The Parable of the Sower

Pastor John asked a question at the english service of the Foursquare Church this morning that left me hanging my head in shame!  He was preaching about the parable of the sower and asked who was good at growing plants.  Several hands shot up while my thoughts shot to the corn crops which I was lying awake thinking about for over an hour last night.

Turns out there's quite a bit more to it than ploughing the fields and scattering the good seed on the ground.  Although I have done this with plenty of help from visiting teams...and it is fed and watered by God's almighty hand, along with my own, and Jakob and Lincon's!  Hopefully with this team effort we will start to see some progress with our corn and the other vegetables we are growing.

This may seem like a strange topic for a missionary to be writing about.  The idea is that we produce something of a market garden to teach Haitians how to grow vegetables for themselves and also perhaps to sell.  Ideally we will then be able to roll out the whole aquaponics system to churches, schools and orphanages that we have ties with here, and also in Les Cayes and Jeremie where we also have projects ongoing.

So life at Foursquare is turning out to be pretty sweet!  I'm enjoying getting to know the people who work with them as well as the teams who are constantly coming for short visits to help in all areas.  We also have plenty of opportunities to visit the orphanages and tent cities that 4SQ work with in Port-au-Prince.  For me he highlight is beginning to build relationships with Haitian people who come to the church or who work with us or in the projects.  After 3 months of only really meeting security staff of other NGOs it feels fantastic to finally be spending time with the people I came here to be with.  My creole is coming along... slowly but surely...some days more slowly than surely but it all counts!

One of the other major bonuses of joining up with 4SQ is spending time with the wonderful permanent base staff (although they are not all as permanent as I would like!)  A few weeks ago we went to Wahu Beach to celebrate someone's birthday.  Not only was it our first trip to a beach in Haiti, it was also my first time eating lobster (bought straight from the boat of course!) and I have to say, I am a fan of both things.  It felt brilliant to be going from it being just me and Jackie for so long, to being part of a much larger family here.  As much as I hope to be a blessing to Foursquare Haiti, they have already been a huge blessing to me in just giving us the opportunity to serve and to be a part of the work that is going on here...and the 'good bye Aaron' steak didn't hurt either!!!

Samaritan's Purse and Foursquare

When we arrived in Haiti almost five months ago we had a fairly good idea of how things were going to work out for the first few months...how wrong could we be!  We had come to work intiially with one particular project...but after some weeks of negotiating it became clear that this was not going to be our future in Haiti.

We spend some weeks after that pursuing different avenues, speaking to people from different organisations here to find a good fit where we would actually be able to be productive!  Its very frustrating to be in a country like Haiti that has so many needs everywhere you look and to not be helping. 

We began working with Samaritan's Purse a couple of months ago.  We go out to their base outside the city every Friday to deliver the teaching which we have prepared for 6 women to teach to 360 women from their villages.  Its a fantastic programme teaching literacy, numeracy, health care and the Bible...which is where we come in.  Its a joy to be out there every week.  I love the fact that we get to see the sea, and wide open spaces, something that Port-au-Prince, like most cities, is sadly lacking in!  The teaching is always highly entertaining, maybe more for us than for them.  Its also been great getting to know the Samaritan's Purse guys.  They are involved in a good variety of projects around the area and every person we meet adds a little richness to our day.

This did leave us with a rather long week still to fill however.  Then a few weeks ago we had a chance encounter outside a cafe near our house that we had never been to before.  We were there with visitors from the UK and we noticed the Foursquare car on the car park.  As we were entering the building the Foursquare guys were coming out.  Our visitor struck up a conversation, and to cut a long story short we're not working with them pretty much full time, when we're not with SP.  It feels like a really great fit for us.  The 4SQ have the same roots as Elim and the guys seem as pleased to have met us as we are to have met them!!!

Its still early days of getting to know each other and finding our rhythm of working together but at the moment I'm helping with the communications side of things.  There are teams over pretty much constantly and you can imagine how much effort goes in to just keeping track of everyone as they prepare to come.  So I take care of this allowing mar, who runs the teams, to focus on the guys on the ground.

I've also been doing a fair amount of gardening at one of the bases.  They (or I should say, we) are working on an aquaponics system with tilapia, chickens and a bunch of different vegetables.  Its not exactly what I learnt in Bible College but I'm thoroughly enjoying working out in the Haitian sunshine.

I expect there will be more to come on this in the not too distant future.  In the mean time I'll be researching how best to farm tilapia, tending to my vegetables and working on all things computer based...what ever they need! It feels fantastic to finally be a part of a group that is doing the stuff here!  You can check out Foursquare and see all the great work they are doing here with orphanages and tent cities etc.  

Avoiding Deportation!

While preparing to move out to Haiti we discovered that we would be allowed to stay for 90 days without any form of paperwork, but would need to visit an embassy in order to obtain a visa for a longer stay.  Unfortunately there is no reciprocal agreement between the UK and Haiti and so we would have to pop over to either Brussels, Paris or Rome.  The plan to actually make this brief trip somehow got lost and forgotten about somewhere in my boss's well earned mistrust of my slight over enthusiasm about this being a much needed jaunt to Rome.  And so it was that we came to Haiti for 3 years with a slip of green paper in our passports allowing us to stay for just 3 months!

With all the time we spent settling in and finding our feet, this impending potential deportation slipped our minds until week 11.  It was over lunch that we casually asked someone from another NGO, who insisted that the authorities would in fact frown on our illegal alien status, and suggested that we really ought to leave the country for a couple of days.

This news could have not have brought us more consternation...you would think!

So with all due efficiency we returned home and secured for ourselves a 3 day trip, for work purposes you understand, to the Dominican Republic!!!

Its an old cliché but words really do not adequately express the wonder and relief of again being able to walk down a street!  I should add the joy of being unescorted, and not feeling threatened in any way etc...but the walking was amazing in itself.  I am aware of how little exercise we get here as we go everywhere in the car...but I would never have anticipated the two days of leg ache that followed a gentle stroll around the Colonial District of Santo Domingo that our lovely hotel was situated in!  Never in my life have my legs hurt from strolling!!!

It wasn't the business of life, or the devastation that is still so evident on every street in Port-au-Prince that we needed a break from.  The security issues mean that we have far less independance here than we would have at home.  While we are very well taken care of it was still a huge sigh of relief to be able to have full control over what we did and what we ate and at what time.  The freedom of eating was something that we took full advantage of, as well as being able to watch TV in bed, including the start of the Royal Wedding!  We also got to see the couple emerge onto the balcony at the airport...much against the wishes of the airline staff who were trying to prepare our flight for takeoff!

On day two we took a local bus (how many other types are there?) to Bocca Chicca...well, straight past it to be honest, and then back into the town...we'd thought it would be more obvious when we arrived!  There doesn't seem to be a lot to the town, and the beach was pretty small...but how much room do two missionary ladies need?  It was breezer than is healthy for sunbathing, and some peeling did follow, but it was so great to lie on a beach, read a book, swim in the Caribbean Sea...blissssssss

It is incredible that Haiti and the Dominican Republic are on the same island...they are worlds apart!  I'm sure there are areas of the country which aren't as beautiful as the Colonial District and that it has its own share of difficulties but the comparison is so striking it is barely worth commenting on.  I'll let the photos blog for me!

 

Welcome!

17th April 2011

Thank you for visiting my blog and welcome!

Since arriving in Haiti a couple of months ago things have been moving pretty slowly.  There are a variety of reasons for this.  Things are never as you expect them to be when you come to a new country, new job, new culture etc.  In fact that is pretty much the only expectation you can count on!  In a lot of ways it has been good to have had the time to settle in, get used to our surroundings, learn a bit of the lingo and generally find out how life works here in Port-au-Prince.

The house that we are living in currently is situated in an area called Tabarre in the north west of the city.  Its a fairly quiet area...apart from the huge UN base about 200 metres away!

We share the house with our landlord, Alphonse and his family.  It feels very secure inside the 10ft walls,  but still homely with the enormous and bountiful mango tree that dominates the outside area.

Jackie, my co worker, and I spend many hours on the veranda in the shade of this giant tree reading and studying, writing emails...and playing scrabble!

Our latest news is that we have a meeting with some folks at the Samaritan's Purse base tomorrow morning to discuss a couple of projects that we may be able to get involved with.  I'm really excited about the prospect of working with such a well established and well respected organisation.

We went to visit the base last week and thoroughly enjoyed being out of the city for a few hours, and driving along Route 1 which gave us our first good view of the Caribbean Sea since our plane landed 10 weeks ago!  We were invited to join the Chaplaincy Team that afternoon as they visited one of the Samaritan's Purse cholera treatment centres just outside Cite Soliel, one of the poorest areas of Port-au-Prince.  I was impressed at what can be built with a few planks of wood and some tarps...and in just 9 days too!

We spoke to some of the nurses, most of whom had just arrived the day before, using their annual leave to work 12 hour shifts in 35 degree heat...now that's impressive!  You can't fail to be moved by the sight of the low, hard beds, also covered in tarps with holes cut in the middle above a bucket for those too ill to move.  While we were there though a young woman was allowed home and it is these victories that must keep the staff going through the darker moments of their work there.

Most Sundays we attend Pastor Forges church, Solid Rock Church, which is relatively close to where we live.  They lost their building in the earthquake last January and meet in a huge tent.  The church has around 3,000 people come on any one Sunday in 2 morning services.

There isn't enough room for us all to sit inside the tent so most weeks we are outside in the sunshine.  The first week, however, Pastor Forges spotted us and invited us to come and sit inside...on the front row...where else?!?

(Can you spot me in this crowd of worshippers?)


We enjoy the worship and recognise some of the songs so we can join in...when we can remember the English version that is! The sermon is a little above our knowledge of Creole unfortunately.   We have been known to be sitting with our Bibles at the ready only to realise that we're still on the announcements...its still early days!

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Thanks again for taking the time to read my blog.  I'm looking forward to being able to fill these pages with exciting stories of what God is doing here in Haiti, and some more nonsense of what I've been up to along the way!!!