Preparing to leave for 2 months

Things are always a little more crazy amongst our house when it is time to prepare to leave for 2 months.  We will be flying to Detroit on Thursday and everyone is looking forward to a vacation and seeing friends ad family.

Knowing that we won't be here for 2 months there are many things that we need to do.  This past week Kyrk traveled to Atrel once again to speak with the owner of the property that we are wanting to purchase for our house.  We are praying that the paperwork can be started and hopefully completed by the time we return at the end of February, so that Kyrk can start construction in February. 

Patti, Kyrk, Trey and Joubert standing on the property in Atrel that the training center will be on.

Kyrk explaining to Joubert what the next steps will be for the wall around the property.  These are the pillars that we recently built around the property.

There are so many things that Kyrk and I do here that have to be explained to others so that they can continue to happen.  Pray that we are able to get all the details looked after before we leave.
Your prayers for our journey on Thursday are also greatly appreciated.  Traveling with 5 children is always an adventure, so we pray that everything goes well.  It will be midnight when we land in Detroit, so it is going to be a late night.  We are hoping to arrive at my parents between 2 and 3 am.  That is a long day for the kids when we start from home at 8 am.

As a little other side note, we still have at least one little mouse living in your house.  We are really hoping that we catch him before we leave.  We don't need a mouse running free in our home for 2 months :)

Flu and Rats

Fight with the Flu:
This past week our family has been fighting the flu bug.  Robert, Jonathan and Anna had it fairly bad and it lasted for at least 3 days for each of them.  Kyrk and I had less then 24 hours of feeling yucky, but thankfully didn't get it as bad as the kids.  We are so thankful that we are all doing well now and it seems that the bug has stopped spreading to the other staff. 

Rats:
On Saturday morning I did my typical morning routine of checking the rat trap in the back room.  I noticed that it had moved, so Kyrk went to check it out.  Yes we had indeed caught a rat and that rat had made a large mess in the back room knocking over the bucket of food for the pig.  I wasn't too excited about having to scrub the back room, but it was good motivation to clean it really well.  We moved the freezer to clean behind it and discovered a drain pipe that wasn't blocked.  After checking outside, we discovered that for the past 10 years we have had a nice open passage way for the rats to enter our house :(  Wow am I so thankful that the rat made a huge mess and we were forced to move the freezer.  Hopefully once we catch all the rats in the house, we will be rat free!!  Thank you God for a big rat mess.

Getting ready to leave for 2 months:
The next couple of weeks are going to be filled with preparations for leaving for 2 months on December 1.  It is always a lot of work to get things ready to leave, but it is so wonderful to be able to rest and relax once we are away.  We are really looking forward to seeing family and friends and to share in several churches.

Our week

I'm so thankful that this past week has been a much more relaxed week compared to last week. 

This past week Kyrk has traveled to visit a few newly constructed homes and also went to the village of Grande Source to check on the progress of the community to carry the sand to the building site of their new church (about a 1 hour walk).  It is encouraging to us that we are able to continue rebuilding homes, churches and schools.  We will keep rebuilding until the rebuilding money is used.

We were also blessed this week by having a group from Fellowship Bible Church in New Jersey come and help build a home.  They arrived on Thursday and will be here for a week. 

 Kyrk's parents also returned this week, which is always a wonderful thing.  It was nice for them to be able to be out for a few weeks, but it is always wonderful to have then come back.  Thankfully my work load is much lighter now that Patti is back, so I'm super thankful that she is back.

On Thursday Chelsea and I were able to have a fun ladies morning out.  It was a real treat to visit a jewelery making project and also spend some time with a friend from MAF.

Next week we are having a conference for about 75 preachers.  I'm really praying that everything goes well with the ladies in the kitchen again.  Join us in praying that the men who come to the conference will be open to hear what God wants to teach them and eagerly take what they learn and apply it and share it with others.

Fun in the Kitchen

This past week I have had the privilege of working with several cooks in our conference center kitchen.  There were about 200 teachers, school directors and administrators who came for a training conference and the 5 people in the kitchen were responsible for preparing 3 meals a day for them.  On Monday when I went to see how things were going in the kitchen, the head cook asked if I would be willing to help serve the food during lunch.  I willingly agreed knowing it would be a great opportunity to get to know the ladies and work alongside of them.
Brianne, my niece, along with Chelsea, a new missionary here, also helped out and we had a lot of fun together.
Even though it has been a long tiring week, it has been a blessing to spend time with the cooks and continue to build a relationship with them.

Chelsea helping to cut up potatoes for the salad.

Rebekah came along today to watch

My first job today was to help squish the plantain to make "banan pese"

The head cook, Madame Dodo, talking with 2 men who helped to serve the food.

Ladies doing the final preparations for the salad and sauce.

The people patiently waiting for their food.

Plating the fried chicken.  My hands were super greasy when I was done this job.

Everyday this was our job.  Using a large plate we scooped the rice and beans into the containers for each table.

Chelsea and Bri having fun washing the dishes

Fun with a Generator

Load the generator onto a large truck, sounds like a simple task right??  Well in Haiti it easily becomes an all morning project.


It was decided that the best place to park the truck was in the playground against the steps leading from the road.  After carefully positioning the truck they had to build a large ramp.  This required several pieces of plywood and carefully placed concrete blocks to support the ramp.  Then they had the fun task of cautiously moving the generator down the road without it going down the road by itself :)

Thankfully when there is a difficult task to do, everyone is willing to join in and help.

Mission accomplished! 
The following morning the truck took the generator out to the camp where it was installed and is providing much needed electricity for the camp.
 
Another praise!  Some of you may recall that following the earthquake I wrote a blog about our trucks and how they were old and we were praying that God would keep them running to keep distributing supplies to people.  Click here if you want to read it.   Jan 2010 truck blog

A couple of months ago God blessed us with a new large truck.  (The truck pictured in this picture)  We are so thankful to have a new very reliable truck.  God is so good!