WE ARE HERE! (Our first week in Haiti)

We did it! We made it through our first official week in Haiti as a family. We have actually been here 12 days now! We started our journey Thursday morning saying goodbye to our families at the airport and flying to Ft. Lauderdale that first day. On the second morning we woke up and flew to Port Au Prince, Haiti and then took RMI’s bus on a 4 1/2 hour journey to Les Cayes, our new home. We were warmly welcomed by RMI staff and had a delicious meal waiting for us as well.

The first week we stayed at the guesthouse behind the Nunemaker’s while we worked hard on getting our house in order and beds set up so we could start sleeping in our home. We have been at our home for 5 days now and it has been wonderful working on it and slowly making it US each and every day. We are so grateful to our organization, RMI, who has given us plenty of time in this beginning period to just acclimate to the weather & culture and make our house a home. In the coming weeks we will start field orientation and language studies. Then after that we will actually start our ministry work.

The beauty here is astounding. I have teared up so many times while staring out at God’s creation here. As we ride our ATV/dirt bike on these bumpy dirt roads in the heat, there is something so peaceful about it. There are no words to quite describe how it feels as we drive along through the hills, the village and smell the Haitian food cooking, hear them worshiping in church and seeing smiles all around as we pass them by. We long to get to know them, grow in their language so we can start building relationships. Only God knows what He has planned, but we are excited to see who we get to meet along this journey and most of all see God working here. He’s been here, He’s been doing a great work here, we now just get to be a small part of it and we cannot wait to see the lives, including ours, that He works in and changes for the good, for His glory, for His kingdom!

We can’t say it has been all rainbows & butterflies 😉 We definitely had some tears, a LOT of sweat haha, exhaustion and feeling a bit overwhelmed at times. HOWEVER, God has shown us this week, that HE IS OUR STRENGTH! He is constant, He is never changing, even when all of life is changing a lot. It truly has been a great week all in all though.

We had a LOT more good moments than hard moments thankfully! 🙂 The good definitely outweighs the hard. Some of this weeks good included seeing everyone again at RMI and meeting new friends too. Seeing our new home and incredible view of Gods creation that we get to see daily. Watching our boys make new friends and have so much fun playing daily with them. Riding our ATV and motorbike. Making our house into a home. Watching our boys start their first day of school. Haitian food…need I say more! Hearing from our house, the Haitian people worshiping down below in the village.

Some of the things we have had a chance to do this week include going to our first Haitian wedding. Anderson, a friend of ours, invited us to his wedding and it was such an honor to be a part of it. It was very beautiful and brought glory to God!

We got to have lunch at the boys teachers house this week with our house staff and hers. It was so wonderful sitting all around together eating and getting to know each other.

I was able to go into town with other RMI staff to get some paint for the Zeke’s room as we ran out of the paint we brought. It cost $40-$50 per gallon depending on the color eeeek 😉 So I decided to only get one and we came back and used leftover paint from the living room for the rest of his walls haha. We also went into town looking for chain for our hammock and after trying 4-5 stores we still couldn’t find what we needed so we need to figure out what to use now to get our hammock up. I had to walk across that rickety old bridge with boards spaced far apart in the pictures above. I have a fear of heights, so that was fun for me! 😉

We as a family got to go to a school outing with all the other families in the boys classroom. We had such a wonderful time and it helped the boys get more excited about school since they were getting to know their classmates.

I had the chance to go to my first ladies tea now while living here. They have these weekly so the ladies in the community can get together for encouragement, support and just good ol’ chat time together. The boys love it because the kids come and play outside while the momma’s talk inside.

All but Daddy and Isaac have had bouts of sickness this week and one injury that resulted in us needing to go to the “hospital” here but all was well and we are all feeling better now so we praise God for that.

WE ARE SO CLOSE!!!

Since we are so busy here now in Haiti, it is much harder for us to try and raise the rest of the monthly support that we need. So would you please pray with us, for the last $300 a month that we need to come in. Thank you so much. We are BEYOND grateful to be 95% raised and have been blown away to see how God brought it in so quickly at the end. It has been so growing to our faith to see His faithfulness and provision in this journey. We have NO DOUBT we will get it in His timing. If you would like to be a part of our support team, please let us know. We can let you know how to go about doing that! http://www.toHaitiwego.com/donate

If we get 6 people at $50 per month we will be FULLY FUNDED! How awesome is that!

For continued good health and strong immune systems to keep sickness away. Safety while we drive our ATV/dirt bike and even RMI cars on the roads as traffic here is nothing like in the states. Continued prayer for us getting use to this heat and humidity. For quick & fast learning as we start in a few weeks with our language studies. For the boys as they started their first day of school today. This is a new transition for them as they have been homeschooled up until now. For us and our families as we already miss each other a lot. For Jim & April as we learn how much food to get each week, what type of food, where to get it, and how to pay with Goudes instead of American dollars. For our relationship with our staff to grow. Pray that day by day, the language barrier would be less and less and our relationships grow more & more.

• Mesi anpil (Thanks a lot) for your prayers & support. God has used you all in such a mighty way to strength & encourage our hearts. We love you all. Love, Jim & April