Ezai has the best smile. I know that I’ve mentioned him before in my blog, but with every visit to the Poor House, I eagerly anticipate his huge grin, giant hug, and sweet enthusiasm. He always leaves me a little something to remember him by– usually a smudge of his breakfast on my shirt or some dirt on my cheek– but those serve as tangible reminders of his friendship and hugs. He is 14, orphaned, and while he cannot use his left hand, flex his left foot, or tell you anything about himself, he can sing songs clearly word for word. 

The last time that I flew back to America, I sat next to a lady who was returning from a short-term missions trip to the northern part of Haiti. She had been working at a mission station that has several ministries, including an orphanage and a group home for kids with cerebral palsy.  Kids just like Ezai!!!!! As I shared with her about some of things I’ve been involved with here, she got really excited about Ezai’s story. She urged me to contact the orphanage and see if there might be a place for him there. 

Ezai has been living at the Poor House, a place for the destitute in town. The majority of the residents are elderly, and it’s a fairly depressing place to be. How wonderful it would be for Ezai to have brothers and sisters and clean sheets and healthy food and good medical care!! All of those things are available at this orphanage for kids with CP.

Eagerly, I contacted the orphanage, and after several emails, I just received word today that it looks like they have a place for him!!!! Yay!!!! Praise the Lord!!!! I am overcome with joy. How precious for this sweet little one to be so well taken care of! We are hoping to get him settled in up at his new home in early October. Please keep him in your prayers as preparations are made. How incredible! Ezai is on the right:

            The missionaries on the Wesleyan Mission Station have stopped receiving calls about relief drop-offs at the airport, and they are no longer hosting last-minute relief teams.  The pace has slowed to the same steady pulse this place had when I first arrived here in April of 2009, and if I didn’t know better, I might not realize that there had ever been an earthquake at all.

            But the remaining tent cities in Port Au Prince, some of which have expanded since I left in April of this year, and the lingering piles of rubble and collapsed buildings betray my attempts to see normalcy.  A conversation earlier this morning revealed to me that the pain of loss, though less acute than the agony of January, persists as a dull ache in the hearts of many here.  And though equilibrium seems to have been restored, recovery from the earthquake is far from over.        

by: Justine Iskat

There is also a new section available for those that would like to find out more about how to lead a reconstruction team or find a place on an existing team. Please take some time to look through this section and see if you have a role to play in helping Haiti rebuild.

 This past January marked the beginning of a unique program at Ohio Christian University in Circleville, Ohio.  The University began a Disaster Management bachelor’s degree program.  Disaster Management is an emerging field.  This new program seeks to prepare students to participate in and serve others through the management of disaster relief efforts following natural or man-made disasters. OCU students will be trained to serve human suffering and crises from immediate relief through community rebuilding and redevelopment.  Throughout this entire process our students will be showcasing Christ-like service to those in need.

 Students from this Disaster Management Program recently returned from a trip to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. 

 The team had three main goals.  The first was to place students on the ground in order to give them international disaster work experience.  The second was to put meat onto the bones of the past semester of Disaster Management courses.  It was so valuable to be able to actually show the students a concept that they were taught in theory.  Finally, OCU wanted to put the students in situations where they were interacting with the men, women, and children of Haiti, and see how the county is dealing with this disaster.  All of the team goals were met, and the trip was a complete success.  The Disaster Management program at OCU is creating students who are quite capable of responding in Christ’s name to any type of disaster.”

 The OCU team distributed over 1000 tarps across Haiti.  With the rainy season officially underway this might be a Haitian family’s only shelter.  In addition the team was able to meet and talk with individuals across the country.  This allowed the students to get first hand accounts of situation and how different areas of Haiti experienced the events on January 12^th.  This type of information is invaluable, and will be brought back to The United States and shared with whoever will listen in an attempt to keep the spotlight on Haiti.

 While the team was able to bring some relief, the battle wages on.  The situation is far from solved and without continued work and support, the upcoming rains and hurricane season may send this already broken nation over the edge.  

 The Haiti Response Team was made up of, Thad Hicks, Brett Spriggs, Elisabeth South, Ashley Irvine, Van Bolin, Travis Campbell, Jennifer Cartwright, Adam Hicks, and Tempest Norris

There is a new section on the GPCaribeAtlantic website were you can learn about the damaged churches. This section will flow the reconstruction projects as they come underway in July and provide information about how you can pray for the projects and offer assistance.

To visit the new section click on the Reconstruction link at the top of the page or go to
http://www.gpcaribeatlantic.com/reconstruction

I could spend a long time writing about all of the different places we’ve taken food to. I could write about all the different schools I’ve seen giving out our food, the children that clapped for you and all sang “thank you” in unison in Creole, the parents who want me to pass their thanks to kind strangers in America. I could write pages of detail about the need I saw, both numbers and accounts. I could tell you how much what we did was needed, how much the earthquake magnified an already grave need and the ways we met that need. However, let it suffice to say that God asked us to feed His children and we did.

And now I believe He says stop. The reasons you already know. We can’t continue relief feeding for too long or we’ll create dependency, we’ll ruin the food economy, we’ll take the will out of agriculture. A few weeks into the rainy season is a very good time, just as many fruits are beginning to ripen. Again, though, I am stopping because I believe this is God’s time for us to stop.

Haiti is different now. Some people say we’ve entered the new normal. In Port au Prince today, as I get ready to leave the country, I saw that the tents now longer look life refugee hovels, they look like people making the best of things, making a life where they are. That’s a very Haitian way of being – “degage” in Creole, make do. The bedsheet homes are all but gone. Now tents and tarps have rugs on the floor, Christmas lights hung inside, and goods for sale out front. Are things where they should be? No, tents are not houses and churches lie in ruins. But, there is an economy again, and there is feeling that the crisis has passed. What I saw in Port au Prince is true on La Gonave, the emergency is over.

And perhaps, now the real work begins? God knows who He will call. Our faithful friends, the Wesleyan Missionaries, who I have labored beside, are beginning their great rebuilding of so many ruined churches. Ywam Montana, who’s given so much in money and people, is looking to further study and work toward long term development on La Gonave. They’ll probably even send a team in late June. Our friends in Calvary Chapel Spokane who have also spent so much to help their brethren are considering how they can help in church rebuilding, to include sending a project manager, and possibly partnering with the same churches in the future. My prayer is that this is by no means all. Time is short and the laborers are few. Let’s pray for more. Let’s pray for those who do labor, let’s support them.

The Earthquake of January 12th was a terrible thing but out of it we have seen great beauty in God’s people answering His call. If there is any one thing I have learned in this, it is that you CAN do something about it. God must open the doors and He must do the work but if a few people stand up together in Him, they CAN do something. I say this as a regular person and nothing more. I, we, have done nothing more than be obedient, but God has done something here worthy of praise. I want to give Him all glory for that.

Since this is the end of this mission, the very end, I also want to say one more thank you to all of my friends and team mates. We all did this together. For my part, I could never have done this without your prayers. Those who pray may be unknown on Earth but I do not think they are in heaven. I believe, in the end, that this entire mission is a result of people praying in accordance with God’s will. This is His Kingdom. All Glory to Him.

HS.
Caleb Thompson

I have had to modify our strategy a little. The boats are proving a little slower than I’d hoped and the trucks on the island are a lot faster than before due to our larger, less frequent distribution points, the schools. Also, security in Anse Galets has been better than I expected so far. (That can change so please don’t stop praying.) Security on the far shore has been a little worse than I expected. (Don’t sweat that, if you remember part of the new plan is that we’re paying someone to guarantee the food until it reaches the island so he will replace any losses we might incur.) What all that boils down to is I’m going to do more trucking on the island and less boat runs around it.

We’ll still be going around to some of the coastal towns hopefully on Monday but the large network of trucks that our economist has arranged for are making pretty short work of our supply. I’ve been out for the last couple days on some of these runs. I see my role before distribution as strategic and administrative but during it my most important job is providing accountability to our system. I’m also constantly making sure various things arrive when they should and various people connect, but my foremost job is observation. I am in as many places as possible so that we can all know that the food went where it should and so that I can find and fix problems with logistics or security before they get very big. I’m happy to report, so far, that our food is going exactly where we want it to – especially into store rooms in schools from where it will be given out to lots of children and their families in the coming weeks.

On a personal note, the experience of this is very fast and often almost, but never quite, chaotic. I have a kind of constant sense that if I don’t watch carefully and make things right, they won’t be made right. I guess that’s called caring about my job and it makes it pretty easy to get up at 4:30 and not mind.

Contrary to that pace, however, there is a sudden pause this weekend and I’m going to take the opportunity to connect intelligently with our players to make sure we have a good week coming. I was planning to go to Port au Prince for a mad rush delivery of the remaining tarps, which are sorely needed or will be the next night it rains, but after praying about it I feel very convicted that I must not go. I’ll confess the series of transports I needed to get there tomorrow, around for distribution, and to St Marc on Monday early were a little on the sketchy side, but not too much worse than normal. Still, turning a deaf ear to God is about the most stupid thing I can do here so I’m listening to Him and staying here.

Please pray that I hear Him on all things for the coming week. Pray that every arrangement that needs to be made, will be. Pray for all of the people in our network, but especially for our economist consultant, Jean Paul Donn, and his assistant Fridy, who are so critical to our work. Finally, please pray for our success in this whole endeavor and that all the glory goes to God.

HS.
Caleb

That day, exactly one year ago today, I moved to Haiti to start my first year as a Global Partners Go-NET missionary.  I had never been to this country before, and had only found out 6 weeks earlier that I would be serving there.  I really didn’t know what to expect.  

But a lot can happen in a year.  I spent my first few months in country studying Creole. 100 words a week for 11 weeks was the pace I picked.  In the mean time I fumbled around trying to make friends and figure out that crazy guesthouse on La Gonave.  

It seems funny to me now, the way I wrote phrases on note cards and stumbled through my explanations to the cooks.  I vividly remember parroting the phrase “Yo pap manje jis set er” (they won’t eat until 7:00) making long pauses between each word, the dear cooks just smiling at me.  Now I can talk to those ladies for fifteen minutes about their families before even mentioning what’s for breakfast. 

 Around the same time, I also started reading everything I could about TESOL.  I’d sit for hours in my house studying textbooks and wondering how in the world I would be ready to teach a class by September.  But when September came, so did the teaching skills.  Okay it wasn’t that easy.

 It took me about 4 to 6 hours to get ready for my two one and a half hour classes.  In mid October I finalized my first ever syllabus and spent my first semester writing a research writing curriculum for fourth level English students.  Meanwhile I did everything short of singing and dancing to engage my more difficult third level students. 

 When December came and classes ended, I left for the US a more confident teacher.  During my break I dreamt about the future of the English program.  How can I take these students from conversational English to college prep?  When will we be ready for the university? 

 On January 12^th, along with everything else, however, these dreams had to be dropped.  In response to the earthquake, our mission then turned its focus to disaster relief and making me a full time guesthouse manager and coordinator.  The last four months in Haiti were very difficult.  We saw, heard, and experienced new levels of devastation amongst our friends, and grieved not only the loss of life but the temporary loss of our dreams. 

 Two weeks ago, I watched them slap stickers on my bag and throw it in a pile at the Port Au Prince Airport.  I didn’t care too much if it made it to America or not.  I was more concerned about my own time in the States.  How long will I be away from Haiti?  Though I really needed the rest, I still couldn’t bear the thought of being gone for more than a couple of months. 

 This July, if all goes well with fundraising, I will return to Haiti to resume my work with the English program for one more year.  

 The complete text of plan can be found here.