A Little of This and That



The kids at Antoine's wedding


Family and Friends,

Day 153 of our Haiti Adventure!

Sorry we have been out-of-touch for so long, but hopefully in the next few days we will be able to share several new blog posts with you.  Thanks as always for your prayers.  We are doing well!  Below is a few thoughts from Cory's journal a few days ago.  Enjoy!

There is excitement around the orphanage compound, because a couple of days ago Patchouko returned from Port-au-Prince with a new motorcycle. He and I went in on it together and will share it for now. It is a Chinese-made motorcycle, which are plentiful here. We’ll see how long it lasts. They do have Hondas here for quite a bit more money, and everyone knows they are the best kind around, but almost no one can actually afford them, including us!

The kids had a good time this morning chasing Tatsi around the yard. She is a funny little 8-year-old girl from down the road. She had lunch with us as well. All of them are excited about the tea party going on later this afternoon. They will all gather in the clubhouse and share whatever snacks they can assemble. They are talking about making some sort of fruit juice that requires powdered milk, extra sugar, and some other strange ingredients. I’m sure they will have fun and make a nice, big mess.

It is starting to get really hot during the days, and it only cools off to about 80 degrees at night now. Thankfully, we have a wall fan we can plug into a battery system which is charged during the day by a solar panel on the roof. That is going to really be nice as we get into the truly hot days of May. We are anticipating the rainy season as well, so the tag-team of muggy and hot will team up to try to defeat us soon. We will prevail!

Hard to believe it is only about 8 weeks until we return to the US. We are getting close to the 5-month mark of living here. Looking back we absolutely believe it was the right decision to come when we did. God was totally at work in that decision, guiding us. We are looking forward to the chance to go back, visit family and speak in churches, and come back refreshed for another year in Haiti. It will be hard to leave everyone here for a few months, but we pray God will use this summer to strengthen our love for these people even more.

Soon we will move into the old orphanage building and begin to mold it into a home for our family. The first task will be to make it more wheelchair accessible. The building is comprised of a large, central meeting room which serves as kitchen and dining room, and four bedrooms off of that middle room. Unfortunately, all four bedrooms are either up or down a couple of steps. The plan is to fill in the two lower rooms with sand and cement and make them level with the central room. For now the upper rooms will remain inaccessible to Lynn unless I am there to move her on the stairs or she crawls through the door. It won’t be ideal, but it will be a considerable increase in living space and a lot more privacy than staying in the Mission House, especially when teams come to visit.

After that project is done the big push before next fall will be to get better electricity, internet access, and if we really dream big, a flush toilet for Lynn to use! That would help her a lot, and it would allow me to be gone longer during the day. Mike Plasier is working with us to talk through what that would take, and Pam’s dad might be able to do a lot of the work this summer when he comes to work here.

Last night we were sitting near the orphanage, watching a movie on a tiny, portable DVD player with the other kids. Up sauntered a full-grown Tarantula to say, “Hello.” Everyone jumped out of their seats. There was a pause in the action as the tarantula stopped and everyone looked at each other to see what would happen next. At this point Alexandra’s little voice broke the silence. “I’m going back to my house now,” she said as she turned and ran away. It was really funny. Then I took a big rock and sent the Tarantula to spider heaven. We also had a scorpion in the house the other day. That was a first, and hopefully a last!


Enjoy Your Adventure with God this week!
-The Grimm Family Adventurers