THIS AND THAT

It's been a busy week in Haiti, a team of six University of Illinois fraternity brothers arrived last Sat. and a medical team of 17 from S. Carolina, Mo., Kansas and Texas came on Monday. The last of them departed for home this morning which leaves me in Port au Prince to pick up Vic and Donna Binkley later to take out to Pierre Payen this evening.

The college team was led by Jason Marquis who came to visit his cousin Marcus Throneburg who is working at the Canaan School this next year. They worked on pouring some sidewalks and a patio at the staff houses and also with construction onto the girls dorm.

The medical team was led by Dr. Tony Hlavacek and Dr. Ric Bonnell. Tony comes twice a year and brings along lots of medical help, this time he brought mom and dad along too. Ric comes four times a year and brings his wife Wendy who is also a doctor and their three kids ages 7-12 on two of those trips each year. The pictures show the medical team on the night they arrived unpacking medical supplies and making a Medika Mamba type nutrition supplement to give to malnourished babies. They had the the refreshing and also unpleasant experience of riding in the back of an open truck most of the way to Canaan in a serious Haitian downpour.

I think after that they were ready for anything the week might bring. Along with the sweltering August heat we got some relief with having Haitian electric power Wednsday through this morning which meant fans all night long. Some of them were up early for a hike on Friday and a picnic and great afternoon at the beach afterward. I spent most of Sat. in Port au Prince looking for and buying truck parts, maybe I can write about that later. This next week sees Canaan hosting several Haitian schools as they come to an ACE seminar to help them learn how to start similar schools across Haiti. Anyway as you can see life in Haiti can be a little of this and that always challenging but more often than not rewarding. In God's love , steve