There are too many things to share, so I plan on breaking things down by ways thing are different than the states. One of those is our living situation, so I have taken a few pictures to show you.
Living room and dining room
We live in a beautiful three bedroom, two bathroom house. We have running water and electricity. To be honest it isn't all that different than homes in the states except there is no warm water, a baby gecko lives in my kitchen, and if I accidentally leave something on the counter there is a line of ants doing the conga within 20 minutes.
We have been settling and finding our rythm this last week. One area of that takes considerable amount of time is feeding my family. There is a market, very much like MN's farmer's market, on Tuesday and Friday. I have gone there twice and think its great. The cleaning lady kindly goes with me and another LT so that we have some help figuring out what is a good deal. The funny thing is I have no idea what many of the veggetables are. I have been buying one of many of them to give them a try and see if we would like more in the future. If you have ever been to the farmers' market you know they do not like to sell things individually, well its the same here. Add in the language barrier and Friday I bought 15 zorangs. They thoughts I was making juice, I just wanted to see how close to oranges they were. If you are wondering, they aren't. They taste more like grapefruit than orange. Good, but 15 may be a few too many.
I was told the trick is to go very early in the morining, before it gets too hot. We walk down our little mountain and into the market of Titanyen. Lucette, our Haitian leader, brings us to the bananas (figs) first because they are hard to come by. They are at the opposite end of Grace and at the beginning of the market. Then we each go through our list to find all of the things we need for the next 4 days. We pile them into our reusable shopping bags and walk back up to Grace. This can take anywhere from 1 1/2-2 hours.
Austin came with yesterday to help. He said his favorite part was when we had stopped to buy something and a man made a loud noise behind us. It was his signal to have us move because he was carrying a slaughtered pig across his shoulder. This pig was huge, dripping blood, and a crazy sight to see!
Yesterday I went to the Deli Mart to pick up some items that are unavailble in the Titanyen market. This takes a driver (I'm not quite ready to drive in Haiti) and apparently takes 3 hours. No, it didn't take me that long to shop. Traffic was crazy yesterday! So, lesson learned; buy enough for a couple of weeks and don't go on Saturday.
I mentioned last time that the kiddos were struggling with lunches in the feeding center. We are finding that often the breakfasts or dinners work better for their tummies. Today it was bananas, bread rolls and something else. My kids thought it was pretty tasty.
All in all, we're settling. Keep your prayers coming. We always pray that we can be a tool used to shine God's light here. We want to be able to exude God's grace and to deliver truth with that grace. We love your prayers, we litterally can't do it without them.
Thank you to each of you who support us!
Jennifer
The house where you are staying looks very nice! What an incredible experience with the shopping. It's kind of crazy to to think it can take up to 2 hours to get to a farmers market, purchase your goods and come back, when back here, there are so many close by. Continued prayers are being sent your way daily. Love the updates Jenn!!
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