A Little Update

Well, it hardly seems possible that today wraps up our first week in-country, but it's true nonetheless.  To sum up, we have had a busy, fun-filled, humbling, blessed time thus far. 

Headed off to church

This past Sunday, we attended church in Thomassin just down the mountain from the mission.  Scott and I had been to this church before, but it was a first for the kids.  They loved it, although it did get to be a little bit long for them.  I am going to attend children's church with them next week.  It's the same format as "grown-up" church -- no crafts, games or activities.  Just a little more kid-oriented.  I think I will benefit from going since they will be speaking slower and using smaller words!  After church, we came home and I ran several loads of laundry in our facility down the hill from our house.  Our sweet friend Debra mixed up a batch of her homemade laundry detergent for us to try and it works great!  I will be hopping on the "make your own laundry detergent" bandwagon next, I think.  Then, we hung out with our new friends Roger and Judy who happen to live upstairs.  We had some good laughs!  They are a ton of fun.

A tea party on the porch
with a friend

Josiah doing what he loves!

Monday and Tuesday were a flurry of activity.  Let me say, the dish situation takes a bit of getting used to.  I think I spend about 1 and 1/2 hours a day at the kitchen sink washing our dishes.  I scrub them in the cold soapy water from the cistern first, and then I rinse them in bleach water to make sure they are truly clean.  Since a lot of the modern conveniences like a microwave, ready-made dinners, etc. are not available, we use a TON of dishes making the food we eat.  Just something else to get used to, I guess!  The kids have really enjoyed hanging out with the other children on the mission and exploring everything.  It has been so good for them. We also officiallly started our in-country language study on Monday.  Our friend from church, Hassan, met with us to tutor us.  We will be meeting 4 days a week to study Creole! Judy (our upstairs neighbor), Scott and I will meet for an hour each time, and then Scott will continue for an additional hour.  It is intense but we want so badly to be able to communicate with the people.

Judy, Chelsea and I
in the truck

Then today, I got to get off the mission campus and venture down into Port-au-Prince with the ladies!  We had some house needs that we needed to shop for: some bulk groceries, garbage can, dish drainer, etc.  We started out at 9:00am.  Our driver Rico picked us up at Debra's house and we ventured down the mountain.  Traffic was pretty awful but we reached "MEGAMART" (awesome-sounding place, huh?) around 10:30.  If I had to compare it to something, it's like a Sam's Club except men follow you everywhere to try and help you and different things are available depending on when you come to shop.  It was pretty impressive, though!  I didn't think there would be a place like Megamart in Haiti!  After that, we went to the coolest place for lunch -- Eppy's.  It was huge!  They sold fast food items, deli food, but then they had a huge bakery full of delicious breads and desserts.  Unreal.  All four of us ate for $12.  Then, we headed off to a Home Store to see if we could find a few more items on the list.  By the time we made it back to the mission, it was nearly 3:00!

From left: Chelsea, Debra, Judy and Me
At Eppy's for lunch

Scott plans to take a trip into Port-au-Prince to help Roger finish one of his projects in the city on Friday.  His main focus right now is to learn Creole, however, and he is spending multiple hours a day studying.  I am trying to keep up as well, but most of my time is spent with the kiddos and. . .doing dishes.  Ha!  Not just dishes, but other household things.

Gorgeous mountain views!

The house is coming along nicely and we will upload photos soon.  Things are coming together so quickly on the housing end of things that we may be able to start homeschool as soon as next week!  We will see.  Our main focus is to settle in and acclamate to the culture.  We know that you are praying for us and we are so grateful.  We love you all!



Bonswa, tout moun!  Goodnight, everyone!

Home Sweet Haiti!

Bonjou! 

At the Nashville airport at 3am.

Still at the Nashville airport
 after 2 cancelled flights.

This is our first post from Haiti!  We have been in country since Wednesday and have been primarily focusing on getting settled.  Honestly, getting here was the hard part!  We experienced three canceled flights while in various airports, all for maintenance issues and so our quick half-day trip to Haiti was extended to nearly two days.  The kids were troopers, though.  I think the first day, we were all awake for about 22 hours!  Our first two cancelled flights were in Nashville.  Then, Scott found a flight to Washington DC that we could connect and fly on to Miami. We had an overnight stay in Miami since it was too late to catch the Haiti flight on Tuesday, so the airline put us up in the Miami airport hotel.  We walked up to our room only to find that the room number they had given us was actually a broom closet!  Not a very nice surprise after you’ve been awake for 22 hours.  We sorted that issue out , slept 4 hours, and boarded our flight to Haiti, it got cancelled, we deplaned and then boarded a different plane to Haiti.  As we started to see the coastland of Haiti out our plane windows, Kilee said "Home Sweet Haiti!"  Love that girl.  When we arrived, our friend Trey was there waiting for us.  It was so good to see a familiar face! 

Happy to finally
 be on a plane!

Day One:  Once we arrived at the mission, we found out that some of the items from our container had arrived, so we did some unloading and tried to get settled down in the house for the night.  Our fellow missionaries had made things so welcoming for us!  As soon as we walked in the house we found a welcome sign made by our friends’ kids, fresh-picked flowers, all of our previously-sent items unpacked and arranged, our beds were made, basic groceries were in the cabinets, and lunch was in the oven.  Talk about being spoiled from the beginning!  Before we ate dinner together at the dining hall, the kids played with the Bakers’ kids for awhile and held the bunnies at the mission petting zoo.  After dinner, we walked back home and fell into bed.  We crashed!

At the airport in Haiti.  Glad to finally be here!

Day Two: We awoke to the sound of massive amounts of dogs barking, goats whining and roosters crowing.  It was a pretty day with lots of sun!  Oh, and the biggest surprise of all?  We have a hot shower!  If we wait until after the generator comes on, the tiny water heater kicks on, and even though the water just falls out like it’s being poured out of a bottle, it is GLORIOUS!  We began the day cleaning items that had come off of our container.  It turned out that some of our furniture had gotten a little moldy during its overseas voyage, so we moved it outside in the sun and cleaned it from top to bottom and left it out to bake.  Then, that afternoon our sweet friend and next door neighbor Chelsea offered to watch the kiddos at her house while her husband Trey took Scott and I to the supermarket in Petion-ville.  We jumped at the chance to go and rode down the mountain.  The supermarket was surprisingly nice, although it does cater to the few wealthy in Haiti as well as to the foreigners.  We found anything and everything you could find in a Kroger store, although the prices were nearly double what we usually pay in the States.  We went home, unloaded groceries, played with the kids and went to bed. 

We didn't get this huge avocado
at the supermarket.  They grow
 on the mission property!

Day Three: So, evidently a tropical storm was on the way today.  Scott made a quick trip to Camp LaPhare (a BHM camp) to pick up some things and then hurried back before the winds started to blow.  Tropical Storm Isaac began to pick up speed by midday and by early evening the palm trees were swaying hard in the breeze!  Friday is pizza night in the dining hall and so we trekked down in the blowing rain to eat pizza and fried plantains and drink Coke.  Usually everyone gets together after supper on Friday nights to play games together, but Scott had a bad headache.  I paid a visit to Dr. Bernard, the chief physician/surgeon at the BHM hospital because I had a huge red swollen bite on my leg.  He gave me some anti-inflammatory drugs and I offered to pay for them.  He shook his hand in the air and said, “No, no.  You are home.”  So sweet.  The meds helped quite a bit.  The winds blew all through the night and the rain poured down.  We got 18 inches of rain overnight thanks to Tropical Storm Isaac.

A home-cooked meal
helped us to feel settled.

Today: We woke up to the wind still blowing, but the rain had tapered off.  We did a LOT of unpacking today.  The kids were great sports and helped along the way.  By midday, the sun was starting to peek through the clouds.  BHM incurred little to no damage here on property, although Scott donned his rain gear and helped a couple of the guys cut up a tree that had fallen.  We watched an afternoon movie and continued our unpacking.  Then, we cooked some familiar food for dinner.  We had found whole fryer chickens at the supermarket and some of the Haitian BHM employees grabbed some potatoes for us from a street vendor.  Dinner ended up being Crock Pot whole chicken (shout out to Paula Evans for that recipe!), green beans and mashed potatoes.  Then we had cut up pineapple for dessert.  YUM!  We had a good Kentucky dinner tonight!

Tomorrow, we will be attending a local church!  More news to come.

Thanks for bearing with us for this long post!  We wanted to catch everyone up on what was happening.  Our future posts will be shorter and more frequent once we get our internet set up here in our house.  We love you all!  Thank you so much for your prayers, your support and your encouragement along the way.  You have no idea how much it means to us.

Cramming Life In

These past couple of weeks have been, well . . . eventful.  After clearing out our house by sending stuff to our parents' houses and to Haiti, we have been left with a very interesting house to function in!  Phrases like, "Are we out of plastic forks AGAIN?"  "Kids, stop jumping on the air mattress!" and the dreaded "I've been looking for *blank*".... "Oh, sorry honey, I took it to Goodwill!"  But, it's been fun camping out at home.  We've definitely had more time together since there's really only one good room to sit and hang out in!

As far as some experiences we've tried to pack in, I've listed them as follows:

• Well checks for everyone
• All dental work completed for everyone
• Trip to the zoo
• Family night ice skating
• Lots of swimming
• Visits with family
• Use up all gift certificates/cards, etc.
• Playdates with the kids' friends
• Dinner with friends (almost every night til we leave!) 
• Many many many many trips to drop off items at Goodwill
• Selling larger items
• Finish scrapbooks I've started
• Pick up medical records
• Getting shots we still lack
• Just sitting and enjoying the air conditioning
• Chinese food, often!

We are really enjoying special times as a family and treasuring all of the friendships the Lord has given us while we've been in Louisville.  Only 15 days until departure!

Haiti After The Earthquake-Paul Farmer

 This book is not for the faint of heart.  It is filled with tragic accounts of January 12, 2010 and the few weeks to follow.  Paul Farmer, author and doctor, tells the story of the underfunded, underequipped and understaffed hospitals before the earthquake and then clearly demonstrates how these this tragedy began long before the earthquake.  According to Farmer, the loss of life and property were greatly amplified due to the poor conditions prior to the earthquake.  Throughout the book Farmer describes, in sometimes grotesque detail, the "hospitals" a.k.a. tents out in the middle of the yard where doctors were forced to perform amputations, and surgery without the proper supplies.  Overall, Farmer did an excellent job creating a unique perspective of the days following the earthquake.  His love for Haitians, especially those suffering from decades of oppression and poverty, is evident throughout.

 Buy this book at Amazon.com

From Amazon.com
Publication Date:July 10, 2012

“Paul Farmer, doctor and aid worker, offers an inspiring insider’s view of the relief effort.”—Financial Times “The book’s greatest strength lies in its depiction of the post-quake chaos… In the book’s more analytical sections the author’s diagnosis of the difficulties of reconstruction is sharp.” —Economist “A gripping, profoundly moving book, an urgent dispatch from the front by one of our finest warriors for social justice.” —Adam Hochschild “His honest assessment of what the people trying to help Haiti did well—and where they failed—is important for anyone who cares about the country or international aid in general.” —Miami Herald

President Bill Clinton
"A gripping recollection of the quake's ruin, chaos, and despair, and the story of remarkable persistence, hope, and love in the aftermath. Once you've seen Haiti through Paul Farmer's eyes, you'll never see Haitians, or any of the world's poorest people, quite the same way again."
Adam Hochschild
"Profoundly moving....An urgent dispatch from the front by one of our finest warriors for social justice. With eloquence and wisdom, Paul Farmer shows how we cannot fully comprehend one of the great natural disasters of history without understanding the man-made suffering that Americans and others have inflicted on Haiti.""Madison Capital Times," July 14, 2011
"Through the sharing of his experiences and the essays of fellow relief workers and survivors, the book serves as both a first draft of history and a call to action for rebuilding a country devastated by natural and unnatural disasters...