Haiti 2018 – Day 1

Haiti 2018 – Day 1

Greetings beloved church family and friends,

Thanks again for all your support and prayers!  Well, Monday morning started off quite early as I rose at 2:40 AM to load our vehicle and head to the airport for our flight to Miami and then on to Haiti.  Landing in Port au Prince, Haiti around 5:30 PM.  Oh I forget to tell you I got through all the airport check points without a single hitch, my new titanium hip didn’t even make a beep going through the security scanners.  The toughest part in the entire airport experience is trying to leave the Haiti airport and get to your vehicle without being surrounded by Haitian men constantly trying to pull your luggage away from you, in order to carry it for you to your vehicle, for a charge of course.

The weather conditions in Port au Prince were a sunny 93 degrees and a wonderful 60% humidity which makes it feel like 100 degrees.  Of course the Haitians take this all in stride but we Minnesotans, who dug out of a winter storm just a month ago, feel the heat!  The capital city of Port au Prince is alive with people walking, sitting, standing, talking, shouting and singing with local music coming out of the store shops that line the roadways.  The traffic is as crazy as crazy gets with buses, cars, trucks, motorcycles, mopeds and pedestrians all competing for the same piece of road real estate.  We noticed some exciting new changes in this busy city this time around – we saw our first actual stoplight, not that anyone really paid attention to the red, green or yellow lighting.

From the airport up to our mountain home takes a little over an hour going straight up winding and curving roads, which makes it even crazier, and what made it a little scarier was that this was my first experience with night driving in Haiti – really don’t care for it.  We finally arrived at our final destination at 7:30 PM.  After a meal of rice and chicken and some wonderful singing we finally laid down on our sleeping pads on the floor, called it a night, totally exhausted at 11 PM.  We went to bed with the constant barking of dogs and arose very early with the constant crowing of roosters.

Took our first morning bucket baths, which is hauling water up from a deep well, pouring the cold water into a 5 gallon bucket, taking that 5 gallon bucket into the bathroom, standing in a tiled shower stall with some plastic hanging up by a wire and then throwing the cold water upon your body with a smaller plastic cup while shouting “OHH YES!!” next taking your soap and washing all those necessary areas and then rinsing those same necessary areas with the cold water while again shouting “OHH YES!!”

The people who house us are a gracious and welcoming people. There is the language barrier, but we smile and nod and say “Uh Huh” a lot.

We’ve been told our pastors conference starts Tuesday (today) at 2 PM, so be in prayer as we see what our great God of the galaxies is about to do!!

Love you all.

Making much of Jesus!!!
Pastor Gman