God's Kingdom work, chicken, and forgiveness...oh and bugs.

One of our jobs is to help keep our staff at Grace Village accountable. It is a big job. The cool thing is that we get to know and/or be a part of a lot of really amazing things that God is doing. 

The Transition Program is a program to help our kids from ages 16-20 transition out of the orphanage and into society. We are trying to make sure that we are helping set them up for a successful future. 

The Elderly program has just hired someone to help the elderly make jewelry. The jewelry is sold to Americans and the elderly are able to make a profit and begin supporting themselves. 

Our 'Aqua Girl' will be leaving as of December and it has been great to see how well she has helped transition her position over to the Haitians. It is green, beautiful and ready for harvesting tilapia. We should have 250-300 fish available to eat next Wednesday. 

The outreach program is working on getting the bread ovens up and running so that our elderly, family of staff, and eventually the community will have access to make bread and sell it if they choose. The outreach program also visits the children that have been reunited with their families to see how we can help them support themselves and we help with school for the children. 

The medical clinic has opened and they are seeing the Grace Village children, the 340ish school children, our elderly and staff. The hope is to grow and be able to open it up to the village of Titanyen soon. We also have a Dr coming to do minor surgeries and a dentist to fix problems and do preventative maintenance. 

The school is continuing to move forward as they grow and learn. We have just started to be blessed with the opportunity to learn more. 

Our church is run by an amazingly passionate man. He loves Jesus and takes Jesus' call to share the Good News with others seriously. Grace Church has been able to bring people to Christ weekly, minister to the children, do community outreach, and a hospital outreach program. Amazing stuff!

A silly struggle we have is finding meat in Haiti that doesn't have a funny taste. So today we decided to try to purchase chicken to eat from a new place that our missionary friends suggested. This place is a chicken factory, sort of. They raise and sell chicks, make and sell chicken feed, and butcher and sell chicken (chicken that looks and tastes like we buy in the states). It is only a 4 minute drive from Grace so I told Etienne, our driver, "It will be quick." I forgot were we are. 

We drive onto the road and Etienne asks me if I know where it is, um...no. I figured we just drive down the road and look for a big factory. Only it appears that there are two big factories right next to each other and we went to the wrong one first. 

As we pulled up to the chicken factory there are barbed wire topped gates and security guards with shot guns to greet us. They take our driver's badge and give hime a pass to put in the car. We then park the car and walk into an air conditioned office building. There was no one to greet us so we kind of looked around goofily until Etienne said, "Sit." He kills me. So we sat. It wasn't long before a nice looking Haitian lady came out of her office and invited us in. We sat and told her that we would like to purchase chicken. The options were numerous and with the language barrier, she spoke English but was misunderstanding, it took about 10 minutes to tell her what we would like to order. 

Once we were all on the same page she called the factory to find out how much the packages that we were ordering weighed so that she could give us a price. Only problem was they weren't answering the phone. After quite a few times of calling he answered, I assume it was a guy, and said he would call her back. She looked at us and said to please wait for 5 minutes. 

Now keep in mind, this entire time we are sitting across from her desk looking at her as she looks at us. It is seriously a strange situation. She waits about 10 minutes and tries to get a hold of him again. After quite a few calls he picks up and she gets the weight. Only for some reason she gets disconnected 2x and has to call back to verify. Finally, the weight of the chicken packages are verified and she is able to begin the invoicing process. 

To begin with she does a proposed invoice. She types it into the computer, prints it, stamps it, and puts her signature on it. It was a perfect signature. She then hands the pre invoice to me for approval. It looks good to me so I gave it back to her. 

A man enters bringing large plastic bags with the companies name on it. 

Then this nice lady creates, prints, stamps, and signs an invoice. I sign this along with another one for her records. She staples my paperwork together and then remembers that she needs to add a paper to hand the security guard (the security shack is maybe a 100 feet away). So she takes the staples out, adds the new paper in the stack, folds them three times so they fit into an envelope and hands them to us. 

At this time, the man from the factory arrives, hair net and all, carrying a plastic bin with our chicken in it. She takes two trays of chicken out of the bin and puts them in one bag. She does this four times. She hands us our bags and says thank you and out we go. One hour later. 

The entire time, I couldn't stop from smiling. It was such an adventure and SO Haiti. 

We recently had an incident with one of the littlest boys and Landen. I won't go into detail, but the little boy purposely hurt Landen. It was not a malicious thing so much as a 'I am not thinking about consequences and I am not implementing my impulse control' kind of things. While momma was sad that this happened to my little man, it was also a great opportunity for us to learn. The little boy was disciplined, he was also allowed to come and say he was sorry to Landen. Landen was able to say he forgives him, and mean it (Landen is by far my most quickly forgiving child). And this little man was able to receive forgiveness. I thought, "Lesson learned, it is finished." However two days later, one of our 17 year olds noticed Landen's injury and asked me, "Did I know who did this to Landen?" I told them yes, I did. They then asked, "Did I like that boy still?" To which I replied yes, I do. In fact, I had made sure that I gave him an extra hug and let him see my eyes as well and the forgiveness I offered him. However, I could see this young man, and the kids around us, not understanding how I could like someone that had hurt my child. Culturally if someone slights you it is a BIG deal. A grudge can be held FOREVER. So this kind of forgiveness was obviously hard to understand. 

It made me think of God the Father and Jesus the Son. I'm absolutely not comparing myself to God, but the situation is similar. We actually killed his child, and yet he offers us complete forgiveness if we will take it. Absolute grace and mercy.      

"For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God."

Romans 5:10-11

I am so grateful I serve and submit to a God that gives such amazing grace. He reached down and forgives us, daily. I want to be able to ooze that same grace and love to the people around me. I want to be more like Jesus and so much less like me. 

Prayer request; 

Please pray for unity of those of us in leadership at Grace Village. We want to be a strong team unified through our mission to serve God's Kingdom. 

Please pray for protection; spiritual, mental, and physical. 

Please pray for sleep...its been a challenge. 

Finally, please pray for the kids. We have 52 children living at Grace and we just desperately want to do right by them. We want to teach them to love Jesus with all of their hearts. We also want to be able to meet their emotional needs well. 

Thank you friends!

Kiddos playing in the rain. :)

Semy, one of our translators, hamming it up. 

Shane's crafty key board. We have decided its gonna be a huge hit and we can sell it in the states for lots of money. What do you think? 

The above two are some of the seriously cool bugs we have. The one below is not. It was in our bed. It stung Shane. It is now dead. (Shane is ok). Yuck. 

Seriously...think about how big and index card is. I have some questions of 'Why' when I get to heaven. :)