Lately, as the Brooks have begun their transition of focusing their energy on community development instead of hosting teams, the house has been getting a little quieter each week. Rebecca left about a month ago for the summer and Kathy and Beaver left a couple of weeks ago. I am nearly all by myself in this big old house! It is nice not having to worry about leaving clothes in the washer and having anything that is not in my room becoming community property! But, I do miss my adoptive family.
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| Not having the Brooks here enables me to turn the whole house into a staging area for my projects! |
Visa Update -
Ruth-Cher's mother came through with the last document that we were told that we need and we made a trip to Port last Thursday to turn in the last of the items for the Visa application. Now we are going to wait...very impatiently...for a phone call from the immigration office. Please include us in your prayers for this to happen quickly. We are running out of time for this to work. We would like to be in the states before the end of July. If it does not happen soon, we will wait for the baby to be born here and then travel to the US to visit family and friends when our little girl is old enough to travel.
For our living situation down here, we are still looking for another place to rent, still waiting on the process of trying to get our money back from the first landlord. I have a place to stash my stuff for an extended trip if the visa process is successful, but it is not somewhere that I think we can live together if we end up staying here for a while.
Building things -
Yep, I have made a couple of new personal bests...longest table I have built so far - fifteen feet long, longest benches at fourteen feet long. I am making some good progress on the furniture for Rebecca Lonzo's transition house for boys that age out of her father's orphanage. I have completed four beds so far, I have constructed all of the dining room furniture and two other benches for the porch. I have three more beds to build...I will start on those this week...if my newest injury doesn't slow me down too much.
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| The top for the long table, awaiting some serious sanding. |
I am also building all of the furniture for our new location of "Pursuit of Happiness English Institute." We have rented a new location to be able to serve more potential students...but it is empty. I am nearly complete with the construction of the benches, I built one wall and a reception counter as well. I would like to thank those of you that have sponsored benches...that helps! Our new session begins July 14th, so I think I will make the deadline on the rest of the things I need to build.
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| Some of the benches in one of the classrooms. |
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| One bench before the finish (sand twice, varnish twice) |
Health -
Chikungunya!!! There is a new craze down here and it sounds like some kind of spicy dinner. But it is no joke. This virus made its debut in the Caribbean in December and it spread like wildfire. It is transmitted by mosquitoes...yep, got plenty of those. It comes with a fever, headache and joint pain...it leaves with an itchy rash. It lasts for 4 to 7 days for most people with the joint pains lingering proportional to your age. My wife got it a couple of weeks ago, she was miserable. I am just finishing it...I got symptoms Sunday night and I only have joint pains left...because I am old. I was under the impression that after you get it, you don't get it again, but I am hearing stories of round two and round three from some people.
And...my foot! So, I have lingering joint pain and a bit of fatigue from the stupid chicken chimichanga...today after my wife and I got back from the market, we were unloading my bike and I lost my balance and the bike fell. It fell on my foot. The handlebar smashed the top of my foot that was only protected by the straps of my sandals...so not protected. It was a deep gash and I was bleeding profusely in front of my wife's house. I grabbed some clean underwear off the line and quickly applied pressure and secured it with my sandal straps. Then I headed to Jubilee.
I circled JB's house yelling his name to try to get him to open the medical clinic. He gets that all the time, usually for some heartburn or a headache, so he is reluctant to even see who is trying to get him out of his house. Thankfully, I convinced him that it was indeed some kind of emergency and he opened up the clinic. Shortly after he got started, Kezia showed up for something or other and she lent a hand as well. JB got me cleaned up and put in a few stitches.
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| At the clinic, after it was cleaned up a bit. |
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| After JB got done stitching me up! I will live! |
JB is something else. When I first came to Haiti (he is featured in my first blog post) JB (Jean Baptiste) was helping me get the forms ready for the pour of the ceiling of the first floor of the Jubliee school. He was very handy with the tools I gave him, but you should have seen him do my stitches. JB recently went to school for nursing and he is currently playing a big part in the day to day functioning of the clinic in Jubilee. He has steady hands and a great demeanor...I thank God that he is still a part of my life. He also has gardening as a hobby and he takes care of the garden in Jubilee...I am going to let him take whatever he wants from my garden at the house for his garden out there!
Still reading?
Lots of blah blah blah, sorry about that, but that is just what is on my mind today. I want to thank everyone that takes the time to read about my life down here. I am happy to know that you care. Again, I would like to appeal for support, spiritually and financially. Please pray for my wife and I. If you would like to help me out financially, you can make a monthly or one time contribution using the paypal buttons at the top of this page. Those donations go to my Nebraska corporation. "Tools for Success." We are still waiting for 501(c)3 status, so donations through those buttons are not tax deductible. If you would like to make a donation that is tax deductible, you can do that through my friends at Much Ministries...FOLLOW THIS LINK and include my name in the special instructions to seller.
Thanks and God bless you,
Scott
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