The Dominican Republic for my 50th

Some of my friends have gone to Hawaii or the South Pacific for a landmark birthday. Some have gone to the Holy Land. My big landmark birthday will be Monday. While it is a school holiday here (the Day of the Dead!), I have no big plans to commemorate the day, just plans to teach our Godly Woman coordinator to use an electric sewing machine and to meet with the management team to plan strategies to deal with the recent major increase in the Haitian minimum wage. HAFF staff members enjoy observing each others' birthdays with a little evening party, so, I presume that will happen. My exotic birthday trip was last weekend, a little closer to home.

It has been a busy 8 weeks since Greg and Barb and Heidi and Jeff and I arrived in Haiti. School is well under way as are the Godly Woman and Young Leader's for God classes. Jeff and Heidi are settled into their routines and Greg and Barb and I have settled back into our normal busyness of meetings and teaching and maintaining the property and taking people to the hospital and fitting people for glasses and working in the office and all the other many things we do at HAFF each day and each week.

Two weeks ago Dr Jerry returned and he now has his dental clinic up and running. Yesterday a new family, Jonathan and Kathy arrived with their baby, Jackson. They will be staying at HAFF for 6 weeks to help out and investigate future possibilities. And today, Carla and Colin and Becky and Rachel return to Haiti. We are also hoping that Barb and Greg's daughter Gabi will be able to join us in a few weeks time.

It will be a busy 7 weeks until I go back to the US for Christmas. In this time we will be continuing our normal activities as well as orienting and helping Jonathan and Kathy, we will be preparing and submitting the major financial report for the Haitian Ministry of Finance and we will be hosting some groups of visitors.

In between these two blocks of busyness, Greg and Barb and Heidi and Jeff and I decided that it was the perfect time to take a break. So, last weekend, October 23 - 25, we went to the beach in the Dominican Republic. We all agree, if we go back, we want to go for longer. We were able to drive HAFF's Land Cruiser all the way to Cabarete, a major destination for Kite Surfing on the north coast.


Kite Surfing at the beach at Cabarete, Dominican Republic





Thankfully, the road conditions on the Haitian side have improved, so the trip only took about 7 ½ hours of driving time. At one point, that would have been the time needed just to get to the Haitian-Dominican border!

Our 2 nights and one full day at the Hotel Kaoba in central Cabarete, just minutes walk from the beach, was very pleasant. We didn't do much. We had several nice meals together,



Barb, Jeff, Heidi, Connie and Greg at breakfast Saturday in Cabarete.




we sat, walked, swam, flew kites on the beach and read and relaxed and enjoyed unstructured time. It was just what we needed.

Sadly, Barb and Jeff were not feeling well part of the time there and are recovering now we are all back home. And Heidi succumbed to what Jeff had once we got back.

We are looking forward to having all the staff houses full for a while and to having many hands to make the work light. Please pray for us for our health and ministry. Pray that the Lord would keep us well and would use us in all that we do to make His name known and to show forth His grace and mercy and love.