So much news! Where to begin??
Containers… lots of them
After shipping 2 containers in January a third one containing food was shipped in February. After the 2 containers arrived in Haiti they were sitting on the dock waiting for the inspector to approve them and a gang came and emptied both containers, dumped out boxes, stole many things, mainly food and left a giant mess. It has been a headache trying to get everything back to the right mission as we had 7 missions on these two containers. When things got dumped, they were picked up and placed in any box so we just returned a few boxes last week to the rightful owners. Fortunately, our food container arrived after a very leisurely trip around the Caribbean but things went very smoothly. Only 4 missions shared the food (1,000,000 meals) of packaged soup and the food and the Haitians doing the pick-up were all safe.
Church
Pastor Charles’ village church in Gonaives celebrated their 8th anniversary in May with revivals, food, singing and many other activities.
Pastor Gilbert started a new church near Saint Marc and was blessed with a donation that will pour the concrete floor and possibly put a roof on the church. They are looking for chairs to be donated, either plastic stacking or folding chairs. If you have a lead, please let me know.
School and Sponsorships
The school celebrated Flag Day with children playing instruments and singing and having a small parade. This is a big day in Haiti. The food arrived at the school and as you can see it was welcomed with great gusto. We had one of the sponsored children’s 18 month old sister die and it sounds like it was from starvation. The same week the child’s sponsor also passed away. We are looking for people that want to sponsor ($25 a month, $300 per year) Things are really hard in Haiti with no president, very little law and gangs ruling the country. Kidnappings are rampant and stealing is out of control. People are starving to death as many of the missionaries have pulled out. Schools will be out the middle of June but we are happy that the soup is there to provide meals for the children in summer. If you sponsor, we collect money even in the summer which is then used to cover the cost of school uniforms, shoes, books, bags, and more.
Animal and Agriculture Projects
Pastor Charles has been sending pictures of new baby goats being placed with families. Some of our older students are now taking responsibility for the animals. Charles inherited a large piece of land when his father passed away. He is wanting to take the children there and teach them agriculture. There were 700 packets of seeds on this container for the garden and the children to use to grow food for the school and their starving neighbors. One of the things we have talked about is fruit trees. For about one dollar you can buy a fruit tree. Within 8 months the banana trees are producing fruit. The obstacle to this is most of the people rent their property. Very few own the house or land they live on. So, we would like to put their trees on Charles’ property. We are still in need of a bus to transport the children to the garden and to soccer games and other outings. Can you imagine living within several miles of the ocean and never having seen it or gone swimming? He also has a place to take church members for a retreat in the country side but we cannot do that without a bus.
Fundraising
The 5th annual golf scramble was held on May 28th with lots of golfers, best prizes ever, great weather and donations that helped with the cost of shipping the food container. Thank you Joe Mica and Ken Strickland for chairing this and all your great helpers! We can’t say thank you enough.
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