Author: Eric & Elisabeth

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The Latest News…long and overdue newsletter

Ministry Work

Eric teaches  7th, 8th, and 9th Bible classes at Quisqueya Christian School and is also in charge of weekly chapel services. He has 75 students that attend his classes and these keep him quite busy along with his 9th grade discipleship group. 
Students in one of Eric’s classes performing Walk Through the Old Testament
A group of 20 year old college guys have sought Eric out on a weekly basis for discipleship as well. We can count on them to show up on our doorstep each Friday night. They attend an English speaking college nearby where Eric has been invited to speak a few times and has been asked to come as often as possible and share whatever he wishes! These young men desire to grow in their relationship with the Lord and in their English fluency. We use God’s Word to accomplish both! This is also another opportunity for Creole practice in addition to Eric’s Creole class three nights per week. He is now in level 3 and our Haitian friends often comment on how good his Creole is in such a short amount of time!
Elisabeth with 4 of the KOFAEL women
Elisabeth keeps busy attending to the needs of family, hosting all our many houseguests, visiting orphanages and nearby ministries often, subbing and volunteering at school, taking Creole lessons, and working with a grassroots women’s organization called KOFAEL. This ministry seeking to help women affected by the earthquake was started one year ago by two Haitian friends we have come to trust and love. KOFAEL provides small business loans to these women so they can purchase the goods for their little businesses in order to provide for their families and send their children to school. We are in the beginning stages of helping to get KOFAEL off the ground. Elisabeth serves as the only American on the Haitian board for this ministry. Her role is primarily to provide direction, facilitate meetings with those in Haiti who can give sound advice in business matters, help with the translation of documents in English, work on a KOFAEL blog, raise awareness and support, and attend monthly meetings with the women. These women are primarily older women whose husbands are physically incapable of working, widows, and single mothers whose already meager livelihoods were destroyed by the earthquake and who have since been living in tent cities surviving on faith from day to day. It has been a blessing to watch how even the small efforts of KOFAEL have brought them hope and encouragement. We pray that God opens the doors to be able to bless these women with greater sustenance in the coming months.
KOFAEL women praising the Lord for the loans 18 of them received in January.



Family Life
Ethan and his classmate friends
Ethan is our 7 year old 2nd grader who has made an easy adjustment to life in Haiti. Ethan’s favorite thing about living in Haiti is “making lots of new friends”. Ethan has made many new friends from all over the world on the campus of Quisqueya Christian School. He is a little more reserved off campus and is very sensitive to what he sees beyond our security gate. Ethan watches intently, ponders, and asks a lot of “why’s” about other children that do not have the opportunity and privileges that he and his classmates do. Ethan sees and processes these things with the personally painful knowledge that “other children” include his own Haitian sisters whom he loves dearly and prays for daily. Ethan misses his school and friends back in TX and is looking forward to our visit in the summer months. But when asked what other things were his favorites about living in Haiti he said, “that we get to be here for such a long time”. We are thankful that our entire family considers it a blessing to be here and we pray that doors will continue to open for us to be in Haiti for “such a long time”. 
Evan attraction is inevitable wherever he goes.
Evan Daniel, our uninhibited 5 year old (whom we had very little concern about making the transition to Haiti life) says his favorite thing about living in Haiti is “going to school”. Evan started Kindergarten the morning after we arrived in Haiti so he naturally integrates his first school experiences with his first Haiti experiences. Evan preferred to use the outdoor restroom 50% of the time back in TX, and the word “stranger” has never held a lot of weight with him (He’s A LOT like his daddy). 

These and the fact that potential consequences of “wandering off” don’t hold a lot of weight with him either held the bulk of our concern. Elisabeth was very thankful that everyone who understood where we would be living kept asking about how we would cope with “living on a compound”. She would then tell them that a compound is exactly where we need to be (referring to Eric and Evan’s wandering habits)! Our campus compound gives the boys (all 3 of them) the freedom to wander and explore safely and has been a tremendous blessing during our first year of transition. We are also thankful that our campus housing is not situated out in boonies with nothing else around but is right off one of the main streets in the largest city and capital Port au Prince. This allows many ministry opportunities both inside and outside our campus walls. Eric especially makes the most of these opportunities and can often be found outside the gate practicing his Creole gospel with his “machan” (vendor) friends. We are thankful these friendships provide occasions for Creole practice, but realize they also have provided drinking too many cokes.
Eric with his buddies outside our gate!
In return for Creole lessons, Eric keeps them in the coke business. 

Our girls also love to venture outside the gate (though they are never permitted to do so without mom or dad). They love to teach mom all about Haitian street shopping, but mostly they just love feeling free. FYI: (just in case you have recently been introduced to our family) We have been in the process of adopting Elita Marguerite (13) and Esmée (9) from an orphanage in Haiti since February 2010. 
Our Haitian Princesses
Our girls are what first brought us to Haiti opening our eyes and several trips later opening doors for us to move here.  We have cherished precious time spent with our Haiti girls in the past two years and especially the past 5 months. We long for the day that they are permanently in our home and we believe that day will be here very soon! We recently received word that we have an Adoption Decree (meaning that the girls have been legally adopted in Haiti). We are now awaiting for U.S permission to issue the passports and visas. Once the visas are issued we will need to return to the states (since our adoption process took place in the states) and wait for documentation of U.S. citizenship. We are praying that the visas will be issued around the same time that school lets out for the summer months. Should the visas be issued before this time, Elisabeth will have to return to the states with the girls while Eric and the boys complete their teaching/school responsibilities at Quisqueya. We look forward to our return in the summer months in order to complete U.S. adoption paperwork, visit family and friends and Lord willing raise some needed support for our return to Haiti in August.
We have a wonderful church family and abundance of friends here at Quisqueya and surrounding ministries. We have visited several churches nearby several times (we can’t travel far because we usually lack a vehicle), and after 5 months have settled into our growing little Haiti Home Fellowship Church. It doesn’t really have a name but we’ve heard it called that before. It also isn’t really a home church since we don’t meet in a house but at the World Relief headquarters for Sunday service. However, it does feel like we are home when we are there and we are very blessed to be a part of this body.
We do miss family and friends back in the states, but loneliness hasn’t exactly been an issue. In fact, we usually embrace the opposite. Our small house is almost always fully occupied and on the rare occasion it’s not, someone is usually knocking.  We’ve enjoyed hosting many Haiti visitors on a consistent basis (some for a few days, some for a few weeks) since our arrival in September.  We welcome these opportunities to provide hospitality, fellowship, and for others to see another side of life in Haiti. We especially welcome adoptive families visiting their children in Haiti. We have prayed about ways we can give to others adoptions and this is one way we can do this to offset their cost. The long road to a completed adoption in Haiti is mostly a heartbreaking one. We pray for opportunities to provide as much encouragement as possible for fellow adoptive families along the way.

Needs

We praise the Lord for meeting our basic needs thus far and pray for continued provision. Living in Haiti is extremely expensive yet the Lord has provided for us to maintain a very low budget for the time being. However, we are currently short $1,000 per month of our projected needs. We have been able to keep going (praise God for help from family and the sale of Eric’s car back in TX), but have now fallen behind financially the past two months.
Our tight finances will not allow us to consider the purchase of a vehicle at this time, but the need remains. We have been able to use (paying $1 per mile) the school vehicles on occasion and get rides with generous friends the past 5 months. We know the time is drawing near that we will need to have our own ride (and get to be a blessing to others who don’t have one). 
Vehicles are expensive but do not depreciate in Haiti. We have an opportunity to purchase the vehicle of friends leaving Haiti in June. They have a late 90’s model Nissan Safari in good condition, an automatic with 4WD that seats 9-10 and runs on diesel. This is exactly what we need! It would be very difficult and time consuming for us to go through the process of finding another vehicle like this that would meet our needs and we would love to be able to help our friends out by buying it from them!  The cost to purchase this vehicle is around $15,000. We hope to raise this money by June for purchase and so that we can have the summer months to secure the paperwork and insurance documents needed as well (which can also be a time consuming process).
Here is a picture of the vehicle we are hoping to raise the money and purchase in the next 5 months.
It has two rows of bench seats in the very back which allows for up to 6 more passengers.

Prayer request and praise reports

Our greatest heartache and fervent prayer is that the Lord would allow/make a way for our Haitian daughters to leave the orphanage and live with us full time.

We ask that you continue to pray for continued adoption progress for us and for many friends whose paperwork is simply “stuck” in this broken system. Many, many children we know and love are simply waiting with no end in sight. Please pray for these children and their adoptive families to not loose heart or hope during these difficult days.

Pray for the hearts of our Quisqueya students to continue to turn toward spiritual things. Pray that these future leaders will be well equipped, one day leading the country of Haiti in a way that honors the Lord and breaks the cycle of slavery that has been the tragic inheritance of this beautiful land destroyed by greed and corruption.

Pray for the 40 women (representing many children) of KOFAEL. Pray for wisdom in how to proceed in helping them rebuild their lives and for hope and encouragement to reach their suffering hearts.

We praise the Lord and continue in prayer for continued health and opportunities to share the gospel and show hospitality to our Haitian friends and foreigners visiting Haiti.

We praise the Lord for financial provisions and pray for God to lead others to come alongside us for support in 2012.

We praise God for adoption progress and for the blessing of being able to bond with our girls in their own culture, learn more about their country, their language, and in turn understand our Haitian daughters so much better.

Praising the Lord for new renters for our house in TX! Our friends that were previously renting recently had job relocation and told us they would have to move out. A dear friend contacted us (before we even thought about advertising) and said she knew someone that might need to rent our furnished house until at least the summer. God provided!
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Thank you for your continued prayers and support as we seek to serve Him in Haiti! It is always a blessing to hear how the Lord is working in your lives as well! If you would like to contact us with questions, comments, news, and prayer request of your own, please do so! Our contact information link is listed on the right side of this blog as well as our RCE International mission support info.

Much love from Haiti,
The Ream Family

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Defending the Cause

*Double posting from our adoption blog since this post contains issues we struggle through living in Haiti as well as adoption issues. 



“Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; 

maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.”
Psalm 82:3

I once had a conversation with someone who had every good intention in supporting an orphange here in Haiti, but who was afraid to ask the necessary questions related to the accountabilty of support already received. This person truly wanted to help the children in need, but did not want to deal with the conflict of making sure it was the children that were actually being helped. When I asked the reason for unwillingness in addressing this issue the response I received was, “because right now God is telling me to just be still and know that He is God”. This did not sit well with me. I believe the honest truth was more like “I am too invested and too afraid of what might happen if I ask that question”.

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that God asks us to embrace and trust in His sovereignty in all situations, at all times. But I also believe that this verse all too often is taken out of context and used as an excuse to NOT do the right thing. My response was and remains, “What does the word DEFEND in defend the cause of the weak and fatherless mean to you?” Let’s go ahead and talk about what God really is telling from Psalm 46:10. Martin Luther derived the inspiration for the beloved hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” from this very Psalm. We sang that hymn in church on Sunday. It unsettled me enough to revisit that conversation in hindsight, to study Psalm 46:10, and write this post a few days later.

“Be still and know that I am God” is the ending reminder that God is with us (46:11), that He is “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (46:1). “Our refuge and strength” can also be stated “our impenetrable defense”. The Psalmist often describes God as a “fortress”.  Fortress = defense/protection from enemy in battle. Verse 9 directly before “Be still…” is “He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two; He burns the chariot in the fire.” Sounds like a battle to me. The next call for stillness is not a preparation for worship, or a call to simply lay low, avoid conflict, and watch God work. It is a warning to PREPARE for impending judgement on the earth. It is an encouragement to those who are on God’s side that even though we are in a war, though trouble awaits, “though the earth be removed” (46:2) that we can rest in the confidence that He is with us, so “we will not fear” (46:2) as we fight His battle…for the battle is the Lord’s, the victory is the Lord’s, the glory is the Lord’s. But we are called to fight, to defend. 

We have been so blessed by the people we know and hear of who take seriously the call of “defending the cause of the fatherless”. We know God is pleased when the hearts of His people are turned in this direction. But what should defending this cause look like? Specifically, what should it look like in a place like Haiti? Sadly, we have seen that all too often the purely motivated desire to defend the orphan is eventually manipulated and corrupted into defending one’s own good intentions/investment. And the cause of the weak and fatherless is not defended. And the rights of the poor and oppressed are not maintained. (Please don’t think I’m speaking specifically to any individual, humanitarian group, church, or adoptive parents. What I am saying is that as a whole intentions to help often backfire in this broken system and we all need to be very aware of that.)

I have been hesistant for a long while to write this post because this is a VERY complicated issue with no easy answers.There is so much we don’t know. But there are a few things we believe strongly. Things that we now do know.

We believe that the existence of orphanages, while tragic, do serve a purpose. We believe this purpose should soely be to serve the children that endured certain tragedy to end up there. We do believe there are“good” orphanages that are doing the best they can with what they have and are serving the children of Haiti. We believe there are far too many orphanages in Haiti (and around the world) that are not doing this. We believe that UNICEF’s efforts to respond have in too many ways not contributed to the wellbeing of the children. We also believe that many efforts of many others (who may believe they are contributing) are not contributing either, but instead hindering the orphans defense. We believe that not every child that is placed in an orphanage needs to be or should be there. We believe that every effort should be made to make sure a child being placed in an orphanage has no better option. We do not believe that “better option” always (or even usually) identifies with street kids, and kids living in tent cities. Because we believe that in most cases it is better to be free. Because a high percentage of the orphanages in Haiti represent conditions likened to prison. We can say these things now because we live here now, and now we see. We know hundreds of kids living in orphanages. We know street kids. We know people who live in tent cities. We know mothers who are deperately trying to keep their children. We know people who are desperately trying to help these mothers. We know children who miss their Haitian families, and wish there was a way for them to stay together. If only a way had been presented. Everyone wants to defend the cause of the children, but shouldn’t part of this “defense” be to maintain the rights of the child’s family? I think of all the times I sat across from a young woman at the crisis pregnancy center and when Eric and I worked in a teen maternity home living with these precious girls 24/7 and sharing in their struggles and sorrows. I remember spending countless hours with them pouring over their options for the future…making sure that they had every resource possible to maintain their right to make the best decision for both mother and baby. I remember a few weeks back when Navilla (our Haitian friend that helps us at our house) came to me begging me to help her friend find an orphanage to place her son. I asked why she wanted to place her son in the orphanage. Navilla said it was because the father of the child had died, and she no longer had the means to care for him. I asked how old the boy was. “Seven”. I thought of my Ethan who is also seven. My mind flashed to the face of the child I birthed who has been with me for seven years whom I love so dearly. I pictured myself in this situation. If my husband died. How could I bear to loose my son too? This is what many mothers in Haiti face every day. If only someone would ask this mother, “what would it take for you to be able to keep your son?” Does she not have any rights simply because she is poor and oppressed? Does the orphanage down the road present her only hope? It could be something as simple as clothes and a backpack for school and $30 per month. Or… that little seven year old boy, much like my own, could end up (if he is “lucky”) in an orphanage. Let’s just say it’s a decent orphanage where the children are fed, bathed occassionally, and get a little schooling here and there. And there are 100 other children. And the chances of a seven year old boy being picked for adoption out of 100 others are very slim. But let’s just say he does get picked after spending a year or two in the orphanage and having some of his paperwork validated for an adoption. Then he waits another 2-3 years for the adoption to process. He has now been away from his mother for 4-5 years though she visits as often as she is able. The boy is now 12. How much of his childhood has he missed while caged inside the orphanage walls? How much has this mother missed of her son’s life because she was simply too poor to feed him? It is always easy to want to help the children. Everyone wants to help the children. But when Navilla came to me with this mother’s desperate plea, all I could think about was that mother. And myself. And how I would feel if I had to give Ethan away to an orphanage because I love him too much to watch him starve. How could I ever be ok with that? 

We obviously believe in adoption too. Though we understand all too well that adoption is born out of often painful and unjust situations like the one just described. We do not believe adoption is always the answer. But we believe that sometimes it is. For our girls and others we know and love and pray for daily…it is. Yet for thousands more who sit in orphanages it is not. And what is their defense? We believe it is ok to wrestle through these things and that the answers may be different from case to case. We greatly admire the courage of adoptive parents trying to navigate through this broken system. We wrestle still. 

The following posts on this subject also include things we believe and things we will continue to wrestle with from different angles. Please read and know that the people writing these have seen and experienced enough battles in this country to know what they are talking about. Please understand how controversial, conflicting, and confusing this issue can be. But if you truly want to “defend the cause of the weak and fatherless and maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed”, wrestling through these things should be where you start.



The following (below) was written nearly a year ago in a blog post by Heather Hendrick, a friend whose family was also working in Haiti. I am including this because after also seeing these things with our own eyes in Haiti, we believe the following questions should always be considered by anyone seeking to adopt and/or support an orphanage here in Haiti (or elsewhere).


“There are a lot of orphans in Haiti, most of them not living in orphanages that keep them clean, fed, and loved.  The babies sit in cages.  Their lives are extremely sad.  And yet adopting from Haiti is a long, expensive, difficult process.  Anyone telling you anything differently is not telling you the truth.  Supporting orphanages here is also tricky.  Making sure you’re connecting to an orphanage that is honest is difficult.  Most orphanages are over-crowded with disturbing ratios of children to caregivers.

Before adopting from an orphanage or financially supporting one, here are some important issues that we would want to talk-through and see proof (like with our own eyes) that these things were also important to the people running the orphanage.  Remember…this is just us…Aaron and me.  You are free to disagree.  We are not recommending any orphanages.  We don’t feel comfortable doing that.  What we are offering are our own thoughts…the questions we would ask if we were in your shoes after living here and seeing some of this in person.

1. What is the ratio of children to nannies?  In baby rooms we like to see a 2:1 ratio (2 children to every 1 caregiver).  With the older kids, that number can be different, but with babies and toddlers, research suggests that those ratios help significantly with bonding issues once children are adopted into forever families.

2.  How does the orphanage handle teams?  Do they allow people to come in week after week to hold babies,  semi-attach to children, and say things like “Oh…I want this one.  I wish I could take you home.” Is there a revolving door of visitors who are encouraged to care for the kids and attach to them, only to say good-bye 5-7 days later?

3.  Are the children’s basic needs met?  Are the kids clean?  Are they fed well?  Are their diapers changed?

4.  What is the orphanage’s protocol for taking new kids?  Do they take any kid, no questions asked?  Or is there some sort of system in place to identify the times when a mother does not want to give her baby away…she just needs some money…some help?  Most of Haiti’s orphans are not true orphans.  They have parents.  We don’t know the answers to any of these issues, but we know this concerns us enough that we would probably not adopt from an orphanage in Haiti that took babies without first trying to help, in some way, the mothers of this country.  In the very least, we would expect a birthmother to be very well educated about the decision she is making as she leaves her child at the orphanage.  As people who have adopted before, once the baby is home, having peace about the birth mother’s decision to place her baby for adoption has been important to us.  We never wanted to feel like we were taking a baby away.  We wanted to know the mother was educated about her decision, offered options, and still chose to place her baby for adoption.  If we did not feel like our adoption agency did a top-notch job at educating our birthmom and supporting her, we would have a lot of nauseous, sleepless nights.


5. Do the people running the orphanage have any training in adoption related issues?  Do they know about RAD and have systems in place within their orphanage to address it and help children begin to heal?  A caution:  Anyone with a big heart can move to Haiti and start a children’s home.  Anyone with some money and compassion can buy a house and fill it with kids.  That does not mean they have a clue about issues these children are facing, or the therapy, and safe-guards that should probably be in place to help restore these kids.  They may have big hearts, but haven’t even read one book about adoption or issues adopted children face and the adoptive parents face.  And then there is always the sad truth that anyone with money and no compassion can move to Haiti and open an orphanage.  Not to be a jerk, but orphans can be big business…no matter what country you’re considering.

6. What training does the orphanage or agency offer to families who are adopting?  Are they honest about what it’s like to adopt a child who has been in an orphanage?  Do they try to prepare you, as best as they can, for the issues that will arise?  Do they discuss the regular, run-of-the-mill adoption issues?  Do they help you understand transracial adoption issues?  Do they try to prepare you for what it is like to adopt a child who has been in an orphanage?

7. Do the people running the orphanage do everything legally?  Just because the people running the orphanage are Christians does not mean that you can assume they are not paying bribes or doing things illegally to adopt kids out of this country.  If we ever sensed that something was not being done legally, we would run for our lives.  I’m not sure how it is that Christians biblically justify moving to Haiti, lying, and paying bribes in order to get what they want or adopt kids out of Haiti, but they do.  Some people will say that being a part of the corruption is the only way to get anything done in this country.  That is not true.  Please be careful.  And if you ever hear missionaries you support joke about breaking the rules here to get what they want will you remind them what Jesus says about corruption, liars, and oppressing the poor? 

If we were adopting from an orphanage in Haiti, those are the big things that we’d be looking for as we considered where to adopt.  If our church back home wanted to financially support an orphanage, we’d only suggest orphanages that were completely open to moving towards these goals (if they were not already meeting those requirements).   For example, maybe an orphanage does not have the money to hire enough nannies…but…they want to do that and would agree to do that if a church supported them.  Maybe they don’t know anything about bonding issues, or how to rehabilitate children who have experienced great loss…but….they are willing and eager to receive training in these areas…that’s what we’d be looking for before giving money to an orphanage here or encouraging others to do so.

And yet the fact remains…there are kids in Haiti who are living in incredibly sad situations.  God commands us to care for them.  That’s never easy.  Caring for the orphan is extremely multi-faceted.  Orphanages are only the tip of the iceberg.  The real issues lie deep…hidden…harder to see or put a finger on.  Dealing with the real issues surrounding orphan care means thinking through why there are so many orphans in this country to begin with.  The problems in Haiti are multi-faceted which means orphan care in this country must be multi-faceted.  In many ways, caring for the orphan in Haiti means caring for the families…the mothers who have no ability to keep their kids.  With that in mind, caring for the orphan could look like adopting, supporting an orphanage, or ministries like Heartline and the Apparent Project who are working to prevent children from becoming orphans.

These kids are real.  They need homes.  There are no easy answers.  The issues are complex.  Trying to figure out how to best care for the orphan may take a lot of time and may not be as convenient as throwing money or a mission team at the situation.  It will most definitely take some research.  It will take asking hard questions.  Caring for the orphan may not be easy or glamorous.  Ask any parent walking through the murky and turbulent waters with an adopted child who is dealing with loss, the inability to connect, abuse, and anger issues.  Yet being involved in what God declares important is always worth it.  Being invited, through orphan care, to be a part of redemption is a beautiful, life-changing, faith building journey.

It’s not easy, but God has called us to jump in, do the dirty work, and care for the orphan.”







And though this world, with devils filled, 
should threaten to undo us, 
we will not fear, for God hath willed 
His truth to triumph through us. 

"A Mighty Fortress is Our God"
Martin Luther

—
Posted By Ream Family to Chosen and Much Loved at 1/26/2012 02:52:00 PM

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Fountains of Hope

It was the morning after January 12th, 2010. I had not yet heard the news about the earthquake that violently shook Haiti the evening before. I woke up and began the routine in what would have been just an ordinary day. I fed kids, everyone got dressed, put on my running shoes and headed to the gym. I had barely punched in my desired speed on the treadmilI when the television in front of me caught my eye. Several news stations on all four screens were showing gruesome earthquake footage from…Haiti. I watched for a few seconds and then the reality began to set in. Haiti? No! Not Haiti! Lord, please! Anywhere but Haiti! 

Two years ago I had never been to Haiti. I didn’t know anyone in Haiti. And I didn’t know much about Haiti. But I had been studying different countries (specifically orphan statistics) and praying hard about where God was leading us to adopt a child/ren. The months prior to January 2010, Eric and I had narrowed down the list to three possible countries. Haiti was at the top of the list. I was beginning to think more and more about Haiti. We had done our research and knew that we met Haiti’s strict adoption requirements. We realized that Haiti was our U.S. neighbor, making trips to Haiti very possible for us. And we knew that Haiti had a lot of orphans. I was beginning to feel like there were children in Haiti that were the children for which we had been praying many years. I was beginning to feel like we had family in Haiti even though I didn’t know their names yet.

I stopped running and just stood on that treadmill staring at the screen for what seemed like an hour. The thought “there will be many more orphans” kept playing over and over again in my head. I knew right at that moment that there were people calling out from under the rubble. I felt like they were calling out to me. January 12, 2010, “the day the earth shook” changed Haiti forever. Although we were not here that day, it shook us too. And we were forever changed. 

I first came to Haiti on April 17th, 2010. The graphic pictures I had watched from the treadmill and almost every day since came to life the moment I stepped out of the airport onto the streets of Port au Prince. It had been three months since the earthquake. But the gravity of what happened that day was still all around, inescapable. Hopelessness hung in the air. The homeless were everywhere.

This is the first picture I took shortly after we left the airport on April 17, 2010.

Tents and more tents…everywhere. 

Tents were on every corner of the city. 

The sidewalks were covered with tents. 
There were even tents in the medians of the road. 

And sometimes you can see inside the tents. 
And its hard to see hope there.

I made five trips to Haiti in 18 months and on the last one, we stayed. 
We saw more and more of Haiti. We saw more and more tents…in the city
…in the country.

There are tents still.

And brokenness everywhere.

But today, in a few places where there were once tents you won’t see tents anymore. You will see this. It is a beautiful sight. When we arrived in Haiti only four months ago there were tents covering the area where this fountain and another like it now stand. The homeless that were here now have homes. Two years later as we remember January 12, 2010, we do see these glimpses of progress, and hope hangs in the air. There are still tents all around us, but there is hope too. And where there is hope, there is life. We pray we will see many more fountains of life spring up in 2012. 
“For with You is the fountain of life; 
In Your light we see light.”
Psalm 36:9

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Hands Held and Raised in Praise for 2011!

Thank you for your prayers and support in 2011! Our hearts are full of praise as this wonderful, crazy year comes to a close! 2011 has held so many precious memories with precious people who will forever hold our hearts. Thank you for holding our hands all the way to Haiti! 2011 has held so much, but the following two pictures are some of the first things that come to mind when we look back at all our blessings and praise Him for what He has done in our lives and for His Kingdom this past year!

Thankful for hands held and hearts joined in 2011!

“Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips will praise You.
So I will bless You as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.”
Psalm 63:3-4

Hands raised in praise for all He has done in 2011! 


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Making a Difference

One of our primary goals this first year in Haiti is to gain knowlege and understanding about the Haitian people, their language, their culture, their needs (which are usually obvious), and how God would have us serve/meet those needs. One way we have done this is to spend time seeking wisdom from those who have come before us and explore and engage the surrounding organizations that are doing their best to serve here. We have been blessed to have gained insight from many new friends serving at nearby ministries and we appreciate each and every opportunity to learn from them and serve alongside them. One thing we have learned is that everyone is connected here in Haiti. We already feel very connected to these new friends and the ministries God has given them and we want to share them with you! Life has been happening at such a rapid pace lately that we haven’t had the chance to do so on the blog, but hope to catch everyone up soon! 

We feel like we’ve already seen a lot of different sides/viewpoints of Haiti. We work/live at a school so we engage teachers, students and parents on a daily basis. We work with international students (and that’s us too) so we understand things from that end. We’ve spent time at orphanages, churches, women’s organizations, employment programs, feeding programs, medical clinics, other school programs, with missionaries like us, with the poorest of the poor, and with some of the richest people in Haiti. And we are learning so much.

A few days ago we were talking with one of our new Haitian friends that fits into the upper class category. He was educating us on the history of Haiti and how things got so bad for the poorest of the poor. He has at one time employed over 15,000 Haitians (which is no longer possible because the production which brings this job opporunity no longer exist in Haiti). He shook his head when we asked him questions as to how things can change for the better. He said that “change will not happen”. We then asked how anyone could make a difference? He said, “I believe you are already doing your fair share of that” (as he nodded toward our two Haitian girls) and then added that “the future lies in the next generation…and you are educating them to be different”. His son is in Eric’s Bible class at Quisqueya Christian School. 

We, being fresh on the scene and not having experienced an ounce of what our friend has, are perhaps still more optimistic that anything is possible. We do hope and pray for change. We pray that we can truly make a difference. We pray that our girls and the students that we teach will make a positive difference…that together that difference will one day bring change for a better Haiti. But it is easy to feel in the great scheme of things…when we walk down the street piled with rotting trash, piled with the faces of poverty…a sense of hopelessness…like making a difference is certainly beyond us. And that is why stories like the birth of TeacHaiti are so meaningful to us. We will soon share this story and others and you too will be reminded that just one person, one family that reaches out to even one person can make a difference…for one more person, for one more family, for a community, for a country, for the world. So as long as there are stories like the one we will tell next, we will keep on being optimistic that anything is possible. And we know that it is possible because we know the One who defied the impossible and made a difference for us all. We love it that He loved to tell stories about the power of one making a difference…the power of one person who decided to care, who obeyed, who left their comfort zone, who struggled, who tried, who felt defeated at times. We know that He calls us to follow Him in all these things. 

And we know that in the end He wins.