The last 4 days of miracles in Haiti

Monday, February 15
We finally got hooked up to the internet. I will try to get you up dated on the last few days. It has been very busy and a bit over whelming to say the least. There was so much to do to the house just to move in. There was no water, no electricity, and what is here all needs to be repaired. Of course with no access to any communication I couldn't just get on the phone to my father in law to ask him how to wire something (he's my electrician-love you Wayne). But I managed to get it done. We have solar electric panels but the batteries are old. There is enough power to run some lights, fans and refrigerator during the day but won't last all night and won't even run the frig all night on eight 8 volt batteries. I hooked up a generator to the house to help charge the batteries and run the water pump. Luckily there are water tanks on the roof and it only it takes about a half hour to fill the tanks and then the water is gravity flow so I can do that once a day and don't have to run that big pump all day. We have a 4500 generator with only one 30 amp breaker trying to run a house of nine people with computers. We just had six people more arrive today so this is going to be interesting. We worked on the house Thursday and moved in on Friday with everyone cleaning and fixing on Saturday.

Sunday we went to church at Chistianville which is a big compound walking distance away. They have a church, high school, grade school, medical center and university. They also have a staff house and apartments. The church service is being held outside in the school yard. I couldn't understand anything but was exciting to see. There was an alter call at the end and two people came forward. Then they all went down to the river and had a baptism which I missed. I didn't know it was happening, just heard. They have a lot of damage but fared pretty well considering. We will be partnering with them to help with the repairs. They had an engineering company from the US evaluate the damage and are waiting for the report.

The brakes went out of the only vehicle we have Saturday. Well I understand the media played it down in the US but I saw the most exciting thing I had ever seen in my life. Everything was shut down for three days for prayer and fasting for the country of Haiti. This was ordered by the president of Haiti. The awesome thing is that there was not a thing open, not hardly a soul on the street except to walk to church and the churches were full and there was a church on every block. They were praying and worshiping and it was awesome. Even all the radio stations were praise and worship and praying. And I couldn't get our brakes fixed until today, and that was great! You know the whole time this was going on I began to think of our country and I don't think even the President has that much power to call our entire country to pray and fast and it made me very sad and scared for our country. I see the Lord all over this place and you can feel a real presence of God. He is at work down here like I have never seen. Please keep praying for this country they have a long, long road ahead of them but God is going to do miracles here. It is going to be cool to see.

Well I got a thousand concrete blocks, 50 bags of mortar, a truck load of sand and another of gravel delivered today (Monday). I have 6 fresh big guys to start tomorrow on the upstairs. So I better get off to bed. Been some pretty long days. 6:00- 11:00 or so nearly every day.






Thanks for your prayers
Rob


New Life in Haiti....

No Internet

This is Jackie. Rob has called a couple times in the last few days. They have no internet until approximately Tuesday. They have water, sewer and electricity (by generator). The first team arrives tomorrow (Monday). He will send a prayer letter out when they get internet again. Pray for him to be able to get materials tomorrow for the team to work on Tuesday.

Day 2 in Port-au-Prince

We made it safe and sound. It took a while with a snow delay in Detroit and had to wait for a plane in Cap Haitian because the pilot had to wait two hours for fuel. With three hours of sleep we arrived in Port-au-Prince around 2:30 - 3:00 PM on Wednesday the 10th.

I got to sit in the cockpit in the Bimini flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Cap Haitian, very cool. A little scary on the landing I have to admit but very cool. As we flew over the mountains to Port-au-Prince we could see how they had stripped the land of all the mahogany trees. The Island used to be 50% mahogany trees now it is 1%. Once over the mountain and over PaP you could smell the burning of brush and garbage. Then as we came down we began to see all the makeshift tents. They are everywhere some have nice Colman tents that have been handed out or some shelter boxes they call them, but very very few. Most have just sheets if they are lucky maybe a tarp or plastic. It poured down rain last night, what a mud hole. These roads are the worst I’ve ever seen. There like driving in the mountains on four wheeler trails, very hard to get around.

We stayed at a hotel last night and tonight-9 of us in a 2 bedroom. We have very spotty internet. We seem to have it after 9:00 pm. We will be moving out to the house tomorrow but have no internet out there. The system we brought down doesn’t work in Haiti but we found a missionary who also does dishes that said he would give us a good deal on one that works down here. We got the water working today that was an Amen. The sewer is Ok to, because it is a septic system and the pipes are hardly under the surface of the ground, another Amen. We have to get a stove hooked up and I am going to have to run new lines. Tomorrow we are going to get blocks and mortar lined up to start building the second floor on the house next week when a team arrives. Things are accessible but finding them is interesting and then everything is high dollar.

UNICEF ran out of the shelter boxes that I thought we were going to get. I think we are going to need to build something for these people. Everyone is really worried about the rains and that rain last night soaked a lot of people. There were riots down by the UN tents this morning because of the rain. I think they feel that the UN is holding out on them because some got tents and most don’t. Not sure, just the way the Haitians talk.

Pray for someone in the government to come up with some kind of plan to get these people in homes (all of them).

I am very tired will talk later.
Blessings,
Rob

The day Rob left for Haiti

Dear Prayer Partners

Thank you so much for the over whelming support I have received. It is just Gods confirmation that this is truly what he wants me to do.

We leave today at 3:15 pm for Ft Lauderdale and stay the night then we flight out to Cap Haitian at 7:00 am. We catch a plane from there into Port-au Prince. I don't have a time that we will arrive cause missionary flights are just flying back and forth and we hop on one. When we arrive we will not have any communication for a couple of days or so. We do have a house we have rented, it needs a lot of work which we will do for the rent. It's the picture above. It’s a fixer upper they say I will be living in the second floor HA! HA! The first floor is Ok needs a little work. It has solar electric. We are getting a generator to run the well. We have a guy from Texas coming with us who is bringing a satellite system, he thought it would take a couple days. Lots of unknowns whether we have water or sewer. Please keep all this in your prayers. As we are not there to fix up our house we will be camping out here and our priority is the people in Haiti. We must get temporary housing up for the people as the rainy season is fast approaching. We need to build relationship with the ministries that already exist and help build them and multiply them.

As I write this my first grandson was born at 7 lb 12 oz boy with lots of hair. Sometimes we have to put our life on hold and in some cases miss things that are important to us, to fulfill what is more important, Gods work. This Sat. is my wife's fiftieth birthday and then there is Valentines' day.

It is a privilege to do Gods work.

Please keep us in your prayers daily in the weeks to come.

Rob