EDUCATION - ST. ANDREW'S GIFT TO THE CHILDREN OF HAITI

Mission to Haiti – February 6, 2011

This past week has been somewhat frustrating as the Internet has been something less than sporadic; it has been almost nonexistent.  This has prevented us from communicating with family and friends, and of course, we were unable to send our weekly “Mission to Haiti” report for last week.  We were hoping the coming week would be better, but so far this has not happened.

We did have the opportunity this past week to visit the schools at Heavenly Light, Faith, and Eben-Ezer.  They are all doing a wonderful job of educating the children in their care and we were pleased to see things that we would not even begin to see in some of our classes at home being taught at the kindergarten level.  As an example, our Goddaughter, Jellie Gabriel, who is five years old and in senior kindergarten, is able to write her full name, not print but write. 

We saw children in kindergarten learning simple mathematics (addition and subtraction) where our oldest granddaughter who is 6 is only now learning this in grade one.  Needless to say, we were impressed and think how fortunate these children are that St. Andrew’s is able to provide the much needed funding to make this all happen because without our support the majority of these children would not be seeing the inside of a classroom.

At Heavenly Light School, Pastor Vilmer Paul introduced me to two young girls who were aged 12 and 10, but looked more like perhaps ten and eight.  These two girls, together with two other siblings, had been abandoned by their parents and now live with one of the families in the congregation.  The pastor was looking for someone who would find it in their heart to help this family financially with the feeding, clothing and sheltering of these four children.  The two girls were just such beautiful children in their school uniforms that it broke our hearts to think what may happen to them if they do not find the resources to help raise these children. 

Two of our visiting professors left this past Saturday so we are now down to only one.  John took them to the airport and stayed with them until they started boarding the airplane taking them back to Fort Lauderdale.  Last year the one professor, who is an old hand in Haiti, was taken to the airport and left there to check in.  Unfortunately, the airplane never arrived but with the help of a Haitian he was able to contact someone at OMS who arranged to have him picked up, returned to the compound, and flight arrangements were made for the following day with another airline.  Having once been bitten we did not want to see a repeat of this again.

And the good news this week is that the Electoral Commission announced that the run-off for the Presidency together with all the other run-off elections for parliamentarians and senators would be held on March 20^th, and that Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat will be the two candidates for the Presidency.  I expected that there would be counter demonstrations by the Jude Celestin supporters because he now is the odd man out in the runoff for the Presidency, but so far this has not been the case. 

We praise the Lord for His continuing goodness to us.  What a pleasure it is to know Him personally and talk to Him anytime day or night.