Progress at Yvrose’s

I haven’t said much about Monolo and Juani, the wonderful Spanish couple who are staying with us at the house.  Though we can’t communicate verbally (they only speak Spanish), we have found them to be wonderful servants of the most High.

Manolo and Juani Cazorla

Monolo works very hard at whatever he can do up at Yvrose’.  Juani spends a lot of time working on Yvrose’ laundry and with 22 children, you can imagine how much there is!!   Yvrose had a washing machine she couldn’t use since she didn’t have electricity so we brought it down to our house and Juani works on their laundry, washing it, hanging it up to dry, and folding it.  She does many other things, too, to make all our lives more pleasant.  We are very grateful for their presence and we hope they will stay.

I arrived back in Haiti on May 17th.  Bill had asked HCM to come and pick us up as our truck is still impounded by the government.  Some friends, Alan Lindsey with two of his older children, Elisabeth and Ben, and two friends of theirs, David and Marijah.  had been here for about a week helping with many things up at Yvrose’.

HCM’s van picked us up but Bill wasn’t in the van.  He and Alan were following the van on two motorcycles!  It has been so difficult getting around to do anything and Alan saw the need.  He told Bill that he would buy a motorcycle for us if we would buy one.  That day before coming to the airport, they had done so (They are pretty cheap here from China) so that we will have something to drive!  We are so grateful.  It has already made a difference in what we are able to do.

The next day was spent getting ready to go to the mountains.  Rod Baker from Victory Compassion wanted Bill to take a Victory mission group up.  Because of the truck problem, we had been unable to get food up to our school in Pays-Pourri so they had had no school lunches for over a month.  Rod had some rice to donate and they took Bill to the market in their van to buy more supplies.

Bill & Shirley, the Lindsey group, and Rod’s group left Thursday morning in a bus with the supplies.  Bill had hired pack mules to meet them at the trailhead.  All the supplies were loaded up and they made the 4 hour hike up the mountain to our school.  If they don’t get rained out, they hope to show the Jesus film to the people there.  (So far it has rained every night since I arrived.)

Here at home base, I walked up to visit Yvrose and see what had been done since Bill returned to Haiti a month ago.  What a change.  They had unscrewed the roof panels of the two little houses and taken them off. Then they had extended the walls of the houses about two feet till they were level and reinstalled the roof panels and the roof over the common area between the two houses.   Occupants of the top bunks no longer had to duck to avoid hitting their heads on the ceiling.

Progress on Yvrose’s home

Yes, Rod’s people had built bunk beds for the children.  One building houses Yvrose’ storeroom for supplies and the other room sleeps the boys.  The other building has the bedroom for Yrovse, her husband, and the two babies.  Its second room has the bunk beds for the girls.

On the end of the building is a huge water tank that the UN comes to fill once a week.  It has been such a blessing not to haul 5 gallon buckets up on their heads but they still run out before the week is up.  Can’t wait to get that well in!

Jim Hulstedt and, after him, the Lindsey’s have worked to get Yvrose some shelves up in the storeroom and also have worked with the Haitian concrete workers to get some retaining walls built and some outdoor areas padded in, including a pad for a brick oven we hope to build very soon.

New kitchen wall on the right at Yvrose’s

We had been discussing what to do about Yvrose’ school that meets in tents.  The sun will eventually deteriorate the tents till they are useless.  Victory had a container coming to Haiti with more of the little houses they put up but it was not full.  We did some investigating and found a 25 x 40 foot metal building that could be bought for $3200 and put on the container and shipped here.   We are so grateful for Victory enabling us to get the building into the country.   Now we will need to start getting the pad for it ready.

Last week, hardly any cholera cases came into the shack up at Mauser.  No one is up there right now to treat the victims but cases have started coming in again.  I’m sure as soon as Bill gets back from the mountains, he will be trying to arrange for some help to get up there.  It is hard to take care of everything at once.

I will give an account of the trip to Pays-Pourri in the next update after they return.