I'm on Island Time!

We had a wonderful "Relationship Gathering" in Georgia with most of the people in our group on the ground in Haiti and some of the supporting groups from the states.  We all shared testimonies on what brought us to Haiti, what keeps us in Haiti and what our dreams are while we are here.
It was great to put faces to names and to see some of the people that have come down to my new home to visit me.

We also spent a lot of time discussing what we are doing right and wrong.  We discussed the books When Helping Hurts and Toxic Charity.  A couple of books that try to define the differences between relief and rehabilitation. We also had a guy from the 410 Bridge come and share with us the way that they work in Kenya and Haiti.  Sometimes our attempts to help do more damage in the long run...we were very critical of ourselves in many areas...we have a lot of work to do.

So, about the Island Time...

Friday we were privileged to attend a Haitian wedding.  Our friend Francoise Jean got married!  The invitation that I got said that the wedding started at 2:45.  We were running a little behind...it happens often here...and we got to the church a half an hour late...at 3:15.  We were the first ones there!  They were still decorating the place.  The program we got stated that the wedding would start at 3.  It got rolling a little after four.  It was a beautiful ceremony similar to Christian wedding ceremonies in the US.  Everyone was wearing their Sunday best...even ME!  Here is a pick of us men in the back of the truck on the way to the wedding...Amos, Me, Kervens, and a picture of the newlyweds!

So, now that the traveling and festivities of a wedding are behind us, it is back to work.  I have several projects on my plate to get finished before the start of the Jubilee school year.  I have to design and install some shutters / water barriers on the second floor windows for the school, build or have built a bunch of new benches for the feeding program, restore power to the school, set up a solar electric system for the clinic, and probably a bunch of other stuff in the needs done category.

In the want to do category, I would like to reset my garden area at the house, help Amos build some furniture, build some more shelves for my room, put down some pavers around the swing, steal some honey from my bees, build a pedal powered pump for the well in Jubilee, get ready for the next session of my English school...wow, I better stop here...I might actually have to do some of this since I wrote it down!