We hope and pray that you had an awesome Christmas and New Year’s with family and friends.
Every time we write an update about our adventures here in Haiti, we wonder where the time went since our last update. It’s hard to believe that the Christmas and New Year holidays have passed by — we never really had the opportunity to reflect and celebrate! As mentioned in an earlier blog, we said our Christmas was going to be different this year. Well, we have never been more right! When the time comes for a holiday in Haiti, most of our staff are off, but our kids are still here on campus. That means we work extra hard on holidays! Weekends are very similar as well, but not to the same degree.
Thankfully, we had Thanksgiving off. You may know we went to the states in November and we were able to visit with family and friends during our hectic travel schedule. We were with Denise’s family in Shreveport, LA for Thanksgiving. We returned to Haiti in late November with a focus on Christmas. The team that came to help with Christmas prep was amazing – they plowed through all projects we had lined up for them and more. We are so thankful for all the work they did. It’s been really nice meeting new faces from all over the states. This particular team was made up of individuals and families that are sponsors of some of our kids. Great gift to the kids as well as us!
The Christmas Eve tradition in Haiti of having a big party was well attended. We had 130 people for dinner that night! The older girls took a leadership role and planned the decorating, program of games and dances and clean up. Everyone brought a dish to pass of the typical Haitian foods.
Goat and chicken were the main meat dishes. A week later we had an ice cream party/thank you for them and talked about what worked as well as what we can do different next year. Always an opportunity to teach and learn, for both of us. They did a great job.
After cleaning up from the party, we waited for the kids to settle in and then delivered Christmas presents to each of the kid’s houses. With the help of one of our security guards, we were delivering presents until 3am! The skies were clear, the stars were bright, and the temperature was a balmy 80 degrees – not what we typically imagine for Christmas Eve! To top off the holiday weekend, our inverter wouldn’t work, so we had no solar or battery power the entire weekend. We got that back up and running after 2.5 hours on the phone with technical support in Seattle.
The kids were all off from school for 3 weeks around the holidays. Towards the end of that was the weekend of the New Year. Not only do Haitians have New Year’s Day as a holiday, but they also celebrate their independence from France on January 2. That means we had 4 days straight with very limited staff and all the kids here! We, as well as they, were ready for school to start again.
Two days after that we welcomed our pastor and his wife here for a visit and then two interns that will be here until April! And we are off and running! Happy New Year!