Day 5 - Hope for a Nation

I've become fully accustomed to the flow here; waking up at 05:30, breakfast at 07:00, chapel at 08:00, lunch at 12:00, dinner at 18:00. The rest of the time is spent working. The temperature has been in the upper 90s during the day, but the heat really hasn't bothered me at all. The bigger problem is dust. I'm using a 3" paintbrush to daily wipe dust, sand, & sediment from laptops - a nightmare situation for an IT person.

Not too much went on the past couple days as it was a holiday weekend. On Friday, a few of us went to a local church in Titanyen for their Good Friday service. In Haiti, it is not uncommon for church services to last over 3 hours. This particular service lasted almost 4 hours, and was full of worship and scripture reading. Since Creole is the native language here, I could not understand anything the preachers were saying, but it was an awesome sign of hope and faith to see the Haitian people praising and worshiping God. The church was packed to capacity and they were carrying benches in from outside to seat more people as they came in - a completely different picture from what I saw the first day.

My main purpose here is to maintain the wireless network system, all of the computers used on the base, and the cell phones; however, on Saturday I got to put my automotive skills to work. There is an International diesel truck on base used for making food distributions in the city. The ignition switch was broken so it would not start, and the truck was out of commission for over a week. Someone had ordered a new switch, but it was for the wrong vehicle. It would be at least a week before another switch could arrive, so I cut off the old switch and with a little rewiring and God's provision, got the wrong switch to work and even mount in the stock housing. The truck was able to make a food distribution today. Samaritan's Purse has been hiring nationals to perform general labor to allow them to give back to their country as well as provide them with some income. We hired two local Haitian mechanics to work on the vehicles here, but it's proven to be a bad decision. Our Billy Graham Ford van broke a transmission when they either put the wrong fluid or no fluid at all in it, and it locked up driving down the street. They were then found sleeping in a vehicle instead of working on it, among other things. Most of the nationals, though, have been doing a great job and many of them have strong work ethic.

It's been a controlled chaos here. I think the primary reason is due to the constant changing of personnel every 14-90 days. We are currently looking for more people that can dedicate 1 year or more to the effort here. There is so much involved in making this happen - from controlling barge deliveries and dealing with customs, to fleet and heavy machinery operations, to construction and hiring contractors, all the way down to food services for the compound. The constant changing of key leaders in these areas is definitely noticeable. Please pray that God will provide men and women that can make the long commitment here.

It was a good day today overall. We got some more shelters built, distributed lots of food and hygiene kits, and made progress on several other projects on base. A new shipment arrived on a barge tonight and will hopefully be unloaded tomorrow depending on customs. There are just too many things we are working on to list, but I can assure you that much is being done in Haiti. The Lord's presence is definitely here and your prayers are felt.

I will try to upload some pictures soon, but now it is time for me to crawl under my mosquito net and get some sleep as 05:30 comes early.