Sucesses and sickness

Last week, Laurens and I finally felt what it is like to have a wonderful Haitian bacterial infection. At first we thought it was malaria. It had all the signs and all of our colleagues both on our mission and at other missions (who had had malaria before) said that is what it sounded like. Thankfully, we have a lab on site and it turned out to be a bad bacterial infection. We slowly climbed back into the land of the living and after about a week, we were back to normal. Thankfully, the kids did not get it :)

Where did we get it? Not sure if it was the rare burger that we got to eat at a restaurant in the main city, or if it was from the 2 kids that we held at an orphanage that were burning with fever (see photos). None the less; we will be stronger for it!

Laurens has been working on many projects this month including finishing

2 village houses for our new orphanage. We told many of you about this project before we came here and it is great to see the first 2 row houses come to fruition! We will be moving kids in very soon. This project will allow us to expand from 57 kids to 240 kids when it is finished.

In addition to this Laurens has been back in the mountains installing rain monitors; part of an early warning system for flooding. This system will allow communication from the mountain villages to the towns down below that too much rain fall has occurred. 

Town folk can then prepare to move to higher ground before the flooding occurs. After last years hurricanes and flooding, this will be a welcomed system when it is completed.

I have been busy with medical teams, mobile clinics and organization of our health care system here.

Grayden had his second debut as a drummer in church last Sunday and Bridgely has his debut as the bongo drummer. They had the boys on drums, one of our orphanage kids on guitar and another one singing. 

It was fantastic to see and it took a lot of guts for them to 

get up in front of about 700 people!

The kids are getting excited to come back and share all their experiences with everyone this summer and are starting the countdown for the last day of school. We thank God for the great Christian education they got this year in Haiti. They have really fit in well with their new culture and we are so thankful for that. I had an interesting moment today when I was building towers with Bridgely. I said, "What are you building?". He said, "Well, over here is the guard stand (like at our mission), and here is the house, and over here is the kitchen". His kitchen was a stand alone little structure apart but attached to the house (just like a true Haitian house). It was really interesting to see him meld the two cultures in his play like that and to notice that in his eyes, it was completely normal....Interesting.

We continue to feel that this is where God wants us right now and thank Him for it.