My Life

So my wife keeps telling me I need to blog. But I have not figured out how to express the feelings and thought that rush through my head. Such as, as I type a funeral processional is passing by our gate. The band is playing and then it stops and you hear the wails of the grieving. I don't know who died but this in much louder than the normal. Was the person young? Was it a wayward son or daughter? Was it the mother of a young family? How do you express the feelings and thought of living in such a place as La Gonave? To see the beauty of the sea and mountains but yet live among the pain and poverty that belongs to this island. Some days I truly feel like I'm in paradise and the next, the slip of the tongue "Hades",is not far off. The people are beautiful and full of life but also seem to suck every last drop of energy from you. Its crazy that at 80 degrees we start looking for blankets for the bed. This is my world. We drive for an hour to go 6 miles. We pray that our truck that is 15 years old does not fall apart. We pray that soon we will have money to buy a new one. But here is a place of peace and contentment for me. It is not so much a physical place as it is an place of action because for the last month every Wednesday, myself and 2-4 of my CHE helpers climb the mountain for our gruelling 60 min. of "off road" road travel. A friend Justin Dowds took the trip with me a week ago and the question that kept coming up is 'Where is the road?' The answer is 'where there is no grass'. Over rocks and boulders and mud pits filled with rock known as the "Bobble Head" road. Just talking about it make me feel tired and sore. But then we get to our meeting for the Fontina Community Health Project. It last from one to three hour and the meeting is not all that great but the enthusiasm that is seen and felt is invigorating. We teach simple things like digging a trash pit or building a dish drying rack that set in the sun and kills bacteria in pots and dishes. My pockets are always empty meaning I'm not coming with money or new gadgets but simple ideas and concepts that save lives and transform and develop communities. The best part is that when we come back several will say "I built that dish rack or I started my compost pile". This week we sent out a survey with the agents to find out how many homes have trash pits, latrines, vegetable gardens,and how many have been sick in the last month and what were they sick with. We have so much work to do and this is only one zone on this Island of 175,000 people, but these days... are the high light of my life here in Haiti.

If you would like to give to this particular ministry please look for the Community Health Evangelism link.