Haiti Update April 25th

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! He is still on the throne.

Haiti is slowly on the way to recovery. Many of the primary and secondary schools have opened. Most of them are meeting under tents or in temporary wooden shelters. Even those which have not sustained any damage are not meeting in their building because parents are unwilling to send their children to a school that has a concrete roof out of fear that another quake will come.

Once again this month we had two groups simultaneously here with us, 9 from New York, and  6 from Mexico. Originally the one from Mexico was going to go out to our country church to begin building, but we were unable to get the materials on location before they arrived. Therefore, we put them together with the other group to work at our New Life church in Port-au-Prince. This is the second team that has put their efforts to this important task. The first team put in the footers (the base for the pillar). The second team which just left Thursday prepared forms for five pillars and poured three. This is very hard work in temperatures of 100 degrees and high humidity.

The Mexican team was God ordained. We had been wondering how we were going to open our school in Demier because the building was destroyed in the earthquake. A few days before the team came; we were given a 40 by 60 ft. tent for the school. We wandered how we would get up to Demier, and who would put it up since we had never done anything like this. When the Mexican team came, we found out that one of them put tents up for a living. Wow! God has everything in control. Therefore, we sent three of them up with the tent to install it. You must realize, this is no easy feat. The tent was large and had to be transported in our new long bed truck. This required three hours on mountain roads, one of these were over very bad roads. When we arrived at the end of the road, we dropped off the tent tarps, and poles which had to be carried in on foot for 3 hours. The church people met the group of three visitors, and hauled the tent in. The tarps were so big and heavy that it was carried by two men who had a pole on each shoulder and the tarp on the posts between them. The team of three Mexicans went in one day, set up the tent and walked back out the following day, talk about intense physical exertion. Praise the Lord! The school is now opening and functioning under the tent.

We want to thank all those who have come since the earthquake. They have been a blessing to many and made a great difference. Also, we could not do what we are doing without the prayers and support of the saints.

We will be leaving for the States on May 5th for a much neede break and a time of visiting family, friends and churches.