JUST MERCY
Sonel and Jolius
4th Haiti Trip – Vol. II
I returned to Haiti on Wednesday, Nov. 17th, to rejoin Bill. I hadn’t been back since May and the weather compared to then is delightful! It’s about 85 – 90 during the day but has cooled off quite nicely in the evening. With a mosquito net and a blanket, sleeping on the roof continues to be the best part of the day!
We drove (jolted over a ROUGH road) up to the lot we are going to build a house on for Jolius. It is in a “housing” development that someone sold lots on. Bill recently helped Senal, one of the teachers for the school in Pays-Pourri, move his family into the new “home” he had built.
Sonel and his family in front of their new home
Water has to be hauled by hand from over a mile away unless we happen to be coming up in the truck. Compared to Senal’s home, the house we hope to build for Jolius will be larger. Jolius’ brother and father have been working to clear the lot of vegetation so the stem walls can be built.
Jolius and his parents
Jolius is a medical student in Port au Prince. He is from the mountain region of Pays-Pourri where there was no school at the time. His illiterate parents wanted to get him an education so they worked very hard to be able to make the money to pay for his schooling down below. While Jolius was in high school, a visiting American met him and was very impressed by his character. He asked Jolius what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to help his people in Pays-Pourri by going to school to be a doctor. The American committed to pay for Jolius’ to go to medical school in Port au Prince. He has completed 4 years and has 3 more to go.
In the meantime, Jolius takes care of administrative tasks for the school in Pays-Pourri, filing papers with the government, etc. He also comes and helps us on weekends with translation and other things. He has a very sweet spirit and loves the Lord. The young couple who started the school, the Mennonites next door, the visiting American, and now we are very impressed with his character. We are so happy that he is who we will be building the first house for.
Yesterday, Bill and I drove to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Back in February when Bill first came after the earthquake, a Dominican pastor, Omar, helped us buy a truck that has made all our work at the mission possible. However, the truck is still in his name and the officials in Haiti don’t want to keep giving us monthly temporary driving permits so we start the paper/money trail today to try and get the tags transferred to our name and registered in Haiti. We’ll see how long it takes and how much it will cost. We’re praying it won’t be too unreasonable.