Mornings are getting harder and most of us have lost our
bounce. Don’t get me wrong. We are still enjoying ourselves and doing some
great work. Our bodies are simply taking the toll. Food is quite different.
Lots and lots of carbs here with little to no fruit or vegetables. Very different than prior communities in
Haiti we have worked with. Meat or other
proteins are rare, as well. We’re living on bug spray and sunscreen and between
the heat and lack of water, we’re dragging. First morning all the girls were up
2 minutes after Darryl’s first wake up call. I was the only one still laying on
my 2” foam mattress when his second call came.
This morning only one responded with first call and after the second,
seven of the eight girls were still in bed. One still remained a half hour
later. Yup. We’re wearing down.
But the work continues and friendships are being
formed. I have been spending quite a bit
of time with Sonson. Thank you all for your prayers, as bright and early he
rolled in to begin painting again. We were pleasantly surprised, to say the
least. He wore out early and took a few
naps in his wheelchair, but there he was anyway. Everyone kicked in on the murals so we could
get them finished up. It was totally
crazy. I mean totally. Busted butt, but we did it. I got each person started
with a shape and a color and then would move to the next and the next and the
next… until they would say to me “Now you need to do your ‘thing’” and I would
go over and put the final highlights and shadows. Great to see what a community
can do together.
Tina has been such a blessing to the therapists here. You
can tell they love what they do and care deeply for each child. And it’s hard
work. Really hard work. Tina has been unboxing all kinds of new equipment that
has been piling up in storage rooms since who knows when and now that the
arrangement in the room has been set and approved by therapists in Port au
Prince, Tina has been asked to train the therapists here, in using each piece
of equipment. It’s awesome to see the
smiles on both the child’s and the therapist’s face as they are learning
together all that is possible.
Today, we experienced one of those incredible moments in
the life of a mission team. Matt and
some others were in the Therapy Room painting the rafters. There were sheets of
Masonite nailed up for a ceiling to keep the heat down, but it was rain damaged
and downright ugly. So we were asked to tear it out, and paint the corrugated
roofing after repairing some pieces that had holes in it. Our plan was to create some mobiles out of
the good Masonite to hang up in the peaked roof for kids who must lay on their
back most of the day. So anyway… Matt is
in there painting and he yells out to me on the porch “Pastor Melany! Come in
here… you gotta see this…” And sure enough, there was Junior (one of the kids I
first met 6 years ago) standing in a walker with his therapist leading the way
by moving each of his feet, one by one, and Tina coming from behind, holding
his upper body straight and upright.
Junior was holding the hand grips on his own accord and smiling from ear
to ear. It was amazing!! You have to understand, Junior has never walked.
Junior sits in a chair every day, or stands in a chair that allows him to lean
safely up against a cushioned board while tied in. But walk? Move from one room to another??
Yes. Today, with a community surrounding him, yes, he walked. Everyone was cheering and clapping and
walking right alongside him. It was just so very beautiful to witness. Tears were welling up in several eyes as Christ became tangible in the room, right next to us.
We thank you so much for your prayers. Where everyone we have seen with the virus are in bed for three or more days, Sonson rolled into the Therapy Room today, bright and early. He had a little more energy today, though he still
fell asleep once at the painting table, waiting on me for some prep. The first
half of the day he watched me attempt every tool possible to cut some shapes
out of the Masonite. This would be easy with the right tools, but we don’t
quite have the right tools. We had two full size hand saws, a hacksaw, a pair
of tin snips, and a 10 in 1 fold-up transformer pocket tool… none of which were
very helpful to cut Masonite. So the
plan got downsized and after hours of tearing through a few shapes, I was ready
to move on.
So after lunch Sonson and I really hunkered down and got
painting all those shapes and several packages of foam shapes. All we found in
the storage closet were butterflies but we cut additional animals out of the
butterflies and came up with caterpillars, dragonflies, fish, coral, dolphins,
worms, and more. All the girls had assisted Trish (one of the directors) take
fifteen of the kids to the ocean to swim this afternoon. So when they returned
about 5 pm, we put them to work painting all the shapes we had painstakingly
cut out with kiddie scissors. They also painted a couple dozen brown hand
cutouts that we will be using in the mobiles.
The kitchen team was very productive today too. They had
a Haitian team of young men helping with the new counter. They struggled with
the leveling of it and had to start over a couple of times. There are no 2 x
4’s in Haiti, so using luan for forms makes it difficult enough… especially
with hand saws. Tom got them back on
track and the second time was a charm.
The group of girls had worked in the kitchen all day before heading to
the ocean. They painted the entire room, really adding light and brightness to
a very dingy, otherwise dull, room. They
also painted a huge shelving unit that will be used in the kitchen.
Tom had another team over at the orphanage’s school
across the street. There were open transoms above every classroom door and it
seems the local kids climb into the rooms and trash them. So Sister Flora asked
if they could do something about closing the spaces. Some were covered with
chicken wire, while others with wood, but all were covered by the end of the
day.
Darryl and Art played plumbers most of the day with
clogged and/or broken toilets. I won’t go into all the details but wow… what
heroes. Crazy gross stuff they’ve been dealing with. But God bless them, they
did it! The changes will help the health and safety of every person here.
After Shannon gave an awesomely incredible devotion
tonight, half the team slipped off for bed early. The other half won’t be far
behind. Tomorrow we have another list to cover, loose ends to tie, and new
problems to solve. We never know what
friends might stop by (Jean Gary came across the island from Nan Soulette to
visit today!) and we always want to make time for them in the midst of the day,
as well. So off to bed we’ll go, knowing it won’t be long enough, no matter
what.
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