Happy Valentine's Day!

It's just another Sunday here...no one here in Haiti, at least in our area, celebrates the day, so it was rather quiet! We spent a quiet day reading and relaxing, it was raining which meant no visitors...which actually was really nice! Vilex was here most of the afternoon, but he's family...so that was nice too! I have to tell you a nice Valentine's story though. This morning we were drinking coffee on the porch and Steve told me Happy Valentine's Day... I said thanks, Happy Valentine's Day too....oh and thank you for the beautiful flowers. He smiled and said....did you like them? I said, yes, they are beautiful. He then said (smart aleck) what kind were they? I said, roses. He said, what color? I said, red of course, the color you always get me!!!! He laughed. This of course, as you have guessed was all hypothetical, since there are no FTD here or florists for that matter! It was a very, very nice thought though! We hope you all enjoyed your day with a loved one.. and that you were able to do something special together.....like go out to eat...yummmm.....okay so that is another thing we haven't done for months. We hope you all enjoyed it for us as well!

I try to go to the women's meetings on Tuesday mornings....like the ones that I have mentioned a few times. The ladies however meet much more often than that. They meet every Monday and Friday afternoon at one of the women's homes to pray for their homes specifically. They meet on Tuesday and Saturday mornings at the church to sing and pray and practice for their Sunday morning special music at least twice a month. They also meet with the rest of the church on Sunday afternoons and frequently during the week. It is amazing how much time they spend in prayer for each other, their church, their community and their country. I am always struck with the contrast between their prayer time and ours in the US. They spend so much time in prayer and praising God! When I went to the meeting last Tuesday, they all decided that it was my turn to have everyone come to my house and they chose Friday! So last Friday, 34 women came to our house at around 3:30 and stayed until 5:00. We all crowded into the big room....and used all the chairs we could find, even my small kitchen chairs...and we sang, prayed, read Psalms together and prayed some more. It was a wonderful time of fellowship and prayer. The entire time in prayer was for Steve and I, our families, New Life For Haiti, our work there in Marfranc and anything else that they know about us. It was a blessing and lifted us up! It made me realize that I need to spend more time in prayer....

Speaking of praying...Steve's back is still bothering him. We thought it was getting better, but this evening it is still bad. Would you please continue to keep him in prayer for the pain to ease up so that he can continue to get things done!

School has started again. Well, kind of! It was supposed to start last week, but I don't think very many kids came back. There was rain on Friday, so no one came to school. We are really hoping that tomorrow things will get back to normal. It rained all day today, so if it's rainy tomorrow, the kids won't show up! It just seems like things are just slow at getting started again. Tuesday is Mardi Gras, and normally there is no school all week, however Preval (the President of Haiti) has cancelled Mardi Gras for this year, so will see what happens at our local school. Schools in Jeremie and the state schools in our area still have not started....so the whole process is messed up! I'll keep you posted!

However....we will be busy the next two days. One of the big youth events that we started 2 years ago, was Mardi Gras camp for the Marfranc district. Some of you have donated to the youth activities that we started and some of that money is going to be used for our Mardi Gras camp. After the earthquake, when we heard that Preval had cancelled Mardi Gras, Vilex thought maybe he would cancel the Mardi Gras Camp. Last year it was 2 nights and 3 days, and they had a ball. Normally, everyone pays a small amount to come. We knew this year, no one would be able to afford it, but Vilex also said it was important to do it so that things were more normal. The youth need something to hang on to...to know things are going to be okay. So we decided that we had enough money to do a 1 night (2 day) camp and that they wouldn't have to pay anything. He gave each church the number of campers they could have attend, since it was free (we knew we would have 100 if we didn't limit it). So he made the limit 60, we knew we had enough money to do that. We also asked each church to help bring some of the food because they weren't paying money. So each church was assigned, either yams, plantains or fruit for juice. These are all things that are grown in the gardens in this area and would not cost anything to bring. Although we realize that the people donating would probably be selling or eating what was donated.

The 60 campers will stay in the dorm houses that are here at the camp (right next door to our house) and the meals will be cooked by some of the youth and also Mme. Asson (our cook) and probably Benit (our house cleaner) and hopefully several other women from the church. Vilex has a Police officer from Jeremie (who attends the Baptist church there) coming to talk to them and he will stay and eat with them on Monday. I have a craft project that I will be doing with anyone interested at some point during Monday or Tuesday. They will probably watch a movie on Monday night after their praise and worship service! They just love getting together and having a good time. It is one of the few social events in the area and the kids always look forward to it. These youth range from ages 15 to 30.....so it isn't like our youth group in the states. They are from 4 of our Baptist churches and a Faith of the Apostles church in Marfranc....a very wonderful and diverse group of Christian kids. I wish I could bottle up their love of the Lord and send it to all of you. If you could just hear them sing and praise God! It is so awesome.

Our beans are all given out...we think, ha! We bought and loaned out 348 mamits (or 4176 cups) of beans to over 60 families. We'll keep you posted on how the season ends up!

Thank you to those that donated to this project....everyone loves it and it helps so many people!

We have some things that were taken to Bluffton, Indiana this last week that we hope will arrive by container in a month or six weeks. LifeSpring Community church did a food drive for us and we hope this stuff comes on the next container! With this bunch of stuff is a sun oven!!! Yeah! Steve's sister, Amy, found a place on the internet that sells them and she sent me a link to look at. They get as hot as 375 to 400 degrees and there are pots to cook different things in as well bread and cookies! Our friend, Brian Zurita, lives about 45 min. away from the company that Amy found and on their website they talked about donating ovens to Haiti, so Brian decided to go and visit them! Long story short, he got a great discount on an oven, with 2 pots and Amy bought one for us along with cookies sheets, and bread pans and a cook book! When it arrives I'll let you know how we do with it. I think it will be fun to show Mme. Asson how it works, we'll have to see if we can cook beans and rice in one of the pots....or something! Wouldn’t' it be fun to start a new trend...no charcoal cooking. I doubt that it would ever totally replace charcoal, but it might slow down the consumption! I'll sure let you know.

We have also started to seriously look at a solar package to help us with our fuel costs. Currently, we pay almost $5 a gallon for diesel and over $6 for gasoline. Steve found a great solar package that would sustain our home here for about $8,000. This is everything, panels, batteries, inverter, all the hook ups etc. It is something we have been looking at for a while, but with the fuel shortage and high cost, it is really evident that the sun is FREE and we should be taking advantage of it since we live in the land of the sun!! So we will start a campaign to see if we can get this system and get it up and running! So many things in the works.....

You can see that at least the beginning of the week will be busy for us! We pray that you will have a great week! Please continue to keep us and the people here in your prayers. We'll get busy again on the cement probably the week after this...and we'll get you some more pictures! Thank you again for all of your love and prayers and financial help for the people in the Marfranc area. We really appreciate all that you do for us! You are awesome!

God Bless you all!

Joline & Steve