We had rain on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night. When we left for the Bible school on Saturday, we were amazed at what the rain did to an already bad condition. There had been a flash flood near the entrance of St Marc and beyond. The bridge where we pick up Barb, Al and Bev was showing stress of having had too much water. We drove past the police barricade through lots of mud. There were two trucks that had gotten caught in the flood and they were a mess. Hunks of asphalt was everywhere as the water lifted it up and placed it elsewhere. Young banana plants were on their side and not a few trees were uprooted. We hope we get no more rain of that magnitude.
The new bridge in Montrouis works quite well although, it will stand no big storms and the one that hit St Marc, did not hit there. They'd had rain but not a hard one.
School is going well, I think, or can I think at this point. We keep getting new kids, 46 total to date, several older ones who speak no English and that's impacting schedules and staff. We finally have a class for them to learn English. We had to pull Petit Homme from music to use him there but Praise the Lord, we hired another "maestro" to work with us this year and he seems able to handle the children just fine without Petit Homme.
Gary and I volunteered to drive one of our employees, Pastor Samuel, to the mountain to give out hurricane supplies for which he'd received funding. It was a pleasure to give our time, and fuel to go. We don't often get to other parts of the area and this was a chance to see somewhere we'd never been. Quite a steep ride and then the church was above the road. There were 27 families living in the church because their homes were gone. It was like Christmas for them with food supplies, clothing and the children got New Year's Eve noise makers (and they made noise, believe me!) We walked through the village and saw that the roof was all that was left on many homes. Gary had to back up for quite a ways before we found a spot to turn the truck around. It was interesting that all of Pastor Samuel's people chose to walk that distance rather than get in the back of the truck. I saw an interesting picture and to get it I had to stretch my arms over across Gary. Needless to say, his yell stopped me promptly because I was interfering with his ability to see to back up. Somehow the idea of picture taking moved me to be a bit impulsive. Need I tell you that I didn't get the picture??
Hurricane Relief projects of Touch Ministries: The man from Gonaives with the little boy who has a broken hip has returned to Gonaives with rent money and food. He found his wife so the family is now back together. The family with the tree over their house, now have the tree removed and we are in the process of rebuilding that part of the house. The family that was on the street are in a one room apartment, rent paid for a year, two children are in school and we are putting her into business by buying the things she needs to sell. So, in many ways all three families are better off than they were before the storm. A sad note: the man from Gonaives has AIDS. Because he was sick we had him get a physical and the blood test showed him positive. We are wondering about the mother and the boy. As soon as the boy gets his cast off he will be tested. Haiti reality always sets in right when you least expect it!
I think I have remembered everything. If not, more will come when I start putting the pictures on. Blessings to all! Love you, Carolyn
No comments:
Post a Comment