The Adventure of 2011 Begins!



Alexandra stakes her claim on the previously uninhabited Paradise Island


Family and Friends,

They say the more life changes, the more it stays the same. I guess this is true in Haiti as much as everywhere else. With the celebrations of Christmas and New Years over, we hear there are manifestations, or political riots, in the streets of Port-au-Prince once again. Hopefully it won't develop to the point that it did last time. Hopefully God was able to speak to the Haitian people last year and change their hearts through the earthquake, the Cholera, and the many other trials. Of course, you could argue from the other vantage point and say, because God spoke to the people last year they will no longer put up with corruption and injustice in their government. It goes both ways!


But life here in the little village of Ti-Rivier is calm and enjoyable. We forgot to post about our little excursion on Christmas eve, but we rented a boat and two men rowed us out to "Paradise Island" just off the coast. The waves were really choppy that day, so it was a bit of an adventure. The boat was a bit creaky and old and small, but it was fun. As Bruce, a recent member of one of our trips said on a recent trip to the island in the same boat, “If it wasn't the actual boat the Lord used to travel around the Sea of Galilee, it was at least from that time period.”

We are looking forward to a great year in Haiti in 2011. Our plan is to stay here until around June 1st and then go home for a few months to visit family, raise missionary support, speak in churches, and vacation. Then we will return around September 1st for another school year and assess from there what the future plans will be.

We feel good so far about achieving our goals of learning Creole, adjusting to everyday life here, and investing in the future ministry leaders of the community. We feel we are on track to be able to meet those goals in the coming year. All around us are people constantly asking us to do more, so we have been very careful to put family first and move slowly with our ministry in Haiti. Too many people have gotten overworked and burned out on the mission field, people with probably double our faith and ability, so we have to know our limitations and trust God to show us which commitments are the right ones to make.

A special thanks to everyone reading this blog for your prayers, financial support, and just your interest in what we are doing, or more to the point, what God is choosing to do in and through us. We are so privileged and humbled to be able to live our dream here in Haiti, and as predicted, the people here are touching our lives just as much if not more than we are impacting them.

Tomorrow we will try to skype for the first time (from Haiti) with the grandparents.  That should be fun if it works.  We hope to get regular internet access in January and will blog more if we do.
 
May your 2011 be a great adventure!
 
God Bless,
Grimm Family Adventurers



Cory and Elizabeth find some nice shells