Mission Haiti Neighborhood Characters: PETERSON



Craig (Mike and Pam's son) and Antoine at the wedding
(see post, Mission Haiti Neighborhood Characters: ANTOINE)

 Family and Friends,

Please enjoy the latest installment of the Mission Haiti Neighborhood Characters series.  This time it is about a twelve-year-old who hangs around quite a bit, Peter.  We'll try to post a photo of him soon.  Enjoy!

PETERSON

I used to call Peterson “the 11th orphan”, because for a long time we had ten kids in the orphanage, but Peterson always spent most of the day here as well and pretty much lived here. Then we got an actual 11th person, John, so I didn’t call Peterson that anymore. But now John has left, so I’m back to calling Peterson “the 11th orphan” again.

Peterson, or Peter as most people call him, reminds me of how you might imagine some boy who works on a Pirate ship running errands and making announcements for the captain. He is twelve years old, and his voice is very, very loud. He is also very adept at climbing. I’m sure he could shimmy up any ship’s mast in ten seconds flat as he regularly climbs any and every tree around this neighborhood. From there the crew of several hundred would have no trouble hearing the orders of the pirate captain as Peterson calls them out. He also has a knack for learning every little skill and word and game, and no doubt he is destined for great things, just as that boy on the Pirate ship is destined to be Captain himself one day.

Kester and Peter are pretty much best friends now, though they get on each others’ nerves as both of them are overly competitive. Sometimes Peter just gets frustrated because Kester is only 7, I think. But they spend countless hours playing games, kicking around the soccerball and other balls, messing around in the yard, etc… Peter is learning English really fast and has a good chance to truly be fluent some day as do the other kids in the orphanage.

Sometimes I wonder if Peter’s mom is at home wondering where he is at any given moment in the day. One day I asked him about that. I said, “Peter, doesn’t your mom ever wonder what you are doing all day?” He said, “No. She just knows that if I go home she has to feed me. I just know that if I go home I have to do chores, especially hauling water, so it is just better to stay here most of the time”, or something along those lines. Once of twice a week he hands Lynn a piece of bread he managed to buy down on the street. It is understood that we will hand it back to him with peanut butter and jelly. He needs a little skin on his bones!

When Jeri Kraai of Rock Valley, Ia. came down here recently, she taught a group of people to sew diapers for the babies in the community. It wasn’t the women or the men who learned the fastest. It was Peter! After that we had him make a little rug to use as a pad for our bench out on the porch. He could probably make a lot of other things, too. He is a little entrepreneur in the making. He sold us part of his pig at Christmas time and countless supplies of bananas and peanuts.


May Your Adventure be filled with Characters!
-The Grimm Family Adventurers

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

A Perplexing Case Study

Family and Friends,

Day 145 of our Haiti Adventure!

We are all doing very well down here in Haiti.  Today we will have a few English classes, youth group, and leadership training.  Tomorrow we will enjoy church, Men's Promise Keepers group, and hopefully a quiet and relaxing evening.  Should be a great weekend of ministry!  Check out the case study below and please feel free to write a comment as a response...

*THIS POST MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN*

Back in my seminary years we students used to spend time talking through various scenarios that tend to pop up in ministry and trying to decide how we would handle them if confronted with a similar situation. We called these “case studies.” Oftentimes it was very difficult to know what action would be best to take. Two days ago we were thrown into a very challenging, real-life situation and had to make some quick decisions. I won’t tell you what we decided to do, or how it all ended, but will instead present the story to you and let you think about what you yourself would have done.


CASE STUDY

After returning from the market I saw Gertrude (director of the orphanage) sitting under the meeting tent with a young teenage girl. I could tell they were talking about something serious. A little while later Gertrude asked to talk to me and explained what was going on.

The girl came to the orphanage because she was scared of her step-father. She is fourteen years old and a classmate with some of our orphanage girls, and she told us she either wanted to be accepted in the orphanage or she was going to run away to her real father in Port-au-Prince. She explained that while the mom was gone to the mother class at the clinic the other day, the step-father told her that he wanted to have sex with her. She was afraid to tell this to her mom, and the step-father had warned her that if she did so, he would kill her.

Gertrude and I talked the situation over a little bit and agreed that we wouldn’t send the girl back home right away. Instead, we would try to find some way to talk with the mom and let her know what was going on. Our hope was that the mom would protect her daughter and not let her run away to Port-au-Prince, but also not let her get into a bad situation with the step father. Our plan was for myself and Patchouko or Antoine to go to the house, sit down with the parents, and confront the situation.

However, later in the day when I came back from some other appointment, I discovered that the girl was gone. Gertrude explained that she had decided to go home. Darline (a neighborhood girl who works here) walked with her and was supposed to talk to the mom, but when they got close to the house the girl told Darline she didn’t want to go through with it. So Darline came back to the orphanage.

At this point we had to make some decisions. I kept thinking about how the girl might be in danger, and I didn’t feel good about letting her go back to that situation without some kind of confrontation. She had reached out to us for help, and even if she was losing her courage now as she thought about everything, we should still take what she said seriously and follow up on it right away. So Gertrude, Antoine, and I headed up the thirty minute hike to their house.

When we got there the girl ran off into the woods, because she must have known what we were going to do. After a little while they were able to coax her back down to the house, and we all sat down to talk, including her mother, step-father, and an aunt. I explained, with Antoine translating, that their daughter had come to our house asking for help, and we wanted to talk with the family about what she said to us because we were concerned. Then I asked the girl if she would repeat what she had said so that her parents could hear it.

She wouldn’t say anything but just sat there in silence. Finally I asked Gertrude to tell the parents what the girl had said about her step-father. Gertrude spoke for a long time, and I couldn’t follow everything she said, but I could tell the parents were getting pretty worked up. The dad then launched into a long explanation about how his step-daughter was sneaking around with boys after school, and he was having to beat her a lot, and how she was now trying to accuse him of things. The girl continued to sit there blank faced and quiet. The dad said something about how he didn’t want the daughter to live there anymore, but the mom countered with, “If she goes, I go” or something like that.

After a little bit of going back and forth, most of which I wasn’t following, Antoine pulled me aside and explained that Gertrude hadn’t divulged the information about the girl’s accusation of attempted sexual abuse, but had only alluded to the girl being afraid of her step-father because of the beatings. Gertrude was reluctant to put the more serious allegation out there on the table, because she figured the girl was already headed for the beating of her life and that would only make it worse for her. So Antoine and I talked a little more and then went back to the gathering of people and said….

So what would you do in this situation?


May Your Adventure be filled with perplexing choices today as you carry each others' burdens, all for the glory of God!

-The Grimm Family Adventurers

Update on Esperansia, the girl who was attacked

Since the day of the tragic events involving Esperansia we have gained more information about the whole incident. For one thing she was able to receive surgery on both her hand and her head the very next day in Port-au-Prince, so that was fortunate. Both Kiki and Patchouko have had a chance to visit with her. Patchouko showed us some pictures. From what we hear she is beginning to gradually get better physically each hour. The emotional recovery will undoubtedly continue long past the time the final bandage is removed.

Some of us went over to her family’s house yesterday to encourage them and pray together. They seemed pretty wiped out by the whole thing. We walked over and saw where the attack took place, and there was blood on the ground. Seeing that scene somehow made the whole thing more real. It was a little bit creepy.

We also learned the identity of the attacker, and he is a young man who was sort of a fringe member of the youth group. That was very sad to hear. I’m sure it must have been difficult for Pam, because she has known many of these people for the past fifteen years or so. That means this young man and young woman were little kids when she started coming here. To watch them grow up and get into this kind of trouble would be hard. That day will come for us, too, if we stay here long enough. And how can you ever see anything like this coming? As Antoine said, “Nothing surprises me anymore. Anyone can snap at any time. How can you protect your family from something like that?” I said, “I guess you just pray, trust God, and keep your eyes and ears open at all times.”

We will continue to keep tabs on the whole situation and post another update at some point, probably after Esperansia comes home to be with her family. We should also pray for her attacker, wherever he might be at this time, to be found by the police instead of the mob, serve his time in prison, and somehow be changed by God and given a chance at forgiveness and a new life sometime in the distant future. Without God murder is in all of our hearts. By His grace may He have mercy on us all and change us through the washing of Christ’s blood. That is truly our only hope.

Keep Praying and Trusting God!
-The Grimms

Elizabeth's Unforgetable Birthday

Family and Friends,

Day 144 of our Haiti Adventure!

It is going to be difficult to limit this story to a post or two. While we were in the midst of this day (March 30) there was a couple of points where I said to myself, “How in the world am I going to summarize this for the blog?” You really couldn’t even make up the things that happened on Elizabeth’s birthday. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. It was a real adventure, and God was at work in the midst of it all.

The day got off to a discouraging start in some ways. We were getting ready to go to Port Salut, a nearby small city with a great beach, but the kids were absolutely trying our patience. They were whining, fighting, and crying at every little thing. When they had an extended argument about where to sit in the car, I nearly called off the whole trip. We finally got situated and headed down the road. We were accompanied by Chelo, our good friend and able translator.

The drive to Port Salut was absolutely beautiful. The road is paved and nice, and it winds gradually up and through the mountains, revealing a majestic view of the western side of Haiti. It is the kind of drive you imagine taking with a nice little sportscar convertible. The beach we went to actually faces towards Jamaica and Cuba. Lynn & Alexandra got a little car sick, but we had a good time traveling to Port Salut.

We were looking for a resort/restaurant called Dan’s Creek which was said to be run by some Haitians who spent a couple of decades in the US. Apparently they serve burgers and other American food, which really sounds good these days! They also have a pool and secluded, private beach. We found the place and Chelo and I went inside to check it out.

We were warned by the missionaries who told us about this place that it was a little spendy, but I wasn’t prepared for what the lady at the desk was going to say. I asked her about having lunch and swimming in the pool. She told me it would cost $10 for each adult and $5 for each kid to go to the pool for a total of $45. These prices are in American, not Haitian currency. I’m thinking to myself about how last summer I paid $25 in Sioux Falls for a summer-long pass for the whole family for all five of the pools in town which come with slides, kiddie-pools, etc...

Then we asked about the food. She described a little bit of what they had and assured us that if we spent over $100 she would waive the fee for swimming in the pool. Ouch! We went back to the car to talk it over with Lynn. We decided we would wait to have our burgers until this summer when we return to the US. After all, the beautiful beach we just passed by is free! I drove out of the parking lot wondering who exactly their clientele would include. I mean, how many Americans, much less Haitians, plan on spending over $100 for lunch? Strange, really.

So we went back to the beautiful beach and had a good time. There is a restaurant down there, but after looking at their menu, we decided the food they were offering sounded a lot like the food we were trying to get away from back home! So we just ordered some cokes and sprites and enjoyed some chips and granola snacks we had brought with us. Skipping lunch turned out to be a good decision for a couple of reasons. Several of us had stomachaches on the way home which the food would have only made worse, and I didn’t know it yet but I was going to need the money in my bag for the second half of the day.

We headed back home across the mountains and looked forward to spending a quiet day of baking brownies and a pizza for Elizabeth’s supper and enjoying her new computer game, “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego,” which she got as a present. However, we weren’t sitting there long before Antoine came in the yard and said to Sue, “You’ve got a patient down at the clinic, and it looks bad.”

Sue went down to the clinic to check out what was going on. Normally the clinic closes at 1PM, and it was a little bit later than that at this point, so we figured it must be some sort of emergency. After a few minutes Antoine came back and told me we needed to drive the girl to Les Cayes to the hospital emergency room. Time to put the ambulance driver hat back on. I grabbed the bag I had taken with us to the beach, because I knew it still had my ID and some money, and jumped in the car.

I drove to the clinic and found a huge crowd of people gathered there. I backed up to the door and Sue came out and told me what was going on. A young woman in the community, Esperansia Damas (age 22), had been attacked by her boyfriend with a machete. She had a bad laceration on the back of her head and on both hands. In fact, one of the hands was almost cut off completely. Sue said it was mostly dangling by skin. Obviously she was bleeding a lot and needed to be taken immediately to the hospital.

We laid out some towels and a tarp in the car, got loaded up with the patient, a few family members, Sue, Antoine, and myself. I drove quickly but carefully to the city and headed down the now-familiar streets to the ER. This time when we arrived it wasn’t too busy, which was nice. There was a little girl on a cart shrieking as she got stitches for something, but other than that we weren’t fighting the traffic.

We carried the girl inside and got her situated on a stretcher. She wasn’t passed out or anything, but not completely coherent either. When Sue had asked her if she needed pain medication at the clinic she said, “I’m alright.” Wow, these people are tough. Some technicians and nurses came over and began the examination. It wasn’t too long before they could tell they needed extra help.

Pretty soon a couple of off-duty doctors drove up on motorcycles to help assess the situation. After gaining better access to the head laceration by shaving away some hair we could all see that it was much worse than we had thought. It was very deep and possibly into the bone and affecting the brain. The hand was in sad shape as well, and the doctors agreed they were going to have to transfer her to Port-au-Prince for blood transfusions and a more thorough examination by a neurosurgeon.

All this time they kept sending Antoine and me to buy the necessary supplies for the patient. This is how it works in Haiti. When they need anything, I mean anything, from a bandage to medication to a syringe, they write a prescription for it and you have to go buy it from the pharmacy. Amazing. Conveniently, the hospital pharmacy (which consists of one small cabinet and a fridge) was closed for the day at mid-afternoon, so we were literally out wandering down gravel roads with open sewers, looking in nearby pharmacies for the supplies. It was surreal. I could see God at work, though, because the cost of the supplies she needed came out to almost exactly what I had in my bag after our missed lunch earlier in the day. If we had bought lunch, especially at the fancy restaurant, I wouldn’t have been able to buy medicine and bandages. Thanks, Lord, for making me Dutch!

The next problem was to find an ambulance to take her to Port-au-Prince. At first they were having trouble with this, so then we got on the phone to ask Pam if we should just drive her there and meet Kiki, our main contact in Port, for extra help. Pam agreed to send us and assured us she would find some way to cover the cost of the medication, gas, hospital bills, etc… Right about that time, however, an ambulance driver was found, so we were off the hook. He saw us and asked for an exorbitant price to take the girl, but we negotiated it down a little bit. I wish we had gotten him lower on it, but we were in a hurry at this point.

We still don’t know what happened to her the rest of that day and through the night as she road all the way to Port-au-Prince and hopefully got help there. Pam was planning to work with Kiki to get everything paid for. We are anxiously awaiting more news. As we drove back into the village late that afternoon it was memorable to see faces on both sides of the road looking towards Les Cayes, waiting for us to return. A few hundred people were out talking along both sides of the road, just like back home in small-town American when everyone gabs at the end of their driveways whenever something crazy happens in town.

Sue had blood all over her dress, and she was ready for a shower. It was a joy to see her at work, because you could tell that she truly loves these people and will do anything for them. She and Antoine make a great team, and I always enjoy tagging along to help in any way possible. After all that action I was ready for some peace and quiet, and some special time with Elizabeth.

The rest of the day was uneventful other than enjoying the pizza (with only parmesan cheese, which was surprisingly good) and brownies and some time of playing cards and hanging out with the kids and a few neighborhood characters. Rumors were flying around the village at this point about everything that had happened. For one thing we are waiting to hear if the boyfriend will survive or not. People here take their own retribution when something like that happens, so he is probably on the run or hiding.

We finally collapsed in our beds, thought about and prayed for Esperansia, and thanked God for letting us play some small role in helping the people here. Every day is an adventure in Haiti, and Elizabeth’s birthday was even more so than usual! Like I said, you really can’t make this stuff up.

One thing I want to make clear in this post is that I got reimbursed from our medical fund for the money I personally spent for the patient. This is a good opportunity, though, to put in a plug for that fund which is administered by Sue and Pam. This particular emergency, for example, will probably wipe out our medical budget for a couple of months. With Sue’s new role as a full-time nurse down here we are looking for regular supporters to give to the medical needs of the people here, which are extensive. If you are interested in partnering with us in this way, please speak with Pam our Director or send a gift to the address listed to the right, designating it for the “medical fund.” Thanks!


God Bless You and Yours!
-The Grimm Family Adventurers

Mission Haiti Neighborhood Characters: ANTOINE

Family and Friends,

Day 141 of our Haiti Adventure!

There are many aspects of Haiti that make this land memorable and endearing. However, almost everyone who has come here would agree with the statement that the best part of Haiti is the people. There are some real characters here, and I want to use this blog to tell you the stories of five of them over the course of the next few posts. The five I have chosen are simply a handful of the people who spend time in, around, or near our property on a daily basis. If people enjoy this short series maybe we will continue to tell more stories about the characters here including the stories of each kid in the orphanage, the stories of the staff members, the stories of key figures who work for us, etc…

So in the spirit of Mr. Rogers and his tradition of introducing his audience to the people of the neighborhood, we begin with…

ANTOINE

I thought it would be fun to begin with Antoine, because he just got married this past Saturday right here in the orphanage compound. It was an unforgettable event! With Antoine everything is an adventure, so the past few days were just like normal.

Antoine was born in Haiti and spent the first part of his childhood here for something like seven years. After that his family immigrated to Connecticut to start a new life. They were always a church-going family, but adjusting to life in the US was difficult at times. Somewhere in Antoine’s teenage years and/or early adulthood he got headed in the wrong direction. To make a long story short, after living in the US for 26 years he was deported on drug-related charges. That was about four or five years ago. His family remains in Connecticut.

I’ve never asked him to give any more details about any crimes he may have committed in the past, but it really doesn’t seem important anymore when you look at what God has been doing in his life. After spending some time in the prison in Port-au-Prince, Antoine decided to give his life more fully to Christ. He says jail put the fear of God in him. He was soon released and moved back to Ti-Rivier to live with his grandmother and start a new life.

When he moved back here he effectively had to re-learn the Creole language. You would never know that now, because Antoine is a very passionate teacher, tutor, translator and overall communicator. He has a way of getting kids excited about learning. Most afternoons he works with the kids in the orphanage on their French and Creole lessons, and he teaches English on the weekends. He also plays a very important role whenever teams come down here as one of our best translators.

I call Antoine “the bridge”, because he is truthfully the only person around here (besides Adrien) who completely understands both the American and the Haitian cultures. He told me the other day that when he came back here, at first people called him “Blanc” (white person).  He looks like a normal black person, but he had to reacclimate to the local culture and earn the right to be “Haitian” again. Now he is well-respected both in the community and in Mission Haiti. Pam absolutely trusts him with the kids, with money, and with any type of work that needs to be done.

The best thing about Antoine is his sense of humor. Many a team member has left here armed with funny stories about things Antoine did or said during the trip. For example, Sue has plenty of funny stories about Antoine making funny faces when he has to translate in the clinic regarding any kind of feminine issues. Also, he loves to purposefully murder various languages, especially Spanish and Chinese. His shouts of “Que paso, mi amigo?” and “No problemo!” can be heard all over the village. I think some of the kids around here really believe Antoine can speak every language!

So this past Saturday Antoine got married to Jesula, a local girl from the nearby mountain area. We have enjoyed getting to know them and pray they will do well as a married couple and as a Father and Mother.  Like I said it was a memorable event, and nearly everyone who attended got food poisoning as well!  Some of the food was cooked a couple of days earlier and brought from Port-au-Prince, apparently.

The team members who came to visit had a great time, and right now they should be arriving back in Sioux Falls.  We pray all of you are doing well back home, and just know that we are blessed down here in Haiti and enjoying all of the great relationships with neighborhood characters like Antoine.

Many Blessings on Your Adventure!
-The Grimm Family Adventurers

Glimpses of Joy

Family and Friends,

Day 134 of our Haiti Adventure!

A special shout-out to my sister Molly, who turns 29 today.  Happy birthday!

JOY (n.)-  A deep sense of fulfillment and wholeness in Christ that goes way beyond your everyday feelings of happiness.  Can cause laughter and tears simultaneously.

Lately we have begun to get these brief moments of seeing what our future could look like here in Haiti.  I call these "glimpses of joy" for lack of  a better term.  For just a moment we can imagine a little image of what God could do here in our lives and the lives of the people around  us.  These glimpses usually come when our kids are playing happily with the kids in the orphanage, or when I'm out roaming the village and enjoy a conversation with someone where I actually understand a little bit of what he/she is saying.  There is something big and powerful and meaningful and life-changing wiating here for us if we are willing to persevere and trust God to do His work in and though us.

There is a price to pay, however, in order to reestablish yourselves in a completely different cultural context.  You have to gradually give up little dreams and expectations for your life you might not have even realized were lurking there.  For example, I have always wanted to live in a big old house with wood floors, and to enjoy a cold winter night near the fire or a hot summer day out on the shady, wrap-around porch.  That isn't going to happen if we stay here.  The dream has to die, and there is a kind of mourning that takes place in your soul as you let that personal expectation die.

A better and more important example is all of the activities and opportunities our kids might have had back in the states.  I guess there is a part of me that always imagined my kids would one day play on sports teams or participate in the marching band, the choir, some drama team, or whatever else there is out there to do.  If we stay here long enough, they will miss out on all of those things, and we will miss out on seeing them do it as parents.  Maybe some missionaries are able to say goodbye to those things the moment they board the plane for wherever, but I have found it to be more of a gradual process over the course of time as God draws these desires to the surface to be dealt with.

I know what some of you might be thinking.  You might say, "You aren't missing much here.  We go back and forth to activities day and night, and we wish we could find a way out of this vicious cycle."  I appreciate that sentiment, I really do.  But it is still hard to give all of our cultural expectations for our kids completely.  And yet if that is what God is calling us to do, we are trusting that the benefits will outweight the sacrifices, if not in this life, then in the next. 

The great thing lately, like I said, is that already after 4-5 months here we can catch a tiny glimpse of the amazing plan God has for us in Haiti.  I just pray we can stay true to our calling and manage to discern and obey what God wants us to do.  Part of that involves undertaking the painstaking process of letting go of our own dreams and expectations and fully embracing God's plan, whatever that may be.  If we can do that, anything is possible. 

May Your Adventure be filled with JOY!
-Grimm Family Adventurers