Most of you know I went back to Haiti in June with Richard Bradley and Hal Heiss to evaluate some future projects at the Holy Bible School in Petite Rivierre des Bayonnaise, Haiti (outside of Gonaives).
Here is the view from Google Maps:
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We got to know Elise Cadet and the other men and women who run the mission. They are part of a small network of four churches, two of which are church plants from this original church. One of their church plants is just a few miles from the main mission in a town called Souvenance. Souvenance is home to a large Voodoo temple and the locals referred to it as the center of voodoo in Haiti.
Here is a link to an article about a Voodoo ceremony in Souvenance. Voodoo has a real hold on people in Haiti. We joke about Voodoo here, but this is a real and very dark religion.
Here is the Voodoo temple on Google Maps:
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Here is a picture of the gate outside the Voodoo temple:
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| From haiti2 |
The church was planted six years ago and currently has about 60 active members and 50 children going to school there. One of the members we met was a Voodoo witch doctor's wife. She was converted about 18 months ago and has been active in the church since then. Her husband is still in bondage to Voodoo.
Here is a picture of the witch doctor's wife and Elise:
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| From haiti2 |
The Souvenance Church is here just a mile down the road:
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This is a picture of the front of the church:
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| From haiti2 |
From the Google Maps image you can see the beginnings of a block wall around the existing tin and wood structure. We are helping with the resources to finish this building. Last week we sent the money down for Elise to buy the brick and concrete to finish the walls and pour a floor. Here are some pictures of their work so far this week:
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| From haiti3 |
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| From haiti3 |
When we get there next week one of our projects is going to be to help those guys put a roof on the building. Hopefully by the end of the week we'll be able to have church with them in the new building. One of the things I really like about this particular project is that it's not our project. As you can see, these guys are taking the lead and doing the work. We're helping out, but this is their deal. There is also an active healthy body of believers that have been meeting here for six years. We are not helping with a building hoping a church will materialize. The church is already there. We're just helping with a better facility.
Water filters
On the trip in June we were able to take some water filters from Hydraid to the school. They were already in a warehouse in Port au Prince so we picked them up on the way, all 3500 pounds of sand and gravel and filter cones.
Here's a picture of some of the filters put together:
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| From haiti2 |
Each filter can produce 75 gallons of clean water per day. You take the top off and pour 5 gallons of water into the top. It filters through the sand and gravel then up through a chlorine filter. After the chlorine chamber it goes into a plastic container that has a charcoal filter attached to the exit valve. The charcoal filter removes heavy metals and the chlorine from the water. After a few weeks of operation, a film forms over the sand that they call the "slime layer". This layer of bacteria removes up to 99% of harmful bacteria from the water greatly reducing the constant diarrhea that often plagues people without access to clean water. Once the slime layer is in place, the chlorine tablet is not necessary and does not have to be replaced.
After we left in June, we were able to get Santanna, the principal at the school, and his assistant Junior to a training class offered in Haiti by Hydraid. They are now fully trained on how to operate and maintain the filters. Elise said that the clean water is the biggest thing to ever happen to their community.
While we were there we (meaning Richard, the real engineer) examined a filtering system that they purchased, but it has never been installed. It is a system from Living Waters for the World(LWW) that can produce up to 3000 gallons of clean water a day. This time we are taking a man named Raymond Shackleford that has been trained by LWW to install this system. The school has a water line off of a mountain spring that is piped down the road and is used to fill their cistern. This system will be used to filter that water and store in a tank for use. We will probably have to pull the existing tank off of the roof and clean it out with bleach or buy a new tank while we are down there. This filter does require electricity but they do have a generator that they run when needed. There is lot of promise in using this system because it will produce enough clean water for the entire community and could even generate some income for the school. Currently the only source of bottled clean water is in Gonaives 8 miles away.
Sanitation and Hygiene Training
Since the community now has access to some clean water and may have access to a lot of clean water if we get the second system up and running, we wanted to focus on sanitation and hygiene on this trip as well. Our female members, Kandy (my wife), Jenny, a former Peace Corp volunteer who spent two years in Africa, and Mallory, a patient care tech are going to be teaching sanitation and hygiene to women and children in the community. One of our goals is to transform the community by teaching them the importance of digging and using latrines. Hopefully this will occur through the material we are using from http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/. We'll see how that works out. We are also going to teach personal hygiene and hopefully setup some hand washing stations around the school and church. The device we are going to try to build is a tippy tap. It's basically a suspended bottle which is tipped over to dispense some water. Hopefully this simple device will allow the children to wash their hands after using the latrine and before eating. We also have some signs to put up around the school teaching basic hygiene points in Haitian Creole.
As we talk to the community about sanitation and hygiene we also want to gather information about their health. What are their most common medical problems? How many births and deaths have each family had in the past 10 years? What were the causes of the deaths(if known)? This data will be invaluable in helping them shape a health care plan for their community. We have three ladies from the community who have volunteered for medical internships. Hopefully we will be able to help place them in internships at other clinics in Haiti so that they can return to help run a clinic in Petite Rivierre.
Judy4Haiti
I responded to a Twitter request to help get some Judy4Haiti dolls to Haiti. Their goal is to give these dolls to Haitian orphans who don't have anything else in the world. Our goal is to get some of the women of the church in Petite Rivierre to go with some of our group to one of the orphanages in Gonaive to get them involved in reaching out to the orphans in their communities. The orphanages are not very nice places and are sometimes hard to deal with because of corruption and harsh conditions. Even so, we hope to get the local church engaged with the at least one of the orphanages in Gonaive while we are there.
Discipleship
Today I received 300 copies of Desiring God's Finding Joy booklet in Haitian Creole. This booklet is 47 pages and details answer to such questions as:
We hope to host some classes in the evenings for whoever will come and discuss each of these questions. We also hope to hike up to a village in the mountains (6 hours one way!) and pass the booklets out there as well to those who can read. For those who cannot read, we were able to take some Proclaimers in Haitian Creole last time. This time we are taking 5 Proclaimers in French per Elise's request. These devices have the entire New Testament audio on them. They can be charged with a wall outlet, hand crank, or attached solar panel and are loud enough to be heard by a large crowd.
For the kids, Kandy found the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Loyd-Jones in French. We ordered five of them from France last week and they arrived yesterday! This storybook Bible frames each of the stories in redemptive history. The theology taught through this book is even good for adults who may not have connected the Bible into one story of redemption.
I also got a copy of Desiring God by John Piper in French for Elise. This book and John Piper have influenced my personal theology a lot and I hope Elise will enjoy it as well.
Details
We'll be leaving Gardendale about 1AM on Saturday morning headed for the Atlanta airport. We fly from there to Miami and on into Port au Prince. We will arrive in PAP about 11AM local time and meet Elise there with a bus. From there we will drive to Petion-Ville and get a rental truck. From there we'll head north toward St Marc. In St Marc we'll probably stop for groceries and some late lunch. The next leg takes us to Gonaive. Gonaive is on the coast and only 8 miles from the school. The last 8 miles takes about 45 minutes though. Hopefully the road won't be too muddy in the fully loaded down bus.
Pray for the people that we are going to serve. Pray that we will show them the love of Christ in word and deed next week. Pray that they will be encouraged to know that we are one body of Christ and that there are other Christians that care about them. Pray that God will help us to convey our material whether it is hygiene training, discipleship, or just talking about our families back home. Pray for our four interpreters that they will be able to fluently translate our words to those who need to hear them. Pray for our interpreters that we may be able to influence them with the Gospel since we will be spending an entire week with them. Pray for our safety and that our team would function smoothly.
That's all I can think of for now.
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