Mission to Haiti – October 24, 2011
We continue to work away cleaning, washing, and scrubbing anything that doesn’t move other than insects that are fair game. We have more or less finished the major cleaning of the guest house that we are living in and are now concentrating our efforts on another smaller house that will take the overflow of visiting professors we are expecting in mid-January.
This past Sunday we were able to visit our home church, Eben-Ezer Evangelical Church in Cap Haitien (Fougerole), and were delighted to see upwards of 600 in the congregation. We were blessed to have the opportunity to hear the senior choir of 60 voices and thought them so good that they should be releasing a CD. They were so amazing and the precision with which they sang reminded us of the precision with which we remember the Irish step dancers in “Lord of the Dance” a few years back. It was like old home week with many of our friends welcoming us back. We are always blessed when we attend a service at one of the four churches where St. Andrew’s are supporting an education program for the children of the church and community.
On Tuesday the two new diesel generators that are to replace the existing ones which officially gave up the ghost this past week arrived but not without an element of suspense. As the crew was traveling from Saccenville to the airport to off-load the generators from the Missionary Flights DC3 their dump truck was stopped and the trailer and front-load tractor were seized by the police because in Haiti it is a requirement that tractors be licenced and insured with the government. The truck and crew continued on to the airport without the tractor where they enlisted the help of several of the passengers who were flying into Cap Haitien to manhandle each of the diesel generators off the plane and on to the truck, no mean feat because each of the generators weighed over 700 pounds. The generators are in the process of being installed here at the seminary, and as I write this note I can hear one of the new generators running in the background. It is music to our ears, well almost. We should also mention that while it was not planned, two of the passengers who were traveling to Cap Haitien on a OMS work team unrelated to the generators were also engineers and it is these two men who are now installing the new generators. Go figure; there is no such thing as a coincidence. It is all part of God’s perfect timing.While we are thankful to God and know that it is only through Him that all blessings flow, we need to accept that the less than hoped for financial results of last Saturday’s annual “Run for the Children of Haiti” were part of His perfect plan. Perhaps we have been too complacent in our fund-raising efforts for the schools and orphanage. Perhaps we have assumed incorrectly that everyone at St. Andrew’s is aware of the Haiti mission and the cost involved in delivering an education program for over 600 children as well as feeding children in the orphanage. Perhaps we need to diversify our fundraising efforts as well as undertake to deliver a more effective program of communication. It is no longer enough to assume that the congregation will support the mission in Haiti simply because it has always been there, and fundraising has been done the same way and at the same time each year.
We still have one more opportunity this year to regain financial equilibrium. Last year we officially commenced a Haiti Christmas Gift program whereby someone could make a donation to St. Andrew’s HEARTS and give to a friend or relative a gift such as tuition for a year for a child, or uniform, shoes & books for a child, or a food program for a year for a child. There were a number of different opportunities to help a Haitian child while giving someone a gift that would mean so much to the individual. Contact Sandra in the church office should you decide that this would be a perfect way to celebrate Christmas by sharing with those less fortunate. A Christmas gift card will be provided to the donor to give to the family member or friend.
This coming week we will be celebrating both a birthday and our wedding anniversary. We don’t quite know how we will be doing the celebrating, but as always it will be a different experience from what it might have been were we home.
God bless you all.
John & Dorothy
