Guards' Gazebo

HAFF has undertaken yet another construction project! Beginning today, a small gazebo will be rising near the front gate. It will be a place where the guards can sit out of the sun and the rain and still have a good view of the front gate. It will have a palm frond roof so they can still hear during Haiti's torrential rainy season rains!

This morning Greg and Colin met with construction boss Elicien Etienne to discuss the plans.


While they were talking, the "demolition boss" was removing the last stump to clear the land for the foundation.

Michigan Team's Last Full Day at HAFF

The team's last full day started with devotions for the school. The group fell in love with the round "May the Glory of the Lord" (Psalm 104) and sang it in 4 parts for the students. The students loved it too! Then David shared about Samuel anointing David as king of Israel and encouraged the students that in spite of their youth, the Lord wants to use them.

The BTI students took it all in and with a final prayer, they were sent on to their school day.

The team then went to several elementary schools to distribute the chalkboards they had made -- some of the schools were more difficult than others to get to! But the team made friends wherever they went.

In the early afternoon, there was a trip to the Bohoc market (see previous posts) which included crossing the Bohoc river twice!
In the few spare moments during the week, there was time for a game of chess.

The afternoon was full with David teaching the 3rd day of Bible Study for the young men in BTI's upper grades. Smith did the translating once again.

The young men thanked David for his studies, noting that they needed it to grow.
While David was teaching, the rest of the team was on their final day of home visitations. Some of the visits were fun, some were inspirational and some were hard. The Americans brought a blessing to each house with song, Scripture and prayer.

The final event of the evening was the women of the team and Amy Gilbaugh modeling the wedding dresses the team brought to be given to churches for the use of brides who can not afford dresses of their own. A clothing store going out of business donated the brand new, never worn dresses. They will be a blessing to many churches and many brides. These are just about a third of the dresses the team brought.


Tomorrow the team leaves HAFF early to catch the small airplane at the Pignon airport to take them to Port-au-Prince to get the airliner to the United States. They will be travelling most of the day. Please pray for their safe passage.

Sunday with the Michigan Team

Today, Sunday the team split into 2 groups.
Most of them went with Greg and Barb and Amy to the Missionary Church Association campus in LaJeune (about a 20 minute or so walk north on the main road).

There Eric preached -- in English and Creole! And the team really enjoyed the singing.

Dave and Beth Nicol went with me and Derold Mompremier to Monac about 30 minutes drive out onto the savannah west of HAFF. There Dave preached and Derold translated.

The church was having their harvest festival. The festival is a big event starting on a Sunday evening with a week of revival meetings. It culminates on the following Sunday with a Harvest Service -- a time when they baptise new believers and youth and bring in their tithes for the year.

Other churches are invited to send singing groups so there is LOTS of special music. There were at least 14 separate groups that sang at this fete! Afterward, there is a meal. Dave and Beth and Derold and I were invited into the church leader's home to have our meal. The food was delicious, but with so many people needing to eat, it was hard to take much.

We got back to the HAFF campus in time to join the rest of the team for lunch

Then it was time to relax and ride HAFF's 40 year old donkey, Patience. Then it was off to the caves to see the quartz and the bats and maybe the pre-columbian carvings, if they have not been obliterated by graffiti.

Four Church Team (from MI & IA) at HAFF

Tuesday morning a work study team from 3 churches in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area and one church in Iowa, City Iowa arrived at HAFF.

The team brought wonderful camp chairs for the newly expanded dorm porch! These chairs make sitting and visiting on the porch much more comfortable. The straight chairs at the table get hard and old after a few days! Thanks team for the comfy chairs!

This photo has Amy Nicholson, David Nicol and Emily Van Dyke.
Here are Beth Nicol, Brandi Leep and Christine Postma.

Finally, this photo is Eric Hausler, Melanie Dawe, Mike Leep and Daniel Hausler.

Friday morning started with a lecture about Agriculture in Haiti by Ely Mompremier (HAFF Farm Manager sitting at left). Carla Wilson translated for him. The lecture took place in the plant nursery.

Later in the day, Amy, Barb and the young people on the team had a Bible Study with the Young Leaders for God classes.
This morning (Saturday) , while most of the team went to market in Pignon, Eric Hausler taught about 100 pastors and church leaders. In the afternoon, David taught them from the book of Daniel.

The morning started with prayer and beautiful singing of the French hymn "Precious Name of Jesus". The first line of the hymn is "The name of Jesus is so sweet".

The conference attendees are always extremely attentive to Eric, who speaks Creole fluently and brings outlines in Creole. At the end of the day, Greg asked for a show of hands of how many people had walked 30 minutes or more to come to the conference today. Most of the hands went up. Then he asked for every increasing amounts of time. Many had walked 3 or 4 hours. Amazingly, when Greg asked for those who walked 5 hours, there were still about 6 hands in the air! These folks are hungry for the Word of God.

Wednesday the team cut wood to make chalkboard frames. They also painted the celotex that will be attached to the frames to finish the chalkboards.
In the later afternoon, 6 of the team did English conversation with 3 students from the school. The time was supposed to an hour and the groups were supposed to switch periodically. Two hours later, the conversations were still going on and no one had switched!
Thursday the team decorated the room where we held the HAFF Employee Unity Meal. The room was beautiful! Thanks team!
This is the photo Amy Gilbaugh took for us after the employee meal. Amy was on a ladder propped against one of the school buildings! These are all the HAFF staff who attended the meal. There were only 9 missing!!!

Two Young Blessings at HAFF

Amy Gilbaugh came to HAFF for her third trip with her father, sister and brother several weeks ago on the second Iowa team. (Thanks Mark Hausler for the photo!) She is staying on with us as an intern until May first. We were excited when she approached us about doing the internship as she is an extraordinary young woman with an incredible commitment to sharing her faith in Christ with other young people. She has been very popular with the children in the area.

The people at Focus on the Family think she is an extraordinary young woman as well. They chose her as their 2007 Brio Girl (Brio is their magazine for young women 12 to 21 years old)!
While at HAFF, Amy is teaching Bible Studies about purity with the Godly Woman classes and with three young sisters (shown here) from the area. She is also sharing devotions one day a week at BTI and working with the Young Leader's class. And she is helping with computer work and inventories and other tasks around the campus and community.
Here is Amy with the 3 sisters -- Falinnda, Ger-Fasline and Fabnise.
This week we also have Anna Dundas here from Faith Community Church in Castleton Vermont. Faith Community is one of my supporting churches (thanks folks!).
Anna is working with Amy in her studies. The last 2 days they have gone to 2 of Justin's elementary schools to teach some Bible stories. Today was the story of the Tower of Babel. Yesterday was Noah's Arc. This morning Anna also gave devotions at BTI.

Please pray for these young women as they seek to minister to the spiritual needs of the Bohoc area. 

Michigan Team Days 4 through 8

Saturday's program went as planned! Sunday Dave went to church with Dr Jerry to Los Palis east of Hinche. The rest of the team went with me to a small church near the Pignon airport. In the map, Los Palis is about at the left end of the blue line. The Pignon airport is about at the right end of the yellow line. For reference Bohoc (Boroc) is underlined in pink. After church the girls made cookies, anticipating a visit from the Chilean UN soldiers stationed near Pignon. Something must have come up, since the men did not come.