Well hello friends!!!! You’ve probably been wondering about us!  Actually, we’ve been wondering a lot too!  Wondering if our batteries will ever charge. Wondering if we can connect to the internet. Wondering if this page will ever load….. Lack of electricity and snail slow internet has really challenged our communications!  But as we ponder the whole situation, it’s just another step in God stripping from us what we think is normal and necessary, and filling those spaces with Himself!  Finding contentment outside of your expectations is like going on a scavenger hunt deep in the forest without a flashlight.  I could give you all the details, but then my screen would just go blank and another post would go unposted so those stories will have to wait for another day. 

The real story is our adjustment to a culture that thinks totally differently than we are used to.  More differently than we ever dreamed it would be.  Here, the future doesn’t really exist past sundown.  Take the school for example.  School starts Monday.  Everyone knows that you cannot get into school without shoes with no holes.  Well, a lot of the students didn’t even think about that until this week, knowing they couldn’t afford to just run out and buy them.  There is no money (we hear that a LOT!).  The concept of saving to purchase something you know you are going to need, either never occurs to them or they know the hopelessness of the situation and just dismiss it.  We’re not talking about a lot of money, either.   Yes, they are second hand shoes, but a good pair could be bought for about $5.00 US.  And the burden seems to rest on the children.  The parents seem very separated from providing in this way.  There must be more going on than we see.  We have soooo much to learn.  So the questions we struggle with are many!  How do you help?  When do you help?  Who do you help?  Is it better not to help?  Some come begging at your door.  Some just pass through with a warm ‘bon jour’ and warm smile that tries to say everything is ok but their eyes betray the reality they live.  We think we’ve given up a lot, but we will never know what it is like to crawl into a 12; x 15’ hut at night with 7 or more other family members hoping that it doesn’t rain because there is no escaping the leaky roof!

Daily life for me (Pat) is mostly in the garden or helping friends in theirs.  I’ve been making trellises for Malibar spinach which should be sprouting any day.  I also have green beans up and several other things in the ground that should be sprouting soon.  Lettuce, sweet corn, several herbs, hundreds of Moringa trees and some other trees I got from ECHO are things I’m looking forward to.  Not sure what will grow and what won’t but you never know until you try.

Cheryl is kept pretty busy ministering to whoever appears at the door.  Some are sick, some think they are sick, some want to be sick so she will give them something and some are just visiting and some just like hanging around.  And then there are the kids! There are always kids at the doorstep. 

The language is coming slowly, but you never get far away from the Creole-English dictionary!  It’s the #2 book at our house.  God’s Word reigns as #1, but that little dictionary is pretty valuable!  When you pray, pray for our ears and tongues with the language.  Pray for contentment.  Pray for discernment.  And pray that God would give us His eyes to really see how to ‘simply serve’ our neighbors.

We’ve figured out a little bit of how things work here, so we’re going to try and post some pics along with text this time.  We’re still trying to settle into a schedule on when is best to do what, so that will take a little time.  We’re not used to being in bed at 8:30 and being wide awake at 3:00 am, so that’s what I’m talking about.  Do you get up at 4 and work till it gets hot? Try to stay up later so you sleep later? Anyhow, we just wanted to add a little color to this post if the internet will let us. So….

Hello from the ‘blanche kay la’ ( the white’s house) in Soliette. 

 We’ve taken over the house from the tarantula’s,

, and done some little things to make it a little homier.  Pat got to use some of his new tools. He was really impressed with the performance of the concrete drill!  Got the shelves up!  Really, it worked better than you think.  Of course, drilling through stucco and Haitian concrete block is different than drilling into American concrete.

We have the basic outside cleanup around the house done, and have planted some veges.  Not sure what will grow and what won’t so we’re just going to experiment. Today we planted green beans, tomatoes, lettuce and some herbs.  We’ll keep you posted on how it turns out.  We’ve got a few more things to try, but more preparation is necessary first.  Most of the area around the house, I mean right up to the house, was planted in black beans by a friend that didn’t know we were comming.  You hate to just dig everything up, so we’ll do a little bit at a time.  We’ll, the batteries are getting low, so we gotta go.  Love you all.  We’re anxious to see if we can really upload all this too.  Talk to you soon!