Drawing Near to God: HAITI (Sept-Oct 2012): TRIP SUMMARY

Dear friends and family,

As you know—with your help!—I was able to go on a short-term IAM Builders mission trip to St Marc, Haiti. The main purpose of this trip was to continue work on a new, larger school building for the children served by Touch Ministries. Here are two pictures of the soon-to-be new school building:

Images: from the back (our daily entrance) / from the front

The variety of jobs we did was fairly limited. The main thing we worked on was the electrical. Considering this, it may surprise you to learn that one of our main jobs was chiseling holes and channels into the cinder block walls (refer to the images below).

Images: Power-drilling channels in order to be able to run electrical conduit in the floor / Holding up electrical components to illustrate how they fit into the channel I just carved / Cementing over an electrical conduit in the floor / Running pull-wire through one of the conduits.

Once chiseled, electrical boxes and pieces of conduit are fitted into these holes and are cemented over. After the cement is dried, relatively stiff pull-wires were run through the conduits and were later used to pull the electrical wire through the conduit between the adjacent switches, outlets, etc. I don't think the electrical had been started when we arrived, but it was nearly completed when we left.

Besides working on the electrical, I moved sediment—big and small—from the dig site of the school's latrine to a more convenient location...

Images: Haitian nationals digging what will end up being the school's latrine / Showing off my strength as I carry a large rock from the dig site to the dump site. Hauling smaller sediments away from the large pile that has accumulated next to the pit as the Haitians dig deeper.

I also got to try something I had really wanted to try... MASONRY! I helped build a wall!

Images: The space under the stairs before we started the wall / Sliding some cement in between two placed cinder blocks as I had watched the nationals do / Marco and Joe pose next to the completed wall.

Some school kids visit the work site to hand out thank yous... And these thank yous are not only for us, but also, for you who enabled us to go! Thank YOU!

Images: School kids line up to hand us thank you cards / multiple thank yous / a close-up of one thank you: “We love you IAM Team”

In addition to the construction work we did at the school, we were also able to visit the House of Hope, an orphanage associated with Touch Ministries. The best part of the trip was spending time with the “orphans.” (Actually, strictly speaking, they aren't orphans. They each have at least one parent or grandparent living. But their families were unable to provide for them financially, and so—before they were taken in by House of Hope—they were in pretty rough shape physically.) We only spent two days with the orphans, but they were the best two days! One day we went with them to the beach. The other day we went on a walk with them to visit and pray for their families; we did a craft project with them (designed by yours truly); and we ate lunch with them. Here are a few pictures: