Last Tuesday was the school Christmas program. The school staff did a great job preparing for and putting on the program, which included a Christmas meal for the approximately 400 people in attendance. Here are just a few photos from the program...
As I write this the youth group is having their final practice for the
New Years Eve service tomorrow night. They spent all morning separating out food into 150 gift sacks for families in the community. Generally a lot of people come to the New Years Eve program who will never come to church the rest of the year. We would greatly appreciate your prayers that God would use words spoken or songs sung tomorrow night to touch hearts and begin a search for Him.
I love guest bloggers :) It is like getting someone else to do your work for you :D No, really, it is nice to be able to share from someone else's perspective and to see things from an outside vantage point.
One week ago the Pine Grove team flew out after doing a week of Intensive English in the school. They were kind enough to each leave a little message for the blog, and since I am a firm believer in "Better late than never" :) I am going to post them.
On a snowy, cold (-13°F) December 6th at 7:30am a group of six of us left
from Pine Grove
Community Church
in Northern Wisconsin.After a series of flights and meeting up with
one more team member we found ourselves in Haiti, surrendered to God.However, this was not the beginning of our
mission and there were more than just six of us involved.In fact, this was an all-church mission trip.
Weeks before we departed it was decided that we desired to have our entire church involved
in the work God was going to do.We
invited the congregation to be engaged and the response was truly amazing.God raised up people to pray, give
financially, donate items, provide encouragement, drive us to the airport,
develop curriculum, and probably many others things that I’m not aware of.Our mission trip to Lemuel has brought our
church together in a wonderful way and was in fact an all-church endeavor.
One of the greatest aspects of the trip was the building of relationships.Our team that traveled together enjoyed
spending time with each other.We grew
closer together and had many laughs along the way.We also cherished the time we had with the
Lemuel staff, the kids at the school, and the people of the Plateau.We were well received and always greeted with
a smile.The level of hospitality we
experienced truly blessed us.It was
wonderful meeting new people and spending time together.We would love to visit again someday, but
we’ll leave that up to the Lord.
We were able to see God work in many, many ways as the posts by those who went
indicate.The Lord was orchestrating
events and details in our planning stages, during the travel, in our time on
the Plateau, and even on our return to Wisconsin.We would ask for your prayers as we continue
to process our experience.
Though we are now many miles away from Haiti
and the Plateau, our lives are changed.We have a deeper love for people and a greater desire for the glory of
Jesus.May He continue to work in our
lives and all of yours as well.God is
good and we give Him all the praise!
Pastor Jeff O'Malley Pastor of Family Life and Discipleship Pine Grove Community Church
Other team members wrote:
~Throughout this week I’ve been reminded over and over how big God is. Yet He has shown
himself in so many small ways the care of any physical issues of our team, the
smile of a little boy and the translated words of a mother. Our great God takes
care of all things great and small.
~I can't say enough about the Lemuel staff. I came hoping to encourage and build them up,
and I hope I have but all I know is that I am defiantly learning fuller than
when I came. Their abundant smiles, generous hospitality and total surrender to
Christ have been such an inspiration. Their lives for Christ shine so brightly
and is radiating throughout the Plateau and especially through the school kids.
Talk about bright, beautiful smiles. I have never seen smiles so bright and am
thankful to have captured a few of them on camera. What a blessing this trip
has been. I am excited to start processing all that I have seen, heard and
experienced this week as well as seen what Christ has in store for me as a
result.
~I had a really great week at Lemuel Ministries. They were a great encouragement
to me personally in my walk with Christ. So many people have surrendered their
comforts and some their entire lives to serve the LORD here at Lemuel. I
learned that if they can do this so can I. Am I giving up my life to service of
Christ? Am I ministering to people even when it’s out of my comfort zone?
Lemuel challenged me to think about these things. And now I pray that I will
apply it to my everyday life.
~As I woke up this morning, the usual sounds of the Plateau brought a smile to my
face followed soon after by the realization that this is our last day at
Lemuel. This is sure to be a bittersweet day of emotion. The children were
already asking yesterday if we would be back “tomorrow,” so its evident that
they are also fully aware of our imminent departure. The staff here at Lemuel have been amazing as usual. They have been trained very
well and their gracious service has been a huge blessing to our team. There
have been significant changes on the Lemuel landscape demonstrating the team
efforts that have been made in working to pursue the vision of the ministry.
The results of their diligence is nothing short of amazing and very clear
example f God’s hand in the ministry.
It has been a great experience this week as the unity of our group has progressed
each day. It’s always praise-worthy to me when God’s direction and timing
develops into something better then we could ever plan. In addition to our time
working with the kids in the school, we have had the opportunity to visit with
the community which has provided a perspective that we will carry forward. The
reality of the challenges here leave me with one goal for today....to submit to
the power of each moment that we have left.
We are really proud of our staff in all departments (school, hospitality and development) for their hard work in preparing for and receiving not only this team, but ALL our teams and visitors.
There are two more posts but there is a bit of a story behind those so I will leave them for another day :)
Thank you Pine Grove for being part of our lives and our community for a week! Thank you for investing your time, energy, sweat and love into our students.
Congratulations Mary Beerley! You won the raffle! Our English Camp team left today with the Nativity and will be mailing it to you as soon as they get home :)
Rafflecopter randomly selected a winner. The first random selection had not answered the question about a favorite memory or tradition so we had to go to the second and that was MARY BEERLEY!
This was her favorite Christmas memory: One of my favorite memories is when Jim, my sister Kathryn and i were
stranded on Christmas Eve in Austin. The bridge to my parents' country
home was flooded and we had to spend the night in Austin. We went to a
restaurant that had live music. The band was playing the blues. And i
mean the BLUES! We asked why they weren't playing Christmas music since
it was Christmas Eve... They replied that it was Tuesday and every
Tuesday night was 'Bummer Night...' As i looked around at the lonely
tables of 1, i was struck by how often i had wanted my life to be
different, and i was suddenly exceedingly grateful for my family. My
crazy, stubborn, stupifying, WONDERFUL family!!! :)
Thank you to everyone who shared your stories and traditions. I so enjoyed reading through all of them! May you all have a wonderful, joyous Christmas!
We are trying something new! (And will appreciate your patience as we work out any kinks!) For Christmas this year we are giving away one Haitian Nativity Scene made out of a coconut and clay figures.
In order to not have to open the carefully packaged nativity that we are giving away, I have taken a picture of mine. They are all pretty similar, though the coconuts and details can vary a bit.
Ani holding Baby Jesus to give you an idea of the size of the figures.
All figures are wrapped in banana leaves and are inside the coconut.
So, here is what you do... Write a comment below about your favorite Christmas tradition or memory. If everything works right, Rafflecopter will randomly choose a winner. If everything does not work right, we will put all the names in a hat and pull one out! Looking forward to reading your comments!
This year St. Pauls Church in Monaco raised funds to put the metal roofs on the school building. We have done all the preparatory masonry work and look forward to a team in February who will be helping us get the roofs on.
This past weekend Sam and Petion were at St. Pauls to share with the church how the project is progressing and to thank them for their participation. St Pauls has posted a YouTube video of their report. You can view it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn4EQx2BqSs
in all things...
This past week we learned that a very dear friend of ours was kidnapped and then brutally killed near his home in Port-au-Prince. His wife was also shot in the chest but has come through surgery and is recovering.
We are reminded once again of the cost of serving Jesus. May we be counted among the faithful who stand firm till we are carried into His presence.
The staff of Lemuel would like to thank you for ways you have come along side us, prayed for us even when you knew little how to pray. Some have come and encouraged the ministry with their presence. Others have sent notes of encouragement to let us know we are not alone in this. WE ARE GRATEFUL.
May you know Him in great ways through your time of reflecting on His goodness to you.
How do two weeks fly by so quickly? Now I have a lot to catch up on!
The last 15 days have been quite eventful. On Friday the 8th (the day after my last post) I was talking to Krischelle on Skype when I got a call from Manis saying to please come over to the campus as quickly as possible, Sam had cut himself with the electric saw while working on the church porch roof. I grabbed Ani and rushed out the door only to meet with Manis coming to get me on the 4-Wheeler.
I knew it must be pretty bad and was trying to mentally prepare myself. I am not a natural nurse so I was praying that God would help me do whatever I would need to do. I got there to find Sam's finger wrapped tightly with a cloth to slow the bleeding. I was told he had cut off a piece of his finger but I wasn't sure exactly what that meant! How big of a piece???!!! When I unwrapped the cloth I found the he had cut off basically the whole "fingerprint" part of his left pointer. Then James (one of the development guys) walked up with a folded piece of paper which, I was told, held the piece that had been cut off.
I cleaned Sam's finger the best I could and then called mom (a real nurse) to see if it was worth sending him to the clinic to stitch the piece back on. She said it was so I then cleaned the piece of finger as well as I could, put it back in place and taped it down with steri-strips to hold it while he went to the CAM clinic on the 4-Wheeler. I wrapped almost an entire roll of gauze around with the keep it clean and he and Petion headed off for the clinic. By God's grace Sam missed the bone and Bethanie (the wonderful nurse at the clinic) was very hopeful about the piece rejoining with the finger. Isn't the body an amazing thing?!!
Sam continuing work on the church porch roof with his injured finger.
A few days later materials for the school roof arrived! A team will be coming down in February to help us get it on but since Sam and Petion were leaving and would be coming back only a few weeks before the team arrives we went ahead and got the bulk of the materials. I was working on some things at the house when the trucks arrived so Manis ran over to the campus to help them unload and to get some pictures for me. As they were unloading the 2x6s one slipped out of one of the guys' hands and hit James right on the forehead. He crumpled to the ground and for one terrifying second everyone thought he had been killed. Manis yelled for someone to get water and after dousing him, James finally came to. As you can imagine, everyone was quite shaken. In the end James had an awful headache but was otherwise fine. Thank you, Lord!
Unloading the lumber (before the accident). James is in the tan shirt.
By the time the guys finished it was dark. The color of the roofing was a bit of a fiasco as they didn't have enough of the color we had originally chosen, but in the end I really like it :)
All of this has reminded me, though, how much we need to pray, and need your prayers, for safety. Every day things are done here that are dangerous... it is just part of life. Of course as many precautions are taken as possible and everyone tries to be safe... but that fact of the matter is our safety and, more particularly, the safety of our staff is often quite precarious.
On the 15th Sam and Petion flew to Germany. I know they would greatly appreciate your prayers as they will be doing quite a bit of traveling within Europe for speaking engagements.
On the 17th I headed into PauP to meet up with Krischelle and Bonita who were flying back from the US. I had been planning to drive down the following day but when we got up on Sunday Manis said he felt it would be better to leave that morning. There was a strike against the government planed for Monday and no one knew what the roads would be like. I packed as fast as I could and by 9:00 was on the road. Sure enough, the next day the roads were blocked and I would have never been able to get through. Again, Thank you, Lord!
We had a busy time in PauP but all in all things went well and we were able to accomplish all that we needed to. A special thanks to our friends Jenny and Djordjy Compere, Lara Berry and the Broyles family for their help and hospitality!
We got home last night after a long day and an eventful trip and it was GREAT to be home :) I was not able to check my email at all while we were in PauP so please forgive me if you have written to me this week and not heard from me. I will try to catch up soon!
Also within the last two weeks we have been able to triple the cow project participants but that will be a post all its own!
As I mentioned before, Jenna Brill is our intern this year. Her main responsibility is teaching English in the school. She started teaching on Monday and is doing a GREAT job... more on that in a moment... First let me let her introduce herself:
Hey Everyone! I'm so excited to be here working alongside Lemuel! I really enjoy working with children, and I am excited to be starting teaching this week. I am from northern Wisconsin where there is ice and snow for about half the year. It's just a little different than here :) I have three brothers and three sisters, I love music and art, and I enjoy trying new things. I am grateful for the opportunity to be here, and I am looking forward to being pushed out of my comfort zone a little bit and seeing how God will work in my life this coming year. I am praying that His name will be glorified through me!
On Monday I went over to the campus in the morning so I could be there for Jenna's first class and make sure everything was ok. Her first class was the kindergarten and it was so much fun!
The kids were totally engrossed.
Little Woodyoume was mesmerized in the front row...his poor little neck!
Even Isabelle learned "Clap!"
Later in the day she had the Fifth and Sixth Grade...
The fifth grade perfecting the "ah" sound, as in "Sam"
High-fives all around for the Sixth Grade.
In other news from this week, Loring, Marion and Rick all flew out on Saturday. They are GREATLY missed!!!
Marion was Ani's teacher while she was here.
That was such a HUGE help as I was able to have a bit more time to put toward Lemuel stuff.
Rick and Loring were able to get a lot of things fixed... or at least diagnosed... and were a real encouragement to all of us in multiple ways.
I took some pictures of Loring, Marion and Jenna that they could share with their church. I particularly liked this one and thought I'd share it with you... keeping things in perspective :)
Also this week, the water tank returned having been switched over to a new truck. What a blessing this is!!!
Sam leaves next week (ahhhhh!!!! Next week!!!) for Germany. He will be gone for two months so he has been trying to get some things wrapped up, including the porch and depot on the back of the church...
In closing, as I was drinking my coffee this morning (for those of you who know me, you know what kind of a day drinking coffee means I was anticipating:)) the quote on my mug reminded me of where my peace is to come from. I thought we could probably all use this reminder today:
I got this mug at an airport shop on my way to Wisconsin last year.
Although it does not say it in so many words, it is always a reminder to me that the peace God offers His children does not depend on our circumstances.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7 NIV
Father, as we "present our requests to you"
please grant us your peace that transcends understanding,
that this stressed out, frazzled, tired, volatile world may seek our peace and find You.
Blogger is officially driving me crazy. I am sorry if there are some weird things going on on the blog these days... pictures disappearing, posts showing up out of order... I am tying to work on some things and it's messing other things up... I have no idea why. Thanks for you patience!
This morning I headed over to the Lemuel campus around 8:00. Armed with my camera, my mission was to get pictures of everything going on so I could give you an idea of what a typical morning at Lemuel is like...
Since I was entering the campus from the airstrip I came to the pretty blue gate...
Were you to enter from the main road you would come to the main gate which Regilien would open for you.
To my left upon opening the gate is the storage container and the box from the yellow truck. The yellow truck was sent into Port-au-Prince the week along with the water truck. The water tank is going to be transferred from the older green truck to the newer yellow one. They put the yellow box on stilts so that when the green truck gets back it will be easier to put this box on it.
Ahead of me is the Development Office where Gulbert is working on making doors for the new Guest House bath area.
He has taken very rough cut lumber down to a smooth and is now cutting the planks to size.
To my right as I walk in the gate is the school kitchen where I find Mme Wisly. Today's school meal (cornmeal with dried herring) won't take too long so she is using some spare time to sort beans for tomorrow. She has been here since 5:00am. She goes to an early prayer meeting and then cleans and sweeps her area and begins preparing the hot meal for the children and staff.
I continue on to the school and get there just in time to catch them raising the flag.
The kindergarteners are busy with their morning routine as well.
All three classes sing some welcome songs together...
...and then greet each other in French.
The teachers help the children practice their greetings.
They then join in a circle for some fun singing.
Kin. 1 Teacher, Kattia, provides the music.
On the way out of the Kindergarten I passed through the office where Wiltha
was talking with a parent. Wiltha is now working in the office as
supervisor of grades 1-6, disciplinarian, receptionist and secretary
among other responsibilities.
By the time I finished all of that, the other classes were in session. There have been some changes in position since the last school post I did so you may notice some teachers have changed classes.
Bergeline is teaching the First Graders about C Cedille (the French C with the tail... I can't do one in blogger).
Andiose is working on diction with the Second Graders as they read the phrase of the week, "Jesus is the light of the world."
Mezou is working with the Third Graders on putting the correct heading on their papers. The poor guy was a bit frustrated as I passed by. It seems some of his students were not following directions :)
Guillaume is teaching the Fourth Graders about why they won't have class on Friday, November 1.
Wilnique is grading papers while his Fifth Graders take their monthly exams.
The Sixth Graders were also taking exams. I accidentally missed their teacher, Osslet. He was also grading papers while he supervised the exam.
Djanaika, the only girl in the Sixth Grade, writing her exam.
Back toward the Development Office, the development guys are planting trees. They have been here since 7:00 and have already done a huge amount of work in front of the Guest House. Lenique, our General Administrator has stopped by to check on their work. He has been here since before 6:00 and is always one of the last to leave. Derilus (in the straw hat) digs the holes...
...and Wesner comes behind him and plants the trees.
My next stop is the finance office where Williamso is covering for Krischelle while she is in the US. Williamso is currently studying Administration in university. The universities have a very different schedule - their break is from mid-September to mid-November... just when Krischelle was planning to be gone! YAY!
From the finance office I head into the main part of the Lemuel House (the finance office is in the Lemuel House) where Loring, Marion, Rick and Jenna are having breakfast. Loring and Marion you have already met. Rick is here for two weeks helping out with all kinds of maintenance things... electrical issues, vehicles, plumbing, burnt out appliances, odds and ends for people in the community, and who knows what else will pop up before he leaves on Saturday! Jenna is our intern for this year. She will be teaching English in the school. She is working on writing up a post to introduce herself to you all so that should be coming soon.
Mme Gulbert is busy cleaning the Lemuel House.
Jinel, head of the Hospitality staff, is taking down a list from Mme Celissa...
...who is busy cleaning a chicken for today's lunch.
After leaving the Lemuel House kitchen, I took this photo to give you a little peak at the new Guest House shower area, then headed back down toward the gazebo.
I found Mme Obert sweeping behind the gazebo. Mme Obert has much to do. She washes, cleans Manis' office, the gazebo, guest house, and latrines and sweeps the Lemuel House yard!
Back toward the Development Office I find Nadege and Mme Tiferne going for water for the school children to drink.
The school kitchen is the thatch building in the back left of this photo.
As I get back to the Development Office, Lenique is discussing the doors
with Gulbert. They have run into a little bit of a problem with the
doors are are discussing possible solutions.
Inside the Development Office, Rick writes down some information I need, and then he and Loring show me the list they have been working on of items we need to purchase... it is getting pretty long! :(
They then head over to the 4-Runner that they have been working on for the past two days and that has been giving them quite a few headaches! The sunroof was left open last night and we had a little rain so the doors are open so it can air out :)
As I made one last round I found Mme Adrien in the school kitchen pounding spices...
...and starting the fires. Mme Wisly was still sorting beans... it takes a long time!
Mme Tiferne was outside of the school with water ready for the students.
And Marion was in the school to do a story with the Kin. 2 students. The two other Kin. classes were so interested she did it with them as well!
Jenna was also in the school today. She is just following classes to see how a normal day goes. She will begin teaching English in the school next Monday!
My last photo as I left the campus was of Rick in the campus' internet "hot-spot"... yes, this is the best place to get internet on campus.
Some people you haven't seen in this post are:
Bonita: she is in Canada
Krischelle: she is in the US
Sam: He is in Port-au-Prince picking up materials to finish the church depot
Petion: He is in Port-au-Prince taking care of the switching over of the water tank
Enes: He is also in Port-au-Prince as he helped drive the vehicles in
Manis: He stayed home with Ani so I could go over early
Upon arriving back home Ani and I headed up to the roof so I could get started on this post.
This is where I used to sit to work on the internet...
...but Manis, Sam, and Gulbert made me this nice little office so I could work even when the sun is overhead... aren't they nice!
So, this is where I am sitting right now...
...and this is my photographer who stood on a chair so she could take the picture at a better angle :) She just left for school with Marion.
Well, that is the end of our tour for today :) Hope you enjoyed it!
