{"id":1872,"date":"2012-12-28T13:45:39","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T19:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/?p=1872"},"modified":"2013-02-09T11:03:44","modified_gmt":"2013-02-09T17:03:44","slug":"17th-haiti-trip-a-wedding-and-the-2nd-journey-of-the-gifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/?p=1872","title":{"rendered":"A Wedding and the 2nd Journey of the Gifts!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our most recent trip to Haiti was full of joy!\u00a0 Last year, Nono, one of our Haitian \u201cdaughters\u201d who lives at the base and works to make our stays there possible, started teaching at Yvrose\u2019s school.\u00a0 She met Clenol, a young man who also teaches at Yvrose\u2019s school, and the two were drawn to each other.\u00a0 Clenol is a fine Christian man and has been helping us with things on our last several trips to Haiti.<\/p>\n

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Clenol and Nono at their wedding with Bill and Janet<\/p><\/div>\n

On Dec. 15th<\/sup>, they were married in Port au Prince.\u00a0 As often happens in Haiti, all did not go smoothly with minor \u201ccrises\u201d throughout the day.\u00a0 But God pulled it all together and it was a lovely wedding though it was 1\u00bd hours late!\u00a0 Bill walked Nono down the aisle.<\/p>\n

Clenol and Nono will be living at the base helping to host our visitors.\u00a0 Our friends Danny Medeiros and James Padron worked all day building a partition to make them a room of their own at the base.\u00a0 We ask for your prayers for their marriage and their future.\u00a0 We have great hopes that their family will be a light to the community in Haiti.<\/p>\n

The second highlight of the trip was the journey to the mountains to pass out Operation Christmas Child boxes that Samaritan\u2019s Purse graciously gave us again this year!!\u00a0 They gave us over 500 boxes but since their rule is One Child, One Box, One Time, we could not return to our schools but had to go deeper into the mountains to distribute the gifts to other children.<\/p>\n

Sonel and others had traveled to Pensek, the site of one of our cholera clinics last year, to canvas the area and find the children.\u00a0 Over 400 from Pensek and Grand Rac came to the church building in Pensek for the gift distribution on Dec. 17th<\/sup>.\u00a0 Friends from Chicago and Kansas joined us to help with the distribution.<\/p>\n

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Mules carrying gift boxes up into the mountains<\/p><\/div>\n

Once again, we picked up the gifts in boxes from Samaritan\u2019s Purse in Port au Prince, (thank you, Victory Compassion for the loan of the truck to pick them up), packed them into large bags that could be loaded on mules, took them to the trailhead (thank you, HCM, for the loan of the truck to take them there), loaded them on 27 rented mules, and headed up the mountain with members of our team riding our mules or hiking.\u00a0 It was a long and hard five hour climb over very rough territory.<\/p>\n

When we arrived, we were amazed to see\u00a0Adrienne, the crippled girl Bill met last year in Pensek, waiting to see us.\u00a0 She was 18 years old last year when he met her and hadn\u2019t walked since she was four.\u00a0 Bill left her a PROCLAIMER, an audio Creole Bible that she had worn out this year playing it for her neighbors.\u00a0 Adrienne WALKED up to greet us!!\u00a0 I was in tears as I met her for the first time.\u00a0 I asked Bill what had happened and he said, \u201cI think a miracle!\u201d\u00a0 We are praising God for how well she is doing!<\/p>\n

The children were gathered in the church building.\u00a0 A meal of rice, beans, and chicken sauce was<\/p>\n

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Bill handing out the gift boxes<\/p><\/div>\n

served to them.\u00a0 Then Bill spoke through a translator about the gifts and why they were receiving them.\u00a0 He told them of the people here who love God and\u00a0want to share that love with them.\u00a0 Jackson told them the Christmas story of the birth of Jesus and then we passed out the gifts.\u00a0 These are poor children who probably have never had a Christmas gift in their lives.\u00a0 Bill gave every child their box individually and told them Jesus loved them.<\/p>\n

We packed up the boxes that were left and headed out to try to make it to Pelerin for the night but it got dark and we stopped near Chapelle where the destroyed school was.\u00a0 The family who hosted us swept up the dirt floor of one of their dwellings and<\/p>\n

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Happy little girls opening their gifts<\/p><\/div>\n

we spread out plastic and our sleeping mats.\u00a0 In the morning, many children from that area came and we passed out more gifts.\u00a0 This time we got to see them open the boxes and it was a joy to see their beaming faces!\u00a0 The rest of the gifts we distributed to children we met on the trail going\u00a0down the mountain.<\/p>\n

JUST MERCY<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0is hoping to get to do this again next year.\u00a0 To give a gift to a child who has never had one is such a blessing!\u00a0 We are so grateful to Samaritan\u2019s Purse for letting us partner with them to give gifts to these children in the name of the Father!<\/p>\n

We are planning on having a graduation ceremony in January for the children at the schools who are completing The Greatest Journey course also provided by Samaritan\u2019s Purse.\u00a0 They will receive their own Creole New Testament! \u00a0I asked Sonel how the course was going.\u00a0 He said one young lady said she had heard the stories before but now she knew who Jesus was!\u00a0 We are looking forward to our next trip to the mountains to visit with the children who have taken the course.<\/p>\n

There are many decisions that need to be made about the direction we are going in Haiti.\u00a0 The school in Chapelle is meeting under tarps on sticks and we are trying to raise the money to build a church\/school to replace it.\u00a0\u00a0 The school in Pelerin is about to fall down and needs repaired or rebuilt.\u00a0 Storms Isaac and Sandy this summer were very hard on it.\u00a0 We are having some trouble with the school in Robia and will be needing to make some decisions about how to continue there.<\/p>\n

Please keep all of this in your prayers as we seek to know what direction God would have us go.\u00a0 We are so grateful for your prayers and support that make it possible for us to continue to serve in Haiti.\u00a0 May God bless you all!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our most recent trip to Haiti was full of joy!\u00a0 Last year, Nono, one of our Haitian \u201cdaughters\u201d who lives at the base and works to make our stays there possible, started teaching at Yvrose\u2019s school.\u00a0 She met Clenol, a young man who also teaches at Yvrose\u2019s school, and the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1872"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1922,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions\/1922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}