Life Beyond Birthdays

Seeing as how the last three posts have been related to birthdays, it's time for more of a life update!  Stay tuned though- Sawyer's birthday is coming up in a month:)

My parents were here for a visit the second week of September.  Dad is the mission manager for the Haiti Dairy Program and likes being involved with S.E.E.D., so he tries to come down several times a year.  Mom was okay tagging along with him:)  Mom spent the week with us while dad tended to his duties, but he did come up to the hospital to spend one day and night with us.  It was good to have them here and the kids loved it!  The first thing they asked grandma was "what surprises did you bring us?"  Oh boy...

We had ordered some pork and beef that we planned to grind and our order was filled while they were here!  Some guy who is selling a pig or cow whacks it apart with his machete, and somehow by the time we got it it was skinned and kind of cleaned off and put into a five gallon bucket.  Then it's our job to wash it good and chop it into small chunks that will fit into the grinder.  So me and mom cleaned and chopped pork while the men took care of the kids.  We are glad to have the meat but the smell was something to get used to!  Not sure I ever actually did get used to it:)  However, now we have 50ish pounds of ground meat in our freezer and we won't be needing to do that again for awhile!  Actually, sometimes people butcher a cow right outside the main hospital gate and we could get some there too if we wanted.  I haven't seen it with my own eyes, but it has happened since we've been here.  Once, Danny was outside by our gate and saw a man walk past carrying the cow's head after the butchering was done!

We are moving right along with language lessons.  And by moving right along, I mean we have them almost every day, NOT that we are speaking really well!  In the picture is Falens, our tutor.  He comes to our house most afternoons while the kids are napping.  I'm sure I'm probably his worst student ever!  I understand more than I can speak.  It takes me forever to piece together a very broken sentence.  Say something as slow as you can.  Now say it a little bit slower.  That's about how fast I talk in Creole.  And I find myself saying Spanish words interspersed in there too.  The poor people that have to communicate with me!  Danny's doing good with it.  I've had more driving practice and am probably a little more comfortable with it, so we decided we make a good team.  I can get us around and he can speak for us!

After a lengthy conversation about the endless supply of oatmeal creme pies we have in "the red door", we had a version of a Chopped competition.  Dessert only.  One of the required ingredients?  Oatmeal creme pies, of course!

We are getting into a groove with our house ladies.  We have a really long ways to go as far as our communication, but we are usually able to figure each other out.  So far, the food has been great and my house has never been cleaner!  They seem to really like all our kids, but they LOOOOOOOOOOVE Tucker!  He gets doted on all day long!  They can't stand to hear him fuss and if he does he gets picked up and played with right away:)  Pretty much every time they cross paths with him he gets picked up for a little bit or ticked a little bit or something.  But I would rather have that than feeling like they didn't like the kids.

Our yard guys started too this week.  Most people only get one yard guy but we have a large yard with lots of trees and plants.  It's pretty, but requires a lot of upkeep!  After being here this long with nobody working for us yet, it was getting a little out of control!  So we are glad to have them:)  For now we have our people come just two days a week.  That might change to three days but for now we just need to get used to having them.  It's not as easy or fun as one might think to have people doing your work for you when you're used to doing it all yourself and when you struggle to communicate with them.  But we have no complaints about them as individuals and we do like the fact that we can give someone work.  When we did interviews for the yard guys, one question Danny asked one of ours was what he was interested in doing in the future, or something along those lines.  His response was "all work is good work".  It's a different mindset than Americans who are always on the lookout for just the right job!

Please pray for Haiti.  I feel so unqualified to talk or write about the condition of the country because we are still so new here.  But I can say what others who have been here much longer have told us.  There is a fuel shortage which has caused widespread protesting, roadblocks, and violence.  I haven't been to town in awhile but I hear the roads are pretty clear as far as vehicles and motorcycles go.  Crazy is an understatement for what traffic normally is.  We have a little traffic here at the hospital with people using coming and leaving via moto taxi, but it has quieted down significantly in the last few weeks because people can't get gas.  So people (not just taxi drivers) are not generating as much income (if any), which means less money for food.  Food that has drastically inflated in price in the last year or so.  People are feeling more desperate and hopeless.  Quite honestly, because we lack the language skill, I don't hear first hand their stories, so it's hard for me to comprehend all of the desperation.  But I know it's there, and it feels heavy to me.  Back home, we know that we live in abundance, but so do many other people.  Here, it is glaringly obvious.  Plus, we have a way out if we want.  They don't.  It's easy to feel guilty, but at the same time, even if we freely handed out money, we could not fix the problems.  Falens (our language tutor) was spot on when he said every society has their problems.  It is a heart issue that can't be fixed without the Lord.  

This is a part of an email from a fellow Harvest Call missionary who has been here for quite a long time:

This is a difficult time in this Country of Haiti.  The “mood” of the country is different than what I’ve experience during my tenure here.  There is a tension unlike after the earthquake of 2010 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016.  A verse that comes to my mind when I think of Haiti is 2 Chronicles 7.14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.  May the Grace God change the hearts of those in Haiti who need change and strengthen the hearts of His faithful followers.