June Groups

We had a lot of fun with the last group. There were about one hundred and five of them from all over the country and we got the chance to meet just about every group.

Curtis met the group in Port au Prince and rode with them on the bus to St. Louis du Nord. The bus ride was not too bad, and although there were some delays near Gros Mornes because of a truck stuck in the mud, the whole group made it to the main mission safely, and still relatively quickly.

The first group to visit us at La Baie was a team from Savannah with a group from Virginia and a few others mixed together. This team’s main goal was to have programs for teen girls and boys on three important topics; conflict resolution, sexual purity, and forgiveness. The team also had a group of nurses that gave a public health seminar and gave vitamins for the pregnant and new mothers in town, as well as their children. This group got to spend a lot of time in town getting to know the people and we were very excited about their teen sessions, especially for a couple young boys in town who came to every meeting.

The next group that came in was from Winton Road outside of Cincinnati. They stayed here at La Baie at night while traveling to La Fonte everyday for VBS, a revival, and other programs with the community. Rain spoiled their plans a few times and made the roads muddy, they even had to stay the night in the church one night because they could not return back to La Baie. Overall, it seemed that they enjoyed the experience and their programs seemed to have been effective as several people made decisions for the Lord. While part of the groups traveled to La Fonte everyday, a few men stayed back and helped out with some work on the new property. We cannot thank Jerold, Rick and Dave enough for their help. Jerold built a chicken coop and roost, and they also built a goat pen, and fenced in a new garden. These guys even made us dinner on our anniversary on the 22nd (two years already).

The New Chicken Coop and Roost

Another team from Capital Area Christian Church in Pennsylvania was in for a day and they managed to get a good portion of our kitchen painted, we finished it the days after and it looks great. It would have taken a lot longer to do had this group not given a day of their trip to help out. The guys in that group also owe me a Crunch Wrap Supreme.


Finally, we wrapped up the trip with groups from Northside Christian Church in New Albany, Indiana (linked on the right) and a group from Beardstown, Illinois. We have become good friends with the group from Northside as we have several friends who work there and we have also become good friends with the leaders and students that have come on the trip. Northside put together a great VBS for the kids while the group from Beardstown spent some time planting the garden on the new property. They also fenced in the garden and donated a ton of seeds that will be really useful to us. Later in the day we all enjoyed some rest and relaxation at a beach close-by.

One of the areas the group planted.

When it came to the end of the trip, a problem with Tortug’air (the regional airline service that we use to get from Port de Paix to Port au Prince) meant that we had to ride the buses back to Port au Prince. We left in a hurry at around 7:00 in the evening and got to a town called Tintanyen (about 40 minutes outside of Port au Prince) at about 2:00 the following morning. The people at Global Outreach (a mission organization) were kind enough to let us get a few hours of sleep and a shower at their campus until it was time to leave for the airport at around 6:00 in the morning. All of the people who rode the bus got on their flights out of Port au Prince with no trouble at all. However, because of a few late planes (Tortug’air again) there were several people that missed their filghts, and the group from Northside had their flight delayed several times. To make a really long story short, the remaining members of the group got out of Port au Prince at around 1:00 in the morning, meaning that Grant, Jacques and myself spent about 19 hours in the Port au Prince airport.

Overall, it was a great group and a lot of cool stuff got done (there were many other projects in St. Louis, Chansolme, Beauchamp and more). We would like to again thank all of the groups. Be sure to check out the Traveler’s Blog to see what all of the groups are doing this summer. The next group comes on July 4th.

In other news, here are some recent pictures of the house, more can be found on the Flickr link on the left:

Michelet's House

Our House

The Traveler’s Blog

Nothwest Haiti Christian Mission has offered a new way to keep up with your friends and family while they are in Haiti. The Traveler’s Blog (linked at the bottom right under NWHCM Stuff) will have new posts every day that a group is in, describing what they have been doing and where they are working. No matter if a group is in St. Louis, Beauchamp, here at La Baie, or any other campus, they will have the opportunity to share their thoughts during the trip. So now in addition to photos (which cannot be updates as often because of internet and availability of photos) you can also check out the blog. We are trying to help people in the States understand as much as possible what is going on in Haiti during a mission trip and we encourage everyone to check out the many different ways we offer to do that, whether it be through the main mission website (new design coming soon) missionary blogs, or the new travel blog. Check it often. Another post about the last group to come soon.

An Orphanage Comes To La Baie

So we are back in La Baie, which is an appropriate time to post the following info on one of the most exciting projects.

We have mentioned for a while the possibility of a home for children, whether temporary heath-care or a residential facility, in the Bay. We are excited to “officially” announce that a permanent orphanage will be built in the Bay in 2009. When we bought our new land on higher ground we made sure to find a place with space for two houses and an orphanage. We have not started construction on the new orphanage yet, since it made more sense to have our homes built first, but hope to break ground some time over the summer. Right now, the plan is to build a large, two-room building that will house no more than 30 children. Curtis and I want to be as involved as possible with the children and once we factored in the amount of space we have on our land right now, we decided to cap it off at 25-30 children. We want to make sure we can meet all of their needs and do it well without getting in over our heads.

Many of you have caught wind of this program and are wondering how you can help. As we continue to plan and analyze everything we will need, I will keep a running list that will be posted on our site. Since we are starting from scratch we will need everything from sheets, to bowls, to beds, to clothes. We don’t have any children lined up to be put into this orphanage, yet, so we have no idea how many of everything we’ll need, I guess for now we can aim for 30. The great thing is any overflow can be given to our school children, one of the mission’s other orphanages, or families in the Bay.

We will continue to keep you posted on this exciting new project and as needs arise I will be sure to keep you informed. More than anything I ask you to pray for all the little ones that we will slowly meet over the next few years. For them to come to an orphanage means they will not have endured easy lives so, even though we don’t know them yet, pray for protection, that their innocence is not stolen and their hearts not broken, I have no idea where they will each come from but it brings tears to my eyes to think of the possible pain that could be brought to them. Thank you for your support and prayers!

Human Rights Report

Every year Amnesty International (linked on the right) publishes a report on “The State of The World’s Human Rights.” You can find the reports here. One document is a forward explaining the reports and the other is a country by country report, organized by different regions of the world. I took some time to read what both documents had to say about Haiti, have a look.

New Emails

As a part of the new website, we all have new email addresses. Both danielle and I can be reached at our new addresses from here on out. We will continue to use our Yahoo account, but we would like to phase it out as soon as possible. If you want to get in contact with either one of us you can do so at the following email addresses.

firstname.lastname@nwhcm.org

For those of you who do not know why I wrote it like that, if I were to actually write the email address out, we would get a lot of spam. So basically it is my first name (Curtis) followed by a period, followed by my last name (Rogers) at nwhcm.org. Danielle’s is the same just replace my first name with her own. I feel like I just wrote a book.

Day One

Today is the first day of hurricane season, pray this one will go better for Haiti than the last.

Matt and Becca

Matt and Becca are leaving Haiti tomorrow, finishing up their year-long stay in The Bay. Check out their site for their closing thoughts. Nights at the Bay just got even more boring.

Pictures

We added about one hundred pictures to the Flickr site. We have photos from Easter, Mole St. Nicholas, and also construction on our house, check them out b clicking on the Flickr photos on the left.

Construction Week #3

Here are the pictures from our house:






Here are the pictures from Michelet’s house:






Here are some pictures of the land from up on the hill, overlooking the bay:

Election Day

So yesterday was election day in Haiti. Up for grabs was a Senate seat from each zone. Being an event of somewhat importance, Andy Olsen (the mission journalist) and I decided it would be good to document. So the two of us, along with Andy’s friend Chris Phebus, and Seremone an employee of the mission, ventured out to the polling stations in St. Louis and Port de Paix.

It turns out that nobody votes in Haiti, well at least the places we visited. All of the polling stations that we saw were full of people talking and congregating, but not voting. At one point, we asked a lady who was in charge of the section in St. Louis for people with the last names beginning with “T” to “Z,” “How many people have voted so far?” Her reply, several hours into the election, “none.” Apparently the elections drew enough interest to make people get together and talk politics in the yard, but not enough to make people vote.

While we were at this same polling station, Seremone decided that he would like to vote. We encouraged Seremone to take advantage of this civic duty, especially since there was nobody voting and in order to document an election it helps to have someone vote. Despite the fact that Seremone had a legitimate electoral card, his name was not on the list of registered voters, and after a long time of moving from room to room, and trying to explain alphabetical order to several people, Seremone did not get to vote. At one point in the process, Seremone told the people running the office that I was an “international observer,” they looked a little nervous, yet he still did not get to vote.

Port de Paix was much of the same except with more people not voting outside of the election offices. We ate at a local restaurant and watched part of a corny martial arts movie. We decided to give it one more shot after lunch and then it started to rain, so we decided it was not worth it and went back to the mission.

After the day ended, this is what we learned:
-Having an election on a Sunday in a country in which almost everyone attends a time consuming church service is not a good idea.
-People will not vote unless the government can prove that it is legitimate and looking after the needs of the constituency.
-Martial arts movies are stupid.
-I can now put on my resume, “International Observer” for the 2009 Senatorial elections of Haiti.
-Downtown Port de Paix is eerily quiet when the government does not allow vehicles on the roads.
-Apparently if you are a journalist, you can go wherever you want.