It’s easy to forget to say thank you. Someone gives you a piece of gum, or lets you cut in front of them, or gives you a gift, or helps you with a chore-you of course are thankful-but do we always say it? And really, when you do something nice for a friend or a stranger, don’t you just love it when they turn to you and say thank you?

I think it’s the same with God. How often in life do we forget to thank Him? I know I do, more than I realize or would care to admit. Sometimes I don’t even see a blessing for what it is because I can be so caught up in myself that I think I did it.  And that is the worst.

I think I may have shared already that I secretly-okay maybe not so secretely-have been dreading moving into this new house. The reasons are not important enough to list, but some were legit and some were lame. And because of that, I have not allowed myself to stop and look at this new place objectively. This house is large-embarrasingly huge-and therefore I feel a little guilty. Yes it is completely necessary because we do house teams here and we need the land for our containers and supplies. In addition to the fact that it’s a steal for a place so big with property.

My point being I was gently reminded by a dear friend that the Lord does indeed want to bless us in our lives. And when he does bless us, we can’t forget to thank Him for them. Seems simple right? But like I said before, I can sometimes forget to thank Him for the blessing He graciously showers on me. And this house feels like a blessing. Ever since I’ve allowed myself to see it as such, I find my attitude and perspective has changed. As I’m enjoying little and big things around this house, I am now able to thank the Lord openly and genuinely for His blessings. I am so grateful to that friend, who through sharing her life experiences about blessings and thankfulness, allowed my eyes to be opened anew to the blessings of the Lord. And I am wandering around this new place with a new perspective-and a heart full of thanksgiving.

And so I’d like you to see for yourself some of our real life blessing in the form of vegetation…

 

 

 

It’s sad saying goodbye to visitors, especially ones like Todd. He’s so laid back, such a great help, and super fun to be around. Poor guy had to put up with us for two whole weeks though! He came to do electrical work-which he did and did an amazing job-but also helped with so many other things too. The interesting part is he helped us moved into our old place in Port de Paix, and somehow came just in time to help us move into this new place. It was so nice to have an extra pair of hands around though! At the last place he had to put together his bed, this place he helped Brandon put together our couch. The last place he did all the electrical for the OTB kitchen, this place he put together our generator, batteries, then hung a billion lights and fans. We did give him a break though… on Sunday we took him to the private island we discovered months ago with our dear friends Curtis and Danielle-he of course loved it-and we had a great day relaxing. He really wanted to go and see the citadel, because it’s amazing, but we were running out of time. Seeing the citadel was pretty much the only thing he asked to do, and so how could we not make it happen? But, having just moved into the new house, Brandon and I felt like we had too much unpacking and work to do to take off another day. The solution? We asked a Haitian friend, Claynel, to take him. We didn’t know if he would want to go without us, but when he found out that going with just him and Claynel meant that he could ride a motorcycle up to the top, he was ready to go! Being the good friends that we are, we packed him some snacks and water and sent him on his way. I know, it sounds awful but Claynel has been to the citadel about 50 times with groups, so he knows his way around pretty well. And, he’s a super good and trust worthy guy so we knew he was in good hands.

It was great to have him. It’s always nice to have visitors, and especially familiar faces too. Todd loves Haiti, even when we lived in dusty Port de Paix where our neighbors burned trashed three times a day on all sides of us, when we had to ride tap taps everywhere, where we had power just a few odd hours during they day and night, when our house was all concrete with no breeze and see through screen walls,  and we had hardly any fresh food at all. After all that, he still loved it and came back to visit! So he really appreciated all the new luxuries we have now like fresh squeezed juice, and electricity almost all the time, and our own vehicle to ride in with air conditioning!!, and the beautiful balconies with a lovely breeze…and on and on the list goes. I will tell you one thing, we are so thankful we started in a place like Port de Paix in the exact place we were in, because it has made us really enjoy and appreciate all the newest luxurious that much more.

There are mice/rats/creepy things living here. Since no one lived here for a long time, the place was very overgrown and because of that, many crawly things have been living here without anything to kill them.

To battle this we did two things:

1. Bought a cat. We don’t like cats-sorry you cat freaks- but they are great for killing mice and rodents. This cat is a bit wild, or rather a lot wild. We’ve had her now since the day we moved in, and are hoping she’ll do her job! For now, we’re just giving her all sorts of tasty food so she won’t run away. By the way, turns out Todd is the cat whisper. He cracked me up with his skills! He loves cats, so we’ve been so thankful for his help with her the last few days! It was his idea to lock her in a room and feed her tons so she knows where to go for food, he made her a litter box and she used it right away, he started petting her and loving on her which amazed me because she hissed at anything and everything before that! Anyway, I hope she’ll get to eating some mice!

2. We got sticky traps. The old fashioned sling back ones are not easy to find, so we just bought what we could. We set them up two days before we moved in, hoping to take care of the mouse problem before we set up residence. We came back the next day and checked all the traps.. and would you know we had two finding! One had some hair in it-obvously the rat was too big to get stuck. The other one had something stuck to it alright, but it was no rodent. It was the biggest spider we ever saw. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. I actually started gagging and tears were rolling down my eyes ( I thought of you Melissa and Casey-how you guys have such a terrible gag reflex that everyone finds hilarious when in fact you yourselves hate it-and for once I realized how you felt! How you can’t even control it and you just keep gagging while Todd and Brandon were cracking up!!) It wasn’t just the size of this beast, but the girth. We’ve seen-and I have personally killed-spiders as larger as him, but they were much thinner. This one was so huge that I actually looked Brandon straight in the face and told him I don’t want to move here! He and Todd hardly noticed my ramblings as they picked it up to get a closer inspection. Turns out, it wasn’t dead, it was just stuck! So here Todd is holding the thing, it started to move a few legs, he freaked out and tossed it in the air and I started gagging again! I wish I would have never seen that awful movie, Aracnaphobia, all those years ago. Even though we didn’t sleep at the new house that night, it was hard to fall asleep!