Haiti - Day 3

happy Easter!

Wow it has been a crazy 3 days. From Minocqua to Dominican on day one - Great travel mercies for all, expecially Maria, who had two of the worlds largest carry on bags... and no one ever questioned her.. yet Lori, who had a standard carry on, was stopped and made to check her bag. Not a big deal, but pretty funny, because it was like God used Lori to distract the gate agent so Maria could slide on by :)

Day two consisted of "hurry up and wait" getting from our Domionican Hotel to the bus station, and the entire time on the bus. Dominican is a beautiful country. Once we crossed the border into Haiti, the whole world changed. Suddenly there was trash everywhere, littering the roads and ditches. The donkey just became the most popular means of travel, and heaps of burning trash on the roadside, or even on the road itself became common.

Once we pulled into Cap Haitien our jaws dropped as reality seemed to come to an end. There are an estimated 250,000 MORE people living on the streets here since january 2010 than there were before.... and it was already bad before.

We tried to take pictures, but they do not portray the mounds of trash and swarming seas of people. Arguments and fist fights over food, right at the distribution points, blocking traffic and our bus, right in the middle of the road.

I do not believe we were ever in any 'real' danger - God had us covered the entire time, and thankfully HE gave us all pretty good common sense to avoid any further situations like that.

Late Saturday, we arrived at Pastor Henoc's home, and property which houses a main house with guest room, a dorm-style bunkhouse and a very nice new (still under final construction ) orphanage. Plenty of room for the kids to run and play, and about 40 minutes from the bustle and danger of downtown Cap Haitien.

Unfortunately, the city of Cap, randomly decides when to distribute electricity to outlying areas. when we arrived, night was falling, and there were no lights on,, then city power came on, and then we switched to generator power until 10pm. There was no electric all night, and well into Easter Sunday. Generator power is reliable , but expensive for fuel... it's a catch 22.

Matter of fact, the power is twitching right now - so I need to go - I will update EasterDay as soon as I can !

go to Mark jensen's face book page for 100's of photos!

for the team!

We are all well and safe! - Happy Easter!!