Thanksgiving away from home!
As we live day to day, we know we are to be thankful. We are taught from little up to say ‘Thank
you’ when we receive something. The
Apostle Paul instructs us to be thankful in all things. But today is Thanksgiving Day at home, and it
is more than a little strange to be celebrating when life is just going on
around you. We are enjoying an ‘American
style’ thanksgiving with Vladimy and Ashly at the mission house in Fond
Parisian and we are truly thankful for that.
But there is so much more to be thankful for!!!! First of all we are thankful for a loving God
who is always Faithful and full of Grace.
We have also been blessed with an awesome family who we miss so much,
and our friends and supporters who are
the world’s greatest. You always come
through with the prayers, finances, notes and packages just when we need them
the most. Yes, we are abundantly blessed
with material things, but relationships are head and shoulders above anything
else. We thank God today and every day
for all of you, for your steadfastness and grace, and pray also that God will
continue to abundantly Bless you every day.
Yes, as we live every day, it occurred to me that we talk about the
house, the school, the gardens and the area like you all know what we are
talking about. We’ve been here, but few
of you have! Some have seen pictures,
but I thought we’d just give a pictorial tour of the property and our house so
when we talk about some of these things you’ll have a better understanding of what
we are talking about.
Whenever you hear about Haiti, the poverty is what first comes to
mind. It does to us too, but then
something will break through and remind us we are on a tropical island that at
one time was close to paradise!
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| This is the front of our house, and you probably didn’t even notice the green plants to the left of the step. They came with the house and I’ve never seen them do anything but sit there and be green. No one seemed to know what they even were. |
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| Well,
we found out in a big way this week as these huge blooms just seemed to burst
from the plant in just a couple days.
First there was only one, but they just keep coming with 3 coming out
now. We have a lot of surprises here,
but few are as welcome as a beautiful flower bursting forth just for the Glory
of it’s Creator! Let's back up a little to show you most of the property. |
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It’s kind of pie shaped with the house at the pointy end and then goes
uphill with the bathroom (kinda in the center of the picture) marking one
corner and the administration building for the school (top left) marking the
other. The school is between them and the slope below the school is what I
fondly refer to as my garden.
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| This is my workshop, the only flat, level spot on the property. Our solar collectors and water supply are up here too. Not much protection from the sun, but the view is awesome! |
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| Oh,here comes a water delivery now! |
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| It comes just like that, 5 gal. at a time from a spring nearly a 1/2 mile away. About $5.00 US per barrel, that's 10 trips to the spring and back! |
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| Looking uphill from the workshop, up the path past the tree, the little building to the right is the bathroom. |
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| Looking the other way is the path leading to the laundry room. Yes, it looks like it just drops off into nowhere. That's about what it does. Down about 100', across a ravine, up a small hill and on down the ravine to the spring. |
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| It's not very convenient, but it is absolutely beautiful! You're surrounded by the sound of rushing water and lush greenery. You have to watch so not to step in the manure, but the surroundings take your mind off the labor. There's always someone around to give 'motherly' advice. |
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| It's all in the wrist action. The locals don't think I'll ever get it right! |
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| And then a leisurely walk home! |
Inside the house there is one main room -
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| The kitchen is on the one end with the table in the center - |
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| with the sitting area at the other. |
The other half of the house is separated into three rooms
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| Our bedroom |
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| Pat just put the shelves it the utility room. Everything fits and has it's place. Organization is good! |
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| And this is your room when you come to visit. We have a queen size inflatable mattress. The rest of the furnishings are in process but it's clean and dry and we do our best to keep the spiders out! |
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| The shower is out front not far from the front path. It can get a little chilly and dark if you don't get it done before the sun goes down. Adjusting the water temp isn't difficult either, if it's the day the barrel was filled, you get cold. If it's been a couple days, it's a little warmer. The faucet by the door is the hand washing station. All the waste water is collected for irrigation. |
My little personal garden is just in front of the house.
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| This is where it all starts. The first things I've planted are growing pretty well. The trellis has vining spinach planted at each leg with carrots growing underneath. The black bags are tree seedlings that are just about ready to go into the big garden. |
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| This is my soil mixing station. No sterile bagged potting soil here. The black stuff is collected topsoil, the pile in the center is fresh horse manure the kids collected for me and the pile to the right is compost I've made. The green stuff is leaves off a Neem tree. I cut them up and mix them in. It's a natural insecticide. Everything gets mulched with Neem leaves too. |
Well, that's the nickel tour. Hope it helps make sense of some of what we have talked about before and future posts as well. It's still a month or so from bean harvest so I'm running out of places to plant things. We have eaten some of our own green beans and lettuce. The carrots aren't too far off and there are little cucumbers on that just showed up yesterday. We're finding out that the bugs like sweet corn more than we do. That crop isn't going to amount to anything. The language is coming, very slowly, but we are getting braver in venturing out and trying to engage people in conversation. Our next goal is to become emersers, venturing out and making new friends. The plan is to take a walk every day to discover new friends and learn more of their language and history. Pray that God would remove the scales from our ears and loosen our tongues so we can really become a part of the lives of our neighbors and begin to understand their culture.
'Si Bondye vle!' (If God wills!) Our neighbor Memin, bread baker and mother of 7
Miss you and love you lots.
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