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We had a team of 5 women on our September 2004 mission trip, which took place from September 15th through September 24th, 2004.
 We left West Palm Beach flying with Missionary Flights International, and thus began our adventure of dodging hurricanes. Frances had just hit West Palm one week before, Ivan was hitting the panhandle area as we flew out of West Palm on our way to Haiti and Jeanne was hitting Puerto Rico as we left Florida.  Jeanne eventually caught up with us, as you can see in these photos, but aside from being a nuisance, Jeanne didn't effect us in Terrier Rouge the way it devastated other parts of Haiti, especially the city of Gonaives (a special "thank-you" to New Hope Evangelical Free Church in Solon, Maine for your 24-hour prayer coverage while we were in Haiti!).  Because of all the rain, we were not able to do as much visiting in the village as we usually try to do (and we were unable to   make a planned trip out to the village of Paulette), but we did spend a lot of time with some of the children who came to see us at the house we stay in.  During our stay, we saw 5 funeral processions pass by the house in the 6 days we were in the village. The one pictured here was actually a double funeral - for a mother and her 10-year-old son who both died from illness.  We also saw a lot of the UN peacekeeping troops, who are still very-much involved in providing security after the coup of February 2004. Aside from our HUGE work project for the Sponsorship Program of interviewing, measuring and photographing 408 children in 5 days (which you can see in photographs on our Work Projects page),   we found time to have some fun teaching the children some of our games (like Blind Man's Bluff), and Briana experienced the joy of teaching her sponsored child, Mackline, how to color!   We also brought gifts to some of the children from their sponsors. Pictured here are Carmelle Louis who received a Creole Bible and an English/Creole dictionary, and Yves Jean-François who received a new outfit along with a Creole/English dictionary. Yves is also holding a gift he had for one of our team members - a chicken!   We also celebrated 3 special events while we were there. September 20th was Kirstin's 22nd birthday as well as Tiffany's 1st wedding anniversary (thank you, André, for letting her go with us!) and September 21st was Marie Noël's birthday. We experienced a wonderful "Bon Fèt ensemble" (Happy Birthday together), even though Hurricane Jeanne "crashed" the party as you can see in the doorway in the party photo.   The day before we had to leave Terrier Rouge we were finally able to visit some of the children's homes. We were able to visit little baby Bethany Degrace (named after our Bethany Charles!) for the first time. She was born in the the summer of 2004 and is very big for a 2-month-old! We also visited Roussica Angrand, Louisa Joseph, and Mackline Jean at their homes.   The last few photos are some of our favorites from this trip. We hope you enjoy them!  
There were tears in many eyes (including our own) when we had to leave Terrier Rouge and we are looking forward to returning in March 2005, when we also hope to go out to Paulette and see the school there. |
