Monday, March 20, 2012
It was homemade banana pancakes from Chef Ernie this morning
and then I led the devotional and we had a time of worship. After that, we all went our separate
ways.
Ryan took the building team to the site and got them started
and then headed to Port to get supplies from a bunch of different places,
again. I went to Port, in a
different vehicle, for meetings.
We ended up at the airport because Lifeline had an unexpected delivery
of rice flown in by the Airforce and we had to be there until Osmy got there to
receive it. I got to help a team
of Haitian men load 50 lb. bags of rice into the box truck so that was fun. It was good to experience where and how
that all happens, even though it through off my plans for going to the paint
store to get paint samples for the orphanage walls – priorities, ya know? J
Candice and Osmy led a team including Pastor Tommie, Joe,
Victoria, Brittany, Nichole, Delores and Kathy up to a poor little school in
the mountains. It was an adventure
just getting there. They rode in
the L200, a truck with a cage around the back, that they stood in, holding onto
the bars, giving Pastor Tommie flashbacks from his life before Christ days,
lol. They were on a treacherous,
narrow, rocky, road, with cliff on one side that, according to P-Tom, went up
so high they were in the mountains, passing people with donkeys the whole way. He clarified that although he wasn’t
scared, the trip was scary. They
all said they had the most amazing time at the school. Kathy, the teacher in the bunch, who
brought all kinds of wonderful school supplies, including 60 individual chalk
boards with dry erase on the other side, chalk and 200 crafts, led the group in
the projects and had great assistants.
She was blown away by how many kids were stuffed into the classrooms,
many children having walked up to 5 hours just to get there, and they were all
so well behaved. The team was
greeted with enthusiastic songs about Jesus and they did crafts with the
children. The teachers left their
classrooms to come see what Kathy had brought for them to help teach and they
were extremely grateful.
After that, they went back down the mountain and Candice
gave them a tour of the Barbancourt village, surrounding our orphanage.
Tommie went on a little walk up the mountain with Bob and
Linda and a guy shimmied up a coconut tree and cut it open for them with his
machete to eat and drink the milk.
So he was late on the village tour and our Haitian friend Kenol took him
on a private one. They went to the
Voo-doo church and the priest was there.
Tommie talked to him, asked him numerous questions, and got a tour of
all the various rooms where he saw the skulls, spirit murals, etc. The priest told him all about how
people pay him to “appease the spirits” through various rituals in order to
help them with their problems, and also how he puts curses on people.
Everyone is amazed at how much has been accomplished on the
building site in just a couple of days and how God divinely brought together
this team of people with various skills, many who didn’t know each other
before. Tonight Doug Westmoreland
led a wonderful devotional about the extreme measures Christ took to go out of His
way to save a homeless, scary, lunatic (Mark 5), all out of love. After that, we all told a little about
ourselves and how we got here and pretty much everyone said that Haiti has
stolen their hearts and they can’t wait to come back.
2 Haitian girls came up and gave Nichole and Victoria
manicures and pedicures and put braids in Nichole’s hair. They charge $10 and this is their
livelihood so it’s fun for us and a blessing to them.
This coming weekend, half of the team will go home
and half
will stay and go to La Gonave Island for the revival. Please begin
bathing the revival in prayer. We want to pray that the Holy Spirit
would draw hundreds, if not thousands, to a place of repentance and
revival and
that the entire island would come alive and be on fire for Christ. We
know the enemy will not want this to
happen, so please pray against anything he might be scheming and for
the Spirit
to pave the way for a mighty move of God.
Everyone down here wants me to pass along their apologies to
their families at home for not being in contact more often. The internet has been very spotty on
this trip. Also, I know these
emails are long, but know that there is SOOO much more going on down here; I’m
just trying to hit some basic highlights.
Blessings in Christ,
Nikki
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