Family and Friends,
Day 121 of our Haiti Adventure!
We haven’t posted for quite some time, so I guess there is some explaining to do. Sometimes the adventure gets so adventurous you don’t even have time to sit down and think, much less write out a coherent thought to pass on to everyone back home. To make a long story short, the big team had a great week here, some surprise guests came along with them, most of a house was constructed, clinics were carried out all over, a successful men’s retreat occurred, people were taught to sew diapers for babies, demons were cast out, several individuals dedicated their lives to Christ, John left with his Mom, team members were present when someone in the village died and another was born within hours of each other, and I (Cory) spent a big chunk of the week sick in bed.
Let me start at the beginning and give you a slightly more elongated version of all that. This will take a few posts, so check back in the days to come...
The team had a hard time getting here on their first day. Pam had used up all of the pages in her passport…too many stamps! So they sent the whole team over to the US Embassy to get some details worked out and it ended up taking four extra hours. The team just sat there on the bus in Port-au-Prince waiting to travel out to Ti-Rivier. I hear there are some funny pictures of the men finding creative places along the road in the city to use as a toilet, including one of the surprise guests I will mention later. When in Rome… Finally they were on their way and enjoyed an uneventful trip the rest of the way.
Back here at the compound we were setting up tents and keeping the food warm for the team, with occasional phone calls from Pam to let us know how they were progressing. Despite the extra time we still didn’t manage to have the kids ready in time to go down to the road and watch for the bus. I was still bathing the kids when the group arrived. As we emerged from the shower we saw the first members of the team coming into the orphanage compound with the normal sound of suitcases being dragged over gravel.
We really hadn’t done a good job of communicating with Pam about the names of the people of this team, which set up the surprise nicely. Normally we have a better idea of who is coming so we can pray for them and look forward to seeing old friends or fellow members of previous Mission Haiti trips. But this time we just knew the team was big, had many projects going on, etc… So I was pretty surprised when I glance up and saw a familiar blond woman walking quickly up to the meeting tent where Lynn was waiting. I said to the kids, “Looks like we have a surprise team member.”
The surprise team member walked up to Lynn, and I think her reaction was to ask, “What?” It was her sister Cora! Then as the crowd continued to enter the yard we saw surprise team member number two…Cora’s husband Marlon! Lynn said, “You too?” Someone captured the whole event on video, so it will be fun to see that sometime and we’ll try to post it on the blog when we return to the states this summer. We were truly surprised. Somehow Pam and all of our family members managed to keep the whole thing a secret.
We were really happy to see Marlon and Cora. We knew Cora was planning to visit at some point with a team, but we weren’t thinking about the possibility of both coming the first time. I guess the whole thing just came together perfectly. Lynn’s parents had a good week in their schedule to watch Marlon and Cora’s three kids back home, so that was crucial. Also, it worked out good for them to be on a team which involved medical clinics, because Cora is a nurse. The team also had construction and men’s ministry, and Marlon was able to use his experience to get involved in both of those projects.
It was an especially timely week and a gift of God for the pleasant surprise to occur, because I got pretty sick and Lynn appreciated the extra help around the house with the kids and emotional support. As mentioned several times on this blog, the weeks when teams visit get pretty crazy around here. So it was pretty special to experience the whole thing side-by-side with our family members. Part two will share more of the adventures we experienced these past few days!
Thanks as always for your prayers!
-The Grimm Family Adventurers
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