our page.

MOH 500 – The Move – Part 3

It happened!  How exciting to finally witness 103 homes being handed over to people in need.

I will post some pics once I receive them from the person that was taking photos.  But in the meantime, check out the link below.  It’s a message from our president, Brad Johnson, about the days events and there are some photos along with it too.

http://www.mohhaiti.org/blog/reflections_moh_500_key_ceremony

MOH 500 – The Move – Part 2

So, a little disappointed.  The day and time got moved.  It’s now going to happen on Thursday at 10am.

I guess there wasn’t enough time to get the invitations printed and out to all the people who needed to be invited to such an event.

Will keep you posted.

MOH 500 – The Move – Part 1

Tomorrow, at 3 pm, if everything goes as planned, we will be a part of the celebration as the first 100 homes are given to families.

Words can’t express the joy and excitement we feel to be a part of this.

Please pray that everything continues to fall in place for this to happen as scheduled.

Upcoming Events

There’s a lot of excitement in the air.  Within the next month we have 2 big events happening.

One will be giving out the first 100 homes in LeVeque, this is where the MOH 500 homes project is.  The people to receive the homes have been chosen by a committee of Haitians.  It will be great to see the families receive their home.

The second is almost 300 kids, grades K-5, will start attending school in September in the new school built on our property in Bercy, also known as our North Campus.  How exciting to be giving more kids a Christian education.

Update

Things have been great here at MOH.  We have been keeping extremely busy.

We are in the midst of having 100-150 people here each week serving along with us.  Our big outreach going on right now is our VBS, this will continue for 8 weeks.  We have 200-300 different children each week, from different villages, coming to learn about Jesus and be loved on.

John has so many construction projects going on, I think I’ve lost count!  Let’s just say, he keeps busy.

I have settled into my position as part of the Group Coordination Team and enjoying it.

The kids are doing great!  They finished their main school subjects up in mid-June, but we have been doing US History and are almost done.  We will finish up this Friday!  They have been enjoying going out rat hunting, not that they’ve killed anything yet, or I don’t think they’ve even seen any during the hunt.  They have been making bows & arrows out of sticks to hunt with.  They also really enjoyed having the scorpion that they caught in our house for a few days.

It has been great seeing so many familiar faces over the past months!  You all know who you are.  And great getting to know all the new faces!  You all know who you are.

For any that didn’t know….we have moved to our new apartment.  We didn’t have to go far, we just moved below where we were.  Still getting settled in, but we will get there soon.

Please pray for our house to sell very soon!  We recently changed realtors, which has helped, but we really need it to sell soon!

Thanks to everyone for all of your prayers and support!

Happenings

It has been a great week here at MOH. The work that is going on here is happening at a God speed and I was glad to here that we hired a new Haitian engineer to lead the construction projects. He is a nice young man named Fils-aimé. I am looking forward to working with him.

The Housing project in LeVeque is going strong. 138 started and close to 100 finished, except the roofs. We have been waiting to get a container out of port with our roofing material and it finally arrived early this week. Time for some roofing!!!!!

The Hospital is getting painted and the windows were ordered this week. May will be a big push to get the paint and floor finished. We finished 6 homes in local villages this week and teams will be painting them in the weeks to come.

MOH Cribs has been so much fun. We are finding random people from the church and some that are complete strangers and painting their houses for them. A common response when we ask if we can paint their house is, why or what do you want in return. When we say we want nothing but that The Church of Hope just wants to be a blessing to them and the community, the look on their faces is priceless. Random acts of kindness opens doors for the love of Christ every time. We will start to plant trees and do minor repairs soon also.

The big push for the last couple of weeks and for the next few is to complete the first floor of the new guest house. It needs to be completed by May 14th!!!! Teams painted 4 of the 6 rooms on the 1st floor this week and the front porch. The electric, plumbing and septic work began also. Oh yeah, the air conditioning went in too!!! NOT!!! Well it has been windy this week. It is going to be a great place for teams to stay and unwind at the end of a long day.

We are beginning the footings for our new 37,000 square foot warehouse this coming week and continuing to push hard to get the guest house ready. The new school rooms in Bercy are ready to be roofed and painted. September will bring some happy kids as the hope of an education becomes a reality. Very exciting!!!

As you can see things are moving fast and there are more things to start soon….

Thanks to all of you who support MOH. Your faithfulness to your part of God’s call to MOH is truly transforming a country….. WE are so blessed to be a part of God’s work here in Haiti….

John

Our Visit Home (Our Michigan Home)

Home, we now have 2 homes.  One in Haiti, where we actually live and work and the other is in Michigan, but this is the place where we were born and grew up and have lots of family and friends.  Noah one day was confused, we were talking about ‘home’ and he asked ‘Are you talking about our home here or in Haiti?  We need to figure out what to call each one.’  Although we still haven’t figured out a name for each home, they are both very different, but both ‘home’.

The flights back to Michigan were very crazy.  The flight into Miami was like a roller coaster, the nose of the plane was going every direction just before landing.  The flight into Detroit was very turbulent.  We went through a big line of storms and had to climb 4,000 feet higher than what we were supposed too, we were still in turbulence.  I do NOT like turbulence, so I had a good hold on the arms of my chair.

My visit started out really well until later in the day the 1^st day we were here.  My mom ended up in the hospital.  She had several infections going on and what the medical people are calling the ‘superbug’.  She came home after 2 days in the hospital with a picc line so that nurses could come to her house to give her the medication.  My mom got home and the next day I started to get a sore throat.  So in order to visit with her, I had to wear a mask, so I didn’t give her something else.  She cannot leave the house while the picc line is in, which won’t be removed until after we leave.  A big disappointment that we won’t be able to shop together while I’m here, but glad she seems to be doing better.

It has been very different being back in Michigan.  Not just because of the weather or the scenery, but because of the many things that just become natural when living a totally different life style.  What I mean by that is: getting a drink out of the tap, in Haiti you only drink water out of a Culligan bottle;  I am finding myself walking through the house when I get up in the morning, turning all the lights and/or fans off, in Haiti I do this because throughout the day we run on batteries and I don’t want to use up all the battery life on things we don’t need running;  I have to drive very conscience about stop signs, lights and other traffic rules, in Haiti there aren’t many stop signs or lights, I found myself almost passing a person on the left today as they were turning left, this is common in Haiti, when you are turning you have to watch for the traffic behind to pass on any side;  When I am on facebook, I still continue to pass over any videos or anything that streams or has to be downloaded, in Haiti we can’t view any of these things, our internet is very limited.  Those are just a few of the differences that I continue to find myself shocked that I have learned a new way in such a short time.  The craziest thing was, I could only think of the Creole word for grapefruit (chadèk), it took me a minute to think of the English word.

It has been great to see many friends and family.  Noah and Caleb have enjoyed getting to see some of their friends too.

By the way, I have uploaded many new photos to our albums, so be sure to check them out.

Mary

Afternoon Adventure

Last Sunday after church, John, I and the kids decided to head out for the afternoon.  Our destination was the Baptist Mission and the Lookout.

The Baptist Mission is a nice place to go up in the mountains.  They have a little restaurant, a store, a bakery and a zoo.  They also have a church and a clinic among other things.  While you sit and eat at the restaurant, it over looks the mountains and you can see all the farming that is going on, on the side of the mountains.  This is something the Baptist Mission taught the Haitian people, how to terrace farm.  It is a beautiful view.

The Lookout is up in the same mountain as the Baptist Mission, but a different direction around the mountain.  You basically walk out onto someone’s roof top and can look out and see all of Port-au-Prince.  It is a really neat view.  I have some pictures of our last trip to the Lookout in our photos, ‘Our Family Times’ album.

So, these two places were our destination.  We arrived at the Baptist Mission only to find the restaurant and bakery closed.  We were bummed, as we were all hungry!  We hopped back in the truck and John decided to head up the mountain further to see if we could find somewhere to eat.  As we climbed and climbed and came across such beauty, we finally came across a restaurant that looked like somewhere we could eat.  Now, you can’t just eat any ole place in Haiti, you have to be careful that they serve Culligan water/ice and know how to wash/clean the food properly.  We parked and went in.  What a beautiful restaurant, we sat right by the windows that had a view of the mountains and valleys.  And the food was really good.

Once we finished eating, we decided to trek further up the mountain.  We didn’t know we were in for such a ride.  It was such a different world up there, John even said at one point ‘I feel like we just landed on the moon’.  It was really neat to see the valleys and next mountain tops and all the houses down the sides of the mountains and how they farmed the land.  We drove through many different villages, some good-sized and some really small.  We came to one point that all you saw everywhere was green onion.  The air even smelled like green onion.  They were bundling it up getting ready to take it down the mountain to market.  Shortly after that point, we came to a stop in the road.  By stop, I mean there was a couple huge piles of rocks in the middle of the road and no way to get around them.  So we had to turn around and head back down.

On our way down, we found another road to go up another mountain top, so we took it.  We were looking for a Lodge that is supposed to be in that area in the Pine Forest.  We drove through many pine trees, but didn’t find the Lodge.  We did however make it to the top of another mountain.  The road to go down the other side looked too dangerous so we turned back around and came down the way we went up.

As we were on our way home, down the mountain, a guy came running towards us.  I didn’t see what he had in his hand, but John did.  He got up to the truck and John started bartering with him, he then handed me a bouquet of beautiful flowers.

We continued on our way and made it home.  What a great day!

To see the other awesome pictures from that day, go to our photos and look at the album ‘Our Family Times’.

So Much Done!

Sorry it’s been a while since John or I have posted.  Things have been really busy.

We just had 1 team of 88 people here for 2 weeks, and they worked and worked and worked.  They were able to get so much either finished or helped us get pushed ahead, by a lot, on many projects.  Just on the construction side alone, they helped get an apartment ready for another family that is moving down next week as staff, worked on getting the guest kitchen to be moved to the new kitchen area, poured a cement patio and put a cover for an outdoor eating area, built many picnic tables for the Hope Village kids to eat at, built and put up a wood screen for the Hope Village kids to watch their once a week movie on, helped get a water cistern put together and hooked up in Leveque, got many homes in Leveque started and well on their way to being completed soon, worked on 2 village homes for 2 families desperately in need of a home, helped work on the hospital and…..I’m sure I’m forgetting something.  But, this is just the construction side of things, we had maintenance things worked on, doctors/nurses working in the clinic and doing mobile clinics, people sorting through donated clothing and items for the Hope Village, people painting the church, ladies making address signs for our homes in Leveque and street signs and ladies working in the kitchen to feed all of us.  I may have left some things out, only because there was so much going on, it’s hard to keep track.

With that all being said, take a look at the photos.  I have uploaded many new ones.

Mary