It was so fun to have this team here!! Each morning they went downstairs to the kitchen and helped. They would spend about two hours helping cut bags of food, wash dishes and buckets, stir the food, and ladle it into the buckets. It was funny to see our two cooks interact with them! At first they were unsure of anyone else coming into “their” kitchen, but it didn’t take long for them to love the excitement, help and enthusiasm of the team!!

Yes, there is a reason I haven’t posted in about a week.. I’ve been sick. Down for the count, not keeping track of any life outside our room. In fact, when I finally emerged from my cave, I dripped sweat non stop all day as my body readjusted to life away from our small a/c unit! Uh. By Saturday I was finally feeling normal again. And, ready for our team that was going to be here.

We are so excited to have visitors!!!! Especially since we know and love all of them!! Our pastor,who we’ve known forever and just love, from the Carlsbad venue at NCC, JD, and his son CJ are here. Eric, a great friend and who is starting up another kitchen with OTB in Tijuana with his wonderful wife and new baby girl, also came to check things out.. A sweet couple Annette and Chris (we met Annette at the Perspectvies Class at NCC and she was instrumental as we began to figure out what God had for us and missions) and sweet Darchelle who we met just recently and think she has a heart of gold. They all landed in Haiti on Friday-ya they all made it here safely!!-and half were going to spend a few days in PAP while the other half were going to fly straight up here. Brandon left Friday to meet them all and get them to the proper places. Well, since this is Haiti (our new motto, TIH) we got them all at the airport Saturday, sent the three off to an orphange close by, and went to wait with the other three at the airport. They waited from 9am-4pm until Tortug finally told them they only had one working plane and the 80 or so people needing to get to pdp were just going to have to try another day. !!!!  So, they left. And tried to get a hotel , but they were all booked!! So, thankfully, God provided and they were able to go to the same orphanage the other three were at! After much needed sleep, the next day they decided it was going to be another waste of a day to try to fly up Sunday, and that the whole team could just come up together Monday am.

Today is Monday, and they were all supposed to be here by 11:30. Finally, they got here at 3:30. Whew! They are beaten down  and tired but man they are such good sports! They arrived with smiling, sweating faces.. and what a happy sight!! How wonderful and refreshing to see familiar faces, brothers and sisters in Christ! I am already so encouraged by them and they’ve just been here a few hours! More details and pictures to come….

It’s safe to say the hospital is usually a sad, depressing, not where you’d like to go for fun on a nice Sunday afternoon kind of place. Would you agree?  Most of us go when we are forced to succum to our own problems or illness, or even worse we know and love someone who is there because they need to be. It is no different here in Haiti. Except that here, you don’t get the luxury of privacy, a clean environment, the ‘hospital’ food, clean water, a/c, and many other things. Some new friends of ours that live across the street from us teach at a school, and they have been visiting the hospital in their spare time. We have gone with them a few times, simply to talk to, share with, and touch the sick patients. Then we all got to thinking, and wondered what would happen if we showed up with some food. Since we happen to have huge pots that can cook a lot of food, we simply asked our wonderful cooks to add in another two buckets of food so we could take them to the hospital. We have no idea if this is something the hospital could participate in (by being able to donate) or would want to. But we thought we’d just show up and see how it went.

I’m not sure I could say if it was a success or a failure really. The first room we went into was a post op room with about 20 patients. We walked in and said we had some rice and beans if anyone was hungry.  Oh man, the looks we got! There were five well-to-do Haitians there and they immediately sprang on us. Not knowing we spoke Creole they sassed us by asking for chicken and fish too, and how about a drink, and this and that. We tried to ignore them as we went to the other patients and asked if they wanted food. Three did. One man ate his portion so fast we gave him another one. Off to next room-only to find one of the vocal ‘fantastic five’ followed us.  The patients in this room were a little more excited for food (as were their families staying with them) and we passed out about ten plates. Then we went off to the maternity section. A few of those ladies wanted food, but the real appreciative ones were all the dads waiting in the hallway. Soon, we had a line forming, since we had so much food to give out we were giving it to both patients and friends or family visiting. That could have been a mistake considering it was them who then followed us to the next three sections asking for more and more food and even our buckets. They wouldn’t give up! The last room we visited was the children. There were parents of the kids camped out there, meaning their kids have pry been there for a decent amount of time. They were grateful for the food and went back to sleeping on the floor.  We gave away about 3 buckets of food, which is about 240 servings. It was an interesting day. Since we had an extra bucket of food left, we took it to the neighborhood of our driver. All they had to do was shout to a few neighbors there was hot food and within minutes little kids came running with bowls in their hands, shirts on and no pants, no shoes, with huge smiles on their faces. As I smiled I looked to our driver and his wife, smiling as they happily scooped up rice for their neighbors.