Today, team one made the hour-long trek to the village of Preskul. We have been raising money to build a water cistern for this small fishing village that we fell in love with, and today the construction started. Our team moved approximatley three tons of rocks to assist in the building of the cistern. Our workers were phenomenal. They worked so hard all day, without taking a break. While in the village we also blessed them by handing out creativity kits with notebooks and crayons. Once handed out, we started to see the spirit move as Brad talked about creation and Gods love for the people. Sixteen people raised their hands to say that they had accepted Christ, obviously we dont know the true state of all of those peoples’ hearts, but we can always hope for the best and trust God was moving. As the day came to a close we simply enjoyed being with the people and played a fun game of duck duck goose with them! As we had some free time, we prayed for the rest of our team, and that God was doing great things with their time. Everyone had a wonderful time with the people of Preskul and we cant go to way back on Wednesday!! (Oh and by the way, Cody Clawson wishes Sarah Hardin loved him)
-Ryan Crisman
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This was the first day of our sewing classes. Yesterday afternoon we had set up our classroom, modified our plans due to some unexpected issues, and were looking forward to teaching up to 20 ladies how to do embroidery. So this morning when 18 ladies had gathered in the classroom, we were excited. And then more ladies came. And more. We ended up modifying our plans once again and taught two separate classes! Randi presented an excellent devotional about God, our healer. Then we taught stitches and several ladies got to start their bookmark. Mostly we got to sit among the ladies, visiting in multiple languages, and watching their excitement and joy to get to be doing something creative. They enjoyed it so much! It’s an experience I will never forget.
Ruby Dunn
The last few days of of the leadership training has been an amazing experience as well as surprising. Our schedule and approach to the training and teaching has not quite worked out in terms of our schedule as we had planned. I’m sure God is laughing at us for not realizing we are on Haitian time. Regardless, God has been working and has blessed us with pulling back the veil to give us a glimpse into what he is doing within the community. This country is hard. When we first arrived a few of the men discussed how dark the country is. It, at times, was overwhelming. But then we saw that the Light is indeed making the darkness retreat within Northern Haiti. One of the special moments for me was during our leadership training. In an effort to demonstrate the support and love that takes place within a community group I asked one of the pastors to come up infront of the group. I then asked those that knew him to stand up and explained I wanted to lift Pastor Caesar up because of the challenges he is facing daily. I asked each one of them to look at him and tell him something they appreciate, love, or notice of Caesar. As approximately 10 people took turns making statements about this man that would fill your tank for many, many days. But it was at the end when God granted us yet another glimpse into his work. One of the women from his congregation said that she loved Pastor Caesar and that their entire city has changed because of him. Tears filled Caesar’s eyes and when I asked him how it made him feel to hear all of the things that were said he said that it felt very good but then humbly said that he gives all the glory to God. He and other pastors are probably teaching us as much or more as we teach them. There is great news that some of the pastors are much further in their understanding of theology than what we had originally thought. Our prayers are that we can help them establish a system to expand their leadership and to help them establish a community group support structure to help the pastors with seemingly overwhelming responsibilities.
