MTinHaiti

I know I do not blog every day….so finally…. here is a little bit about —-

The first 6 months of 2010 may go down as the busiest of our lives.  January 4 found us on a plane back to Haiti after spending the holidays with our family. By January 6 we were hosting groups from Ohio and Indiana who were tirelessly trying to finish up the sewing room. The dust had hardly settled from them leaving when the earthquake hit on January 12. The next two weeks will never be forgotten as we tried to put together plans to help  the people of Port-au-Prince as well as our own Haitian family members who had lost love ones and friends. — Putting together a plan in the U.S. is tough to say the least so trying to formulate a plan in Haiti is compounded 100 times over.

By the end of February air travel was restored and groups begin to pour into the mission again which brought lots of helping hands and big hearts as well as lots of work and supervision.  Over the next 5 months we would have around 500 people pass through our home and kitchen, some coming for the first time, many returning as seasoned veterans — all coming with a desire to help the Haitian people and help they did. We had preachers, teachers, doctors, nurses, construction workers, artist and painters, students — people from  all walks of life — Grandpas, grandmas and children who came to Beauchamp to serve. Haitian children and adults were taught the Word of God, medical needs were attended to, food was distributed to hungry bodies, and children were loved on and played with.  Shudders, shelves, tables, doors and even a pulpit were built from scratch. ATV’s were fixed, pumps were made to pump again, electrical work completed, generators repaired, and the Dodgenator was given a whole new look.  Sewing machines were made operational. Gutters and water tanks were installed to catch the precious rain drops when they fall in Beauchamp. A Jr. Church and sewing room were completed. A small house is 95% finished. A parsonage has been started as well as a cement cistern. We have helped build Haitian homes and toilets to help people in the community. One Hundred and fifty goats were given out at Beauchamp and forty donkeys. The Shrimp boat from Port Canaveral brought many supplies with its three trips to Haiti, with some of those supplies making their way to Beauchamp. These supplies consisted of food which has helped to feed many hungry people as well as bring in many school supplies for the community school, along with medical supplies and many personal items that Teresa and I have needed.

During all of this Teresa was still seeing her patients and teaching her women in the sewing class which has grown from 5 to 21, along with helping me in my daily tasks. I continued to teach my leadership training classes which now consist of 35 men, having grown from the 5 men three years ago. February through June found me traveling to preach in our revivals (12 so far in 2010) as well as traveling to our different churches to preach on Sundays. In May we traveled to Mare Rouge to plant a new church and are glad to report that at the end of the crusade they had 45 baptisms.

So in a matter of a few minutes you have read a capsule summary of what took hours, days, weeks, and months to carry out not counting the sweat and tears, joys and heartaches that accompanied all of these activities and projects. We would like to say thank you to all who helped in the work as well as those who have prayed and provided funds to accomplish all this work.