Rain, Drums and Fees

Well, our mission work has been progressing very well. We have a communication e-mail that we send out 1x/month (ish). If you want to be updated on our projects, just send us an e-mail (on the right hand side of the screen) and we will send you the updates.

Let’s see, where to start....

Well after we had the funeral and found out that Pastor Andre is better and back home (thank you for your prayers), life went on....Let me tell you a few stories:

The rains have started in Haiti. Most of the time it rains at night but the other day, it started in the early afternoon and it POURED!! Tropical rains are very different than rains at home. They come down HARD. Here is a picture of the rain outside Laurens' office. If this is normal rain, it will be interesting to see what a hard rain is. This rain brought with it a little work for Laurens as the main office roof decided it did not want to do it's job and let the rain come right on in on top of the director's desk!! In addition to that, our hospital clinic (which has an open roof in the center) had so much rain in the hallway, that our cleaning lady was sweeping out the water with a huge broom.

We have a new water cistern system that the January Canadian Team started to build and due to the recent rains, we were able to see that the cistern started to collect the rain water off of one of the mission's roofs. This is and exciting first step towards helping the mission save money so that we can free up funds for other projects to help the Haitian people!

This month our boys started drum lessons with one of our Haitian worship leaders in the church. This has been a blessing as Grayden has wanted to learn drums for a while now and Bridgely wants do do whatever his big brother does. Grayden has been progressing well and in just 3 weeks of practice, he had his debut at church in front of 700 people! He played drums along with the worship band while one of our Hope House orphanage kids sang "Amazing Love". He did fantastic!!! Then last Sunday we had senate elections in Haiti and on Sunday you were not allowed to drive. Since our church bus could not go pick up people, we had low attendance and not much of a worship band. So...Grayden got pulled in to drum for all 6 songs for the small congregation. He was trying to act cool when he got home, but he could not hide how proud of himself he was. :)

This month brought us to our first 1 week vacation this year! For Easter we drove to the Dominican Republic for a week vacation in the sun. Now you might say,"but you live in the sun", well yes we do, but contrary to what you may believe.....we do NOT lie in the sun all day! But in Dominican did we lie in the sun? OH YES WE DID! 

We had a great time with our family relaxing in Santo Domingo area and yes, with HOT showers and all the food we could eat. It truly was a break. Thank you both mom's and dad's for the Christmas gift of money and thanks to Velvet our friend at home who was able to connect us to Colleen who got us a fantastic deal we could afford.

Let us tell you about the 6 1/2 drive there (that took 8 hours). First of all, true to Haitian red tape style, we needed to get a paper in order to drive across the border to show that the vehicle was not stolen. (8 missionaries in a stolen vehicle....sure) Fine, we got the paper for the vehicle we were taking and on the day before the trip, went to the office to get the next paper we needed for the vehicle to cross the border. When we got to the office they said,"oh no, we just changed the rule now you need another paper showing you paid import tax on that vehicle, in order to give you the non stolen paper" Like that makes sense. Ok, this might be a simple thing, except that the vehicle is 9 years old and was imported back in 2000! Our only option was to take the bus (an 8 hour trip and $250 more!). We fretted all night regarding the stupidity of the situation when at 6am the next morning our Haitian director called us and in an excited voice said."I found the paper!!" Apparently he was up all night searching through 9 years of files until he found the paper!

So off we finally went (after getting our non stolen paper) to the border. Now you would think that a border would be a place where you show your passport, maybe pay a fee and they let you through. Not this border! We could get through fine being Canadian but it was the hoops we had to jump through. First of all on the Haitian side, there are no marked buildings. Once you find the right building after fending off all the people that want to "help" you, you pay a fee, then you go to another window and then, you pay a fee, then you go to the police station and they let you off with no fee (surprising). And after paying the little street boy for "watching your car" you go to a gate. They check all your papers and then let you through. At least this is all done of course in Creole which you understand. Then you drive for a bit and get to the Dominican side where of course you do speak the language......then you go into another unmarked building and guess what? You got it, you pay a fee, this gets them a little glance at your passport. After that, you go to another window where they stamp you passport and ...you pay a fee. Then you show them your non-stolen paper and no surprise you pay a fee (you know because they had to look at it). Then you go outside, follow some guy to a little building and get insurance for your vehicle....for a fee only to come back to customs agents who want to check through your bags very very slowly until you pay them a "fee".

Finally we were on our way. We had to pass many police checks, some that wanted a "fee" and others that just wanted to look at the "bonita" girls in the back seat of the car (Rachel, Amy and Diana) fellow missionaries. Luckily fees in 3rd world are not expensive!! We are still not sure how many of those "fees" were due to our nationality and the knowledge on their part that we would be able to pay.....?!

Anyway, we have been back now for a couple weeks, we are now experts in crossing the Dominican/Haitian border and we saw wonderful scenery on the way. We realized what a blessing God gave us to be able to relax with the kids before hunkering down to more great work at Mission of Hope.