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.