As many know, we are now in Haiti. We actually arrived about one and a half weeks ago today. Backup…
The week before we left, our church, LifeTree Fellowship, had a Commissioning Service for us that was amazing and very humbling. We so appreciate our church family. The Bible teaching that is constantly spoken there and the support we have from them. We are honored to have them pray for us and lift us up on a daily basis. We received a gift of the Haitian flag that is with us here in Haiti.
We were also very honored and humbled to have an amazing farewell open house. Many people from our church, friends from our past, and I mean past, came to see us off. We would like to thank Mary Neidert, Juli and Pastor Garrett, Susie and anyone else that had a hand in the planning and facilitated of that day. It was perfect! It was, as you may imagine, bittersweet.
We spent the last week in the states removing the rest of our belonging out of our house and prayed that the new owner would love it there. Our second car, Randy’s, was given to its new owner which then made us carless and homeless! Randy’s mom and dad put us up for our last week home and were the most unbelievable hosts! Thank you, Thank you!!!! We basically took over their garage and there front room with “stuff” that needed to packed in duffel bags and other “stuff” that was going to be stored in their garage until he next time we get home.
So here we are in Haiti, day 11. We are now writing this in our new home! Randy drove in Haiti for the first time yesterday. He will probably be the main driver. He and I both have to take a test to be able to drive any of the vehicles here at HAFP. I am not looking forward to that. All the vehicles are stick shift and I have only done that in the states and only once or twice to practice! 
We have been taking Creole lessons. Pray for me (Denise), on this one! Randy seems to be picking this up quicker than I and is not afraid to use it. I am becoming a little bit more at ease every day. It really is stretching us both. This is such a key component to our time here, for both us and the Haitian kids and staff. Can’t imagine not ever being able to communicate with them.
God continues to show us His plan for us here in Haiti. Every day we learn a little bit more about our jobs. There are some things that we will more than likely “fall” into as a role for each of us.
Although Randy has taken on the lead so to speak, in the electricity department, I am learning as well. It is so important to have that running on our campus for the sake of the Aquaponics program. We headed outside at 4:00am this morning because the national electricity went out and we had to get the generator going. Right now we are running everything from solar power!!! Go figure!
Denise has been learning a lot about the kids, their caregivers and the hosting of the teams that come into Haiti. So many things we will learn as we go. Randy is working feverishly to get the computer lab and other systems up and running.
We both try to get to know the kids, their names and a little bit about them. It’s a lot with over 70 of them running around!
We went into Jacmel and opened a checking account. This was quite interesting. We thank Eliezer for going with us to translate. This is one of the steps to get our residence permit so we can stay here longer than 3 months. We have had to have a lot of documents notarized as well. Next week we will go into Port Au Prince to see a doctor for a brief physical, have more papers signed and then take everything to the proper authorities to get the permit.
The young man in the picture with me is Joel. If you saw the video clip from our presentation, this is the “kid” whose story was told. It was a pleasure to meet him. He is a great success story at The Hands and Feet Project. Very pleasant to talk to. We look forward to getting to know him.