"DON'T PRAY FOR LIGHTER BURDENS BUT STRONGER BACKS"

Top: where the future Bon Repose church will be rebuilt
Bottom: new church benches.

MAKING PROGRESS

It has been a very unusual year even for Haiti which it seems makes world headlines at least one or more times each year. This year Haiti was in the news all year long from the earthquake, slow progress, broken promises , cholera and Hurricane Tomas. There is still 5.5 weeks left something else could happen before 2011 gets here. I thought I knew what I was up against when I took this job but never imagined my first year as director would be this challenging. Yet I feel God has blessed me by giving me this opportunity.

My first 6 months were really consumed by the earthquake and our medical ministry. Since June I have been able to start focusing on the vision I have for preparing PH-H for it's future role here in Haiti. In six more years we will pass the 50 year mark of working here. We started with a vision and implemented a plan that served us well but plans need revised to achieve success.

The excitement for mission work here in Haiti is at an all time high right now and doesn't appear it will slow down any next year. Thank God for that because it will be on the backs of many that we will move forward and accomplish the task God has given us here in Haiti.

These past few weeks we have hosted some amazing teams that have been helping us get prepared for next year but also help us with serving and blessing many in need right now. We have had 2 surgical teams, a German team working with Cholera, and 4 work teams in the last 30 days. We have completed the work on a new church building in the mountains and built church benches for our church that was destroyed in Port au Prince by the earthquake. We have built a 100 lineal feet of cabinets for our mission houses and guesthouse houses, we have painted and cleaned , built a new guesthouse dorm at Pierre Payen, replaced ceilings and are amazed as our Haitian work crews make improvements in some of our structures here at Borel.

I'm excited about what we have been able to do given the circumstances we have been dealing with this year. I'm not one to spend much time in looking back instead it is the plans for today and the days that follow that make me eager to get up and get going each day. God is blessing us with a great opportunity and that is exciting stuff. In God's love. SJM

GOOD DAYS AND COOL NIGHTS

Above : the Targette church


Another week has passed and things are going pretty smoothly by Haiti standards. Last Sat. our team from Indian Head COG departed , they completed the construction of a new 34 x 65 foot church way up in the mountains at a village called Targette. This sister church project was a 3.5 year undertaking from it's conception in 2006. The roof and truss rafters will enable the congregation to hold church services inside the new building the old church will become a school. They have a water project planned up at Targette for 2011 that will bring water from a spring down the the village.

On Monday the 12 member Great Lakes conference team arrived the worked on projects at Borel till Friday afternoon. Such things as putting ceiling in one of the mission houses, renovating the outside of a rundown house to serve as a Missionary & English language school, electrical and some painting. On Friday afternoon they went down to our other guesthouse to work on a missionary house there that needs another room to sleep extra guests in My wife and I also need a place to stay when we overnight there. Today they plan on relaxing at a beach and maybe going out to eat this evening, tomorrow they fly back to the states.

My wife , Shirley left on Wednesday with a 3 day layover in Kansas City to visit our daughter and grandchildren. She will arrive back in Fort Wayne this afternoon and start preparing for the holidays. I will be in Haiti till Dec. 10th then I fly home for 3 weeks to spend time with my family. Shirley and I will return to Haiti on Jan. 3rd.A

On Thursday a small team from Chicago and Indiana arrived , they stayed at Pierre Payen that evening because the time change in the states put teams arriving on the last flight at 4:15 way too late to get to Borel. Three of them will be building cabinets for various locations here at Borel.
The other who is a mechanic is working on a Jeep we are trying to repair, they will leave on the 18th.

On Monday when the Great Lakes team leaves another COG team arrives from German Town , Md. they will be building church benches for the Bon Repose church in Port au Prince. They are led by their pastor and former Haiti missionary Mark Hosler. On Tuesday new missionaries Ken and Betty McIntyre will arrive to help out for a couple of weeks. After their teaching contracts are up next year they will be spending about 6 months each year helping out at PH-H through out the year.

The weather has been really exceptional except for a few days before and after hurricane Tomas when we received some rains. The evenings have been cool with early morning temperatures at 70 degrees. The daytime temps are mid 80's with lots of sunshine.

My goal this trip is to get ready for the arrival of our new missionaries in Jan., and the many visiting short term missions teams. We have every week filled with teams through March and are working on filling up April , May and June as well. Those months are starting to fill up with 3 teams booked for April, and one each in May and June, no doubt we have have them filled by the first of the year. The COG Haiti conference will meet here at Borel the first week of Jan. so I'm also concentrating on having the place really looking nicer and more orderly than it has for several years now. If you haven't already check out our Project Help - Haiti site on Facebook where a post pictures and happenings each day. If you want even more about Haiti check out the GAP-Haiti blog site and website for what will be happening with that organization in 2011. In God's love, SJM

NOW A HURRICANE, FLOODING & MORE CHOLERA

top to bottom: Artibonite valley, shower time, Targette Church, setting rafters

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN NEXT?

Wow what a week!! In spite of Hurricane Tomas it has been a good week here at Project Help- Haiti. The good news for us is that our work team from Indian Head COG in Pa. can say "job accomplished". A project 4 years in the making got completed on Wed. evening. I received the call from the team at about 8:00 pm that evening informing me they had put the roof, rafter and doors on the new church in the village of Targette high up in the mountains above the Artibonite Valley. They would be hiking the 2.5 hours down from the village to another mountain village called Gilbert the next day. This village has an accessible mountain road where we could send a truck to pick them and the equipment up at around 10:30 am.

If you have never worked in remote areas where no roads exist maybe you have never thought how do they get materials and equipment up there short of a helicopter. Well everything goes on the backs of pack animals or is carried on the backs, heads and in the hands of people. Take for instance the gas powered 12 HP. Honda welder/generator. It was transported in a manner of the Ark of the Covenant , two 12 foot 2x4's were slid under the top frame and transported on the shoulders of 8 men , 2 on each corner. The trail is no flat land hike, in fact at one point it goes down into a mini Grand Canyon where you cross a mountain stream. You eventually come to a waterfalls where you take a very steep trail up to the village.

Getting done a day early was a great blessing because on Friday the day we had estimated they would finish, Hurricane Tomas hit Haiti. In our area of Haiti this meant high winds and lots of rain. Such conditions mean very hazardous travel in the mountains. In fact most all travel including buses , tap taps and air carriers were suspended. Also most filling stations, banks, schools and govt. offices. Our team members were able to leave on Sat. their scheduled date but all flights were postponed 3.5 hours still allowing them to leave by 12:30.

The areas where we live and work didn't receive direct hurricane damage but many rivers had minor flooding. The biggest threat was the near torrential downpour Friday night as most Haitian housing is in very precarious condition.

The Hurricane of course may worsen the cholera epidemic especially in the refugee camps and cities with cramped housing conditions. Three of our employees or friends have informed me of deaths in their families this week. I know for sure one was from cholera and probably all were. Haiti is certainly not a place to live or work in if you can't deal with a "what could possibly happen next" mentality . It can wear you down fast if you can't adapt quickly to the fact that things can and often do get worse when you live in a poor country like Haiti. Thank goodness God is our employer and leader. In God's love , steve

CHOLERA UPDATE

12 year old who died from blood clot
15 day old preemie weighs one kilo

WHAT'S NEXT ?




Shirley and I arrived back in Haiti on Sat. 10/23 I had been expecting this trip might be different and we could start establishing a mission routine not so filled with drama. That was not to be as I received an e-mail on 10/20 informing me of the cholera outbreak in the Artibonite valley where we live. As more and more cases were showing up at the hospital in St. Marc the largest city in our area we made plans to set up a cholera ward in our PH-H clinic in Pierre Payen. On Friday the day before we arrived they treated 20 patients by noon on Tuesday the number was up to 112. Fortunately we had already scheduled a medical team from Pennsylvania to arrive on Oct. 23 rd so we quickly asked them to resupply with IV fluids and antibiotic. Some reports are showing the epidemic is slowing down and from what I have seen from my travels this may be true.

Our medical team had been scheduled to do surgeries ( general & Ortho) , we also had two ultrasound techs come to train and do exams and a gynecologist. They have kept busy not only doing those things but with several emergency patients including car accidents, examining babies such as the little 15 day old who was born in the 7th month of pregnancy. The mother has been very sick so she was unable to breast feed but the baby has hung on by getting a little bit of formula down.

Perhaps the most disturbing was the 12 year old girl referred to us from the Mission of Hope at Titayian. She had fallen off a donkey 2 weeks ago and was not getting any better so they brought her to us for a possible surgery. Our lead surgeon examined her and felt she had a broken or fractured femur and possibly a lacerated liver. He scheduled her for an ultrasound and Xray. I told the ambulance driver and nurses who brought her to go on back to MOH and we would contact them later with the results. I had just finished eating lunch and someone came to tell me she was dead I at first couldn't believe it so went over to see for myself . I was shocked to see that someone who 15 minutes earlier had been sitting in a wheel chair eating a cracker had died. Our doctors felt terrible about this but suspect a blood clot broke loose during her 45 minute ambulance ride up to Pierre Payen. Even though we are able to do a lot of things to bring better health care to Haiti it is still disturbing for me each time someone comes to our facility with hope that we can help them and they die at our hospital.

LEARNING FROM THE OTTERS

Top to bottom: Crystal River the Homestead, drying off in the sand after a swim, a few minutes of fun and relaxations on a catamaran.


This past week Shirley and I took our annual Fall trip with my mom , my sisters and brother in-laws . We have been doing this since 1999 and all but one year have gone to Michigan, where we usually rent a condo on Lake Michigan at the Homestead in Glen Arbor. This year we especially enjoyed a family or a group of six otters that were in the Crystal River near the outlet to Lake Mich. Part of the reason the otter were there were the large quantity of salmon coming in to spawn. This was my first opportunity to observe otter in the wild and during 4 days of seeing and filming them I learned a few admirable characteristics they display .

** FELLOWSHIP: High level of social interaction they thrive on the need to be together and stay together. When separated they could often be heard calling the members of the group with a whistle like noise.
** TEAMWORK: They worked together in rounding up fish in the water and in grooming themselves.
** SHARING : They shared with the others in the group the food they caught from oldest to youngest (biggest to smallest).
** POSITIVE ATTITUDE: They seem to never have an attitude of we can't accomplish this task. Even when the fishermen chased them off they would regroup and do something else for awhile then resume with the task.
** JOY: They display a real zest to enjoying life every minute of each day. Everything I observed them do they seemed to go about with a sense of enjoyment, this is definitely tied to having a positive attitude.
** EFFICIENCY: They seem to make wise use of time and whether on foot or in the water they move very quickly. I'm sure they take time for rest but they were always in motion of doing something.

I have heard some of my friends talk about a profile test where your leadership characteristics are given the designation of 4 different animals and if I remember the otter is one of them. I'm not personally familiar with that profile test but from what I observed we could all take some pointers on how to live life from the otter.
In God's love , steve

GOD WHERE ARE YOU ? ( part 2 )

SALT AND LIGHT !!

The following thoughts in today's blog have only come to me recently. Several factors have played an interest in shaping my thinking in the months since the Earthquake, here are my thoughts.

First I ran across this short little paragraph in a book I'm reading, it is a quote from the Los Angeles Times by writer/columnist Joel Stein: " Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring, Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can't wait to go , like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but Heaven has to step it up a bit. They're basically getting by because they only have to be better than hell."

I don't know what your thoughts are after reading that but possibly somewhere between angry and offended to slightly amused, after all it is what I first thought as a 5-6 year old starting to learn about Heaven. Of course as an adult I know there is no Biblical support for Mr. Stein's view. I don't even know if he researched his facts, if he is a Christian, Jewish, Muslim or even a believer at all. The problem I have and Mr. Stein isn't alone in this, is that we the people of the church are letting others tell our story. The news media right or wrong , conservative or liberal , even those supposedly who portray themselves in the middle have hijacked our message the greatest story ever written and twist it to gain reader / viewership, political support or whatever the latest attention grabbing need is at the time.

Secondly June 12th marked 6 months since the disaster and Haiti was revisited by the national news media. One of the things they tried to imprint upon their viewership was the lack of planning, cooperation and progress made since the Jan. 12th disaster. Once again we are letting those with an agenda that is usually tied to gaining the most media attention paint a broad picture of ineptness, corruption and self centered actions of a few indict the vast majority who have accomplished a great story that doesn't get told. Many of my best friends and even strangers who know I work for a large organization in Haiti ask me what is happening there. They want to know if progress is being made. What have we been doing , what are our future plans and often how can they be a part of it? Usually they have heard , read or seen the media present the Haitian government as inept, unprepared, lacking a plan of action and a history of corruption. My response is I can't defend or denounce the Haitian government as I'm not involved in their decisions. I'm too busy to be concerned about what they are doing or not doing other than how it pertains to the plans of our organization. What I can tell is the success stories of Project Help-Haiti and so many other organizations who mobilized so quickly to make a difference in the days and weeks after. Now our organization and others are moving into new ministry areas for the next phase of recovery and that story isn't getting told near enough .

The third thing that has impacted my view is that my home church in the states has just embarked on a new ministry series for this Fall entitled "be one make one" based on the Beatitudes in Matthew . In particular for this blog post Matthew 5:13-16 more commonly know as the salt and light verses are on my mind. They start by reminding us that we are the salt of the Earth and if we lose our salty taste we are worthless in fact it says " we are worth nothing and must be thrown out for people to walk on." It goes on to say we are "the light that gives light to the world." Further more a light shouldn't be hidden it should "shine for all people in the house that they may see." The best part is we as Christians are called to be "a light for other people," to live so they can see the good things we do. "Live so that they will praise your Father in Heaven", that is a story each and everyone of us should be distributing everyday!! Now that gets me back to where I started "WHERE IS GOD?" Well He should be shining in you and me each and everyday for all to see and praise Him in Heaven. I will be the first to admit it isn't always easy and sure it is tempting to say to ourselves that there is enough other people out there speaking but if we as Christians don't speak up others will take our message and portray it wrongly. When we no longer have a salty taste we run the risk of our message being trampled under foot . When we hide our light we run the risk of it being extinguished and many may be lost in the ensuing darkness. I have memorized a little verse by St. Francis of Assisi as to how easy this process can be " Go and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ everyday and if necessary use words." In God's love, steve

GOD WHERE ARE YOU? (part 1)

HEAVEN and EARTH
The theme of this post actually came to me back on Jan. 10th as I was traveling back to Haiti. It is somewhat ironic that many of the thoughts I'm sharing now came to me just 2 days before the devastating earthquake struck Haiti. I intended to write this blog sometime after I got to Haiti but circumstances intervened and I forgot about it till just recently as I flew home from Texas through some beautiful cloud cover again. Maybe it was intended that I should wait 8 months to give more thought to what I was thinking about that morning in Jan. My thoughts back then about what I wanted to post were probably more light hearted than provocative.


I'm not one who likes to read or do computer work when I fly, so I usually either sleep, get into a conversation if I have a talkative seat mate (sometimes my wife) or often gaze out the window in deep thoughts. That day we were flying 32-35,000 feet over some beautiful clouds high above the Earth. So as we passed through those clouds I got to thinking about visions of Heaven and how as a young boy I would lay on my back out in the yard gazing up at the billowing white clouds high above in the sky .I don't know about your thoughts as a youngster but mine were shaped by visions of winged angels resting on clouds possibly singing and playing harps watching out for us humans far below. Somewhere up there was Heaven filled with friends and relatives residing with God in a city filled with many mansions. Much of this was imparted to me as a young boy at Sunday school and week long summer VBS classes. I'm also sure that some of my thoughts were molded by my grandfather passing away when I was seven years old and the comforting reassurance of my parents and grandmother who stayed with us for awhile after his death.


Those reassurances in my young mind about Heaven were quite welcome as were also those of Santa Claus at the North pole and the Tooth Fairy. Somewhere in those years of course I out grew those childhood images we form in our minds about life and replaced them with mature Christian ones. Now as an adult I have a different perspective, for one thing my job requires flying quite often each year. Those flights often allow me to look at those clouds not as before from down on Earth but high above in the sky. Many many times I have flown over them and through them in state after state and even out across the oceans. I have yet to see one angel nor a glimpse of that great city full of mansions in Heaven I imagined up there as a youngster, ( this is the light hearted part).


Yet just because the image I had of Heaven as a youngster was reassuring then and that I can now visibly see my image was compromised that doesn't at all deter my faith that I will be joining God in Heaven someday wherever it is. The fact is I see God and He is with me all the time. I join him each day and He works through me as He does through so many others at home and around the world. He doesn't distinguish between whether we are doing little acts of kindness and love or doing huge Kingdom building ministries by proclaiming the "good news", by planting the seeds, bringing in the harvest, bearing fruit that lasts, taking care of the lost and hurting peoples. He loves us and He calls us to love others by making an "eternal difference" in their lives. As a youngster I of course put faith in my parents reassurances about all things, they didn't steer me wrong as they explained things in a way a child could understand. As an adult Christian I depend on God to expand all aspects of life,death and eternity as I grow closer to Him through Faith and empowerment of the Holy Spirit as I follow His will. So far what I have written is what I intended to share in my blog 8 months ago. In my next blog I will continue with my thoughts that have been expanded over these months as things have unfolded after the earthquake. In God's love , steve