8/30/10

We haven’t done a whole lot of ministry stuff this last week, mainly because we haven’t had a chance to pray about what ministries to put on hold. But this week, we are fasting and praying together every morning about that, praying for the property up in the mountains we are pursuing, praying for the property we need to rent in the city where the city staff will stay and where we will receive teams. We will also be praying for the rest of the staff that we haven’t got to yet. We also have two containers we are trying to get out of customs. They said they want to charge $4,000 for each of them. This is a ridiculous amount!!! Please pray with us on these things!
I haven’t said anything about it to this point, and I’ve known for a while, but God has called me to come back to work with YWAM Port au Prince. I’m still going back to Kansas on September 14, but I’m coming back November 1-2. I will be doing some support raising, spending time with friends and family, and speaking at churches in the six weeks that I’m home. If you are interested in being a monthly supporter, a one-time giver, or having me speak with you or at your church, please let me know! I am really excited about getting to come home and see people, go to Esther’s wedding, speak at my Aunt Mary’s church. I’m excited to see what God is going to do at this time in my life!
We want to run a Discipleship Training School(DTS) in June 2011. We would like to be able to move to the ranch we want to buy in the mountains before that so that we can prepare for it. The ranch is going to cost about $5.2 million, which for some reason feels like a small amount to most of us on staff. And for God, it isn’t a big deal! June 2011 will be here before we know it!!! We are currently looking for a way to provide scholarships for Haitians to attend the DTS.
Please continue to pray for unity among staff and more long-term staff to come here.

8/23/2010

Well, I meant to write another update last week, but, obviously, that did not happen.
After about 7 months of this base starting, it took a break. A much needed break. I had only been here for less than 2 months and I needed a break I don’t know how Lucy and Peterson and the Haitian staff lasted this long!! We went up to a ranch in the mountains called Le Montcel. It was gorgeous!!!
We had some amazing team times. We came together as a team finally. Even before we left, we grew closer in a couple of worship and prayer sessions. Instead of everyone doing their own thing and being scattered, we were unified. We grew in love and respect for each other, where it wasn’t always before. We heard about the vision God gave Peterson for this base. We prayed… a lot! We prayed about what ministries need to be put on hold because we are trying to do too much. (We are still praying about that.)
The view was amazing!!! It was really relaxing. We got to take scalding hot showers and leave the water on the whole time. We got to wear sweatshirts and jackets because it was that “chilly” (70 F). We were clean the whole time. My fingernails didn’t have dirt under them at the end of every day. We were waited on at meals. We got fresh juice every morning. We didn’t have to wash our own plates. No one got yelled at for leaving a cup or plate out. We got to breathe fresh air. There wasn’t an airplane going over every ten minutes. Our ears got to rest from all the noise.
The owner came the night before we left. He talked to Peterson and said that he asked his staff how we were doing. His staff told him we were really easy. They said, “They eat and pray, eat and pray, eat and pray, pray and eat.” Oh, and don’t forget the afternoon nap everyday.
We are going to continue this environment of unity that was started last week. We are going to pray more about which ministries we are going to continue right now. We are going to stay unified. God has blessed us SO much!!! We prayed over each other as staff and got words from the Lord for each other, verses, and confirmations of things God has already spoken in our lives.
I will lift up my eyes to the mountains, from where shall my help come from. My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, He who keeps Israel, shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is the shade on your right hand. The sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul. The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in, from this time forth and forever. – Psalm 121

8/14/2010

What a week!!! No, not even a week, 3 days. After a whirlwind of events, we ended up moving off the New Life property where our base was located. There are no hard feelings toward the New Life people. It is just best for our relationship that we are not squished onto the same property. Now, Hannah, Dani and I are staying with Lucy and Peterson, the guys are staying at the church where Mission Adventures used to be and some of them are still at New Life. We have til the end of August to move all of our stuff off, but we are hoping to get the rest of it done tomorrow. It is funny sometimes how what could seem like a blessing ends up being a burden. We loved having all the teams come through this summer, but a lot of them left a lot of stuff and now we have to figure out what to do with it. It is a blessing, but we are not set up to distribute the stuff right now. We have tons of clothes right now, and also a lot of materials for kids’ programs. Hopefully we will soon figure out when and where to take it all.
It has been a really rough several days. I’ve cried several times, didn’t know what was going on most of the time, nor did anyone else, been yelled at by frustrated people, gotten several really good hugs by people that care. I’ve been stretched to my limits and grown a lot. Although it has been frustrating a lot of times not knowing what was going on, I could still rely on my God that knows everything. He knew everything that was going to happen this week. He knew when He called me here long-term what I was going to go through. Some days, I wonder what God was thinking, but I know that He has me here for a reason and I am glad for it.
I don’t know that I can explain how hard it is to have to leave my friends at New Life. It is really hard to not be around them. Sometimes I would just go get a hug from one of the kids and it would brighten my day. I love hearing my name called across the compound! We will be going back there to work with the ministry they have there, but not living there will be hard. I am glad to say that today a broken relationship was mended, so there are no hard feelings in leaving.
Thank you, Lord, for being the same yesterday, today and forever! Thank you for knowing everything. Thank you for knowing how I would be stretched and what my limits are. Thank you for putting me in the midst of some great staff. Thank you for putting me under the leadership of Peterson and Lucy. Thank you for being a steadfast God and for never failing.

8/11/10

Today was a hard day. I’m just going to be honest right now. It may not be pretty or a fun blog to read, but I’m doing it.
I hate mud!!! Especially when it smells like butt. I’m so tired of rain. I am tired of having to put a tarp on my tent every time it looks like it’s about to rain. I’m tired of people coming here and getting upset when things don’t go perfectly or when nothing is on time. I’m tired of people dumping their responsibilities on me. And not knowing how to communicate, so I just take it. I’m tired of miscommunication every single day! I would love to be able to take a whole shower and not have someone else in the bathroom with me. I’m tired of people blaming me for things not my fault. I wish people would step up and take responsibility for their mistakes. I wish we could all be adults and clean up our stuff. I wish that people would realize we are a baby base and make mistakes and not get their panties in a twist. I hate mosquitoes and don’t anyone dare tell me they are one of God’s creations or I might reach through the computer world and punch you in the throat. I hate ringworm and pimples and this outbreak on my lips. I don’t like goodbyes.
I love the kids at this orphanage. I love the kids at Lifeline that I briefly got to see today. I love most of the people I work with on this base. I loved having three of my really good friends here from Orlando the last three weeks. It sucked saying goodbye to them today. Then I had one of the worst days since I’ve been here. I don’t like it when people compare us to the base in St. Marc. We are not trying to be them or be just like them. I feel like I haven’t been able to process the last 6 weeks very well. And don’t know how to do it in a good way. I love impacting people's lives. I am glad God has called me here to be a servant at this base. I understand that I said, "Here I am, Lord, send me." and that that might not always be the easiest thing. In fact, most days, it probably will be hard. I believe that God is going to make me water, so that I can just flow with what comes at me, and not let things affect me when they are thrown at me. Please pray for me….

8/7/2010

Our building is finally the color it’s going to be until it fades enough to need to be painted. Yay!! It is now green with a gold-ish trim. We have started on some of the inside rooms as well. One of the rooms is like a baby room pink and the girls bathroom is red. We have cleaned out the storage room in the house and moved the sound system back there so that there is more room in the living room.
Valter, our chef, bought a bigger stove with 6 burners on it and a little oven down below. He is working on getting his ministry called Children’s Bread started. He wants to be able to do a feeding program every day for about 5,000 children. He is in the beginning stages of this daughter ministry of YWAM PAP. He is to receive $20,000 to get it started. Please be praying that people would be called to come and help him with this. He will also need a kitchen on wheels. Pray that there won’t be too much confusion or frustration with getting it started.
We did the feeding program at Lifeline and it went really well. We fed a lot of children and mothers with small children. It was great to get to spend all day there with the kids. I also loved showing my YWAM friends around. The kids really really miss the kids that were adopted from Lifeline, and all the people they know from the teams. I saved some pictures from Facebook on my computer to show them and they loved it!
Wyclef Jean announced that he is running for President of Haiti on Thursday. We watched an interview with him on CNN the other night. The Haitian guys that work with us aren’t too impressed with him. He was born in Croix des Bouquets and moved to the U.S. when he was 9 and has spent the last 31 years there. His Creole isn’t too good, nor is his French, neither of which sit well with most of the Haitian people. Peterson said his accent when he speaks Creole is worse than Lucy’s, who has only been speaking it for 6 years. We will see what happens in November when the elections are supposed to happen. I have been told there is usually a lot of rioting and violence around election time, so please pray against that. In intercession on Friday, we prayed that God would raise up a righteous leader who is actually going to help things change and cares about the people.
Today is Peterson’s birthday, so we had a little party last night. Valter took the grill to Lucy and Peterson’s and grilled steak. I attempted to make a peach pie… the crust was good. Now I know how to make it better next time. I was really sad that it wasn’t very good though because I tried really hard. I had to make 2 8x12 pans of it, I didn’t have a flat surface to roll the dough on, and I had never made peach pie before. It ended up being more like peach soup and some crust. My friend, Joshua Miller, helped me some with the crust.
It has been raining a lot more the last several weeks than it did about the first 3 weeks I was here. It is a big muddy mess when it rains. It makes keeping the house clean quite the task, let me tell you! My tent leaks a little bit when it rains a lot, but not a whole lot, for that I am thankful.
I have been driving pretty regularly for about 2 ½ weeks now. Sometimes it is a little stressful, but I am usually not scared. Actually, one of the first days I drove, we went to a hospital and there were lots of hills and lots of traffic. I am from Kansas, so obviously not used to hills, so I told Steeve (one of our Haitian staff) that I was kind of scared and he said, “Don’t be scared, you’ll make mistakes if you’re scared.” So since then, I have determined to not be scared when I drive.
Please pray for me that I will be able to communicate clearly with teams and my fellow staff. Also that I would have wisdom and discernment. My neck still hurts quite a bit usually, so if you would continue to pray for relief there, I’d appreciate it.

8/1/2010

Well it’s been a little while since I updated. I never remembered when I was at the base or when I had a chance that I could sit down and do it, but I always remembered when I was busy or not here.
We have had a couple teams come and go. There have been a couple of big storms as well. Friday night, our maintenance tent blew and rolled about 40 feet across the garden in the orphanage. A couple of unoccupied tents were demolished. Lucy had planned for a girls staff night at her house, so we went ahead and went over there and ended up staying the night. I was scared that the tent Hannah and I share was going to be down or full of water. Thankfully it only had a little tiny puddle in it and a tiny tear in our rain fly. There was another storm last night, but not nearly as bad.
There has been a church group of 8 that has been here for about a week. I went out with them for ministry every day. We went to the tent city in Cite Soleil so they could do a VBS for the kids while some adults were getting teaching from another group. That afternoon we went to the tent city in Delmas 33 to do another VBS. However, all the kids were at school so we just did like a prayer walk where we went to some different tents and asked for things we could pray for. It was mostly all the same thing: it is too hot under the tarps so people get sick, they want to be able to move somewhere less crowded, they don’t have any way to get food or water. It was hard to listen to, but good that the team got a little piece of what breaks God’s heart. Tuesday, we went to a hospital and prayed for patients and then gave them a bag of food. The ones we went to are all in tents. It gets very hot and they also mostly don’t have a way to get food or water. I went with a group to a tent with all kids and babies in it. There was this one little girl who became blind about 2 weeks before. Her mother died and they opened the coffin so she could see her one last time and when they shut it, the little girl went blind. She has a super good attitude. She chattered the whole time and was super cute!!!

Wednesday, we went to Croix des Bouquets to “my” orphanage to do a children’s program. It was so great to get to go see all the kids. Oh I also went there last Saturday so that Lucy and Peterson could see it and meet Nicole (the orphanage director). They were pretty excited to see me. Some if the little ones didn’t remember my name, but that’s ok, they still love to be held and I still love to hold them!! It was really great to get to go back on Wednesday and spend quite a bit more time there. The kids loved having us there and the team really liked it too. I brought a little photo album with me and they loved looking at the pictures of people they know in the States. Especially the kids that were adopted out of Lilfeline recently. We went back on Thursday to work in the garden that is pretty overgrown. We pulled weeds and grass and took it to the burn pile, thankfully, the kids helped. There is another team staying there this week so they are going to be working in the garden some more. One of the ministries we are starting is a children’s food program called Children’s Bread. We have done 2 so far. The first time we fed about 700 kids in Cite Soleil and the second time we fed about 700 people in the tent city at Cite Soleil. This Tuesday we are going to Lifeline to do a feeding program there for the kids and the village kids. We are also doing one on Friday at the tent city at Delmas 33.
The Mission Adventures teams are all moved to the orphanage. Sometimes it gets a little crowded, but it all works out. They are here for just two more weeks. After that, the staff and teams will be pretty small. I have sort of been put in charge of some administrative stuff at the base. I didn’t really ask for it, nor was I asked, but it’s ok, I don’t mind. Please be praying for the communication at our base, also for unity and clarity between departments and with teams.