When it rains, it pours - literally. Like southern Florida, when we get a rain storm in Haiti, it's usually like the heavens just open up and dump out all the water at once. If it lasts for very long, inevitably it will cause serious flooding. This week our Thozin campus entrance was under water. Friday night the church in Thozin had a "night watch" - a late night prayer meeting, comprised of times of music, worship, and prayer. School's out for summer, but the learning never ends! Some of the older students have taken it upon themselves to teach the younger students how to operate our "One Laptop per Child" laptops. How wonderful is this??? When a teen chooses to help someone else ins
This week we held the "Remise de Carnet" - literally the remitting of report cards. Each student has to have a parent or responsible adult present to receive the report card. The school director addresses the parents, basically giving a State of the Union...er...School address. He encourages the parents to remain actively involved in their children's education and to continue sending them to school regularly (lest chores take the place of school). He also shares expectations and changes for the new school year. The parents receive their child's report card and, for the preschoolers, a packet of their creative work from the semester. We are planning to go from partial school days (mornin
Pastor Lex returned to Massachusetts this week. His time in Haiti was very productive and he had many positive things to share with me. The overall situation in Haiti right now, however, is quite dire. People are HUNGRY! Inflation is so out of control that even many who are employed are falling into debt and struggling more than ever to keep food on their tables. In the world of missions, there has been a "movement" toward self-sustainability and "teaching a man to fish." Lex and I are totally on board with this and have been for decades. Education is critical and we are so proud of our staff and students at MOHI who are so committed to teaching and learning - and to the many volunteer
Twenty years ago, Jim Murphy and Stephen Sandoval joined us in Haiti. They were our first "team" and Stephen preached at our first conference. The services were held under a tarp spread out over Pastor Bauvais' front yard. We borrowed benches from somewhere for the event. That first night, I stayed home to finish cooking dinner for the "team". The next day I started dinner earlier, but alas I still didn't make it to the service that evening either. In those days I was cooking over charcoal on a little grill that stood about 8 inches off the ground. I remember making hamburger helper - minus the hamburger. The fire just wasn't hot enough to get the water to boil. Electricity was a rari
