Is this Haiti or Arizona?

Lorraine and the ladies …

At the beach in Haiti …

Just a quickee …

This first picture is a picture of the Sonlight Water tower.  I thought that it would make a cool picture for you all to see.  The second picture is a shot of me with my Senior High School Bible Class, and the other American in the picture is a guy named Steve from a Church in Kansas City.

*For more information on that please read the previous post.

Sonlight Academy …

Kyle, Steve, & the Seniors

More Baptisms and stuff …

Well I have some more exciting news: another student was baptized this Friday afternoon. It feels like we have had a baptism almost every week that we have been here, which has been a very cool thing to be a part of. Unfortunately, though, neither Lorraine nor I really know these kids getting baptized, but we still are so excited to see them join the faith and the family of God; and I hope you guys are excited as well.

On that note … Lorraine and I are both building relationships with as many of the kids and adults as we can. The tough part about this, especially with the kids, is that we have to establish ourselves as their teachers first, so they will respect us and the rules of our classrooms. For the most part, by now, this groundwork has been laid and we have been somewhat able to build meaningful relationships with the kids. On the other side, I have also been able to build relationships with some of my bible college students. Now, this in a lot of ways has been tough too; the bible college students do not speak English very well, and all of them are quite a bit older than me. This has been an adjustment for both me and them (I’m sure), but it is finally starting to pay off. I have been able to share some stories with both my high schoolers and my bible college students that I can tell has made a difference in, not only the way they view me, but also in the way they see faith. Ultimately, connecting true faith to the hearts and minds of the people here in Haiti is our goal, and we are slowly working to bring this to fruition.

This last week was a very good week. I felt a little sick for the first part of the week, but thankfully we had a group in visiting that was very helpful. We had a church group in from Kansas City, and they are the supporting church for one of our missionary families (hint, hint for those from CCCG).  They were an absolutely fabulous group, and they were able to especially help me out.  One of the pastors from this church was really looking to get involved with the kids and teach Bible if he could.  I got him plugged in right away and he taught all of my bible classes for the high school M,T, and W; this was a huge load off my shoulders, because I picked up the final Bible college classes this same week.  The kids really enjoyed him (and no doubt a break from me) and I got a chance to catch up on some things I was behind on; so essentially it was a win win for everybody.  I think the biggest win, though, was for Steve (the pastor) because he seemed to get so much life out of teaching these Haitian kids, and I do not think it is an overstatement to say that this week stirred up something deep within his being.  Now, with this said I long for you all to know that this is a common occurrence with our visitors, so all of you should consider coming to Haiti to serve and be changed.

Now, like I said prior we are on Spring Break, and it is this week when we move from our guest room into one of the missionary apartments.  We have been looking very forward to this, and I sit typing this post inside our new place.  We are still trying to get it situated, but so far so good.  In our new place we have a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and living room, oh and some closets.  The closets are nice because we have been hanging our clothes on curtain rods and towel holders – in other words, not idea places.  Anyways, we will let you know how things progress at our new place, but I am pretty sure that it is going to be awesome.

Well, having the group in last week really reminded Lorraine and I of all of our friends, family, and our Church family and made us really miss close proximity with everyone.  A lot of the people for the Kansas City group reminded us of CCCG people and it was a very good thing.  To that I must say how thankful we are to have such committed family, friends, and a home church, whom we know are constantly praying for us, and are willing to give us other support in every possible way.  We make it our goal to reciprocate this love in the only way we can at this stage in our lives: to pray for all of you.  Once again, we cannot express it enough, but thank you every one for taking the time to invest in us.  With endearing love and kinship.  Blessings!!!

Kyle and Lorraine

Hiking Adventures!!!

Well, Lorraine and I are on Spring Break, and let me tell you it feels great.  We have been here about 5 weeks now, which is very crazy for us to think about.  Unfortunately, I started off really good at keeping up with the blog and then life happened (or at least that is my excuse), but during this break I will be able to catch everybody up; and hopefully we will have a guess appearance or two from my lovely wife.  I know she wants to!

Now, these pictures below are from a hiking trip week took about two weeks ago.  Sorry, I haven’t gotten them up sooner, but we had a great trip out of the city and up into the mountains.  Our new friends, Allison and Lenny (in the bottom picture), were nice enough to take us and show us the way.  We had a really good time; the weather was perfect, the view was beautiful, and the walk was good for our bodies.  I must mention, though, that getting out of the city sometimes is a difficult thing, because the roads are not paved and extremely rocky – not to mention the piles of trash scattered everywhere on the streets.  Also, as people of fair skin we tend to stick out, and whenever you walk or go anywhere the children like to yell at you, and in some cases follow you.  Our walk, though, took us out of the city and into the mountains and then back into a different part of the city.  Needless to say it was an all around adventure.

Allison and Lenny (pictured below), for those of you who do not know, were the ones that we communicated with and ultimately invited us to come here.  They have been dear friends ever since we have arrived, and we are truly thankful to God for placing them into our lives.

Well … keep checking for more because there are more coming up … Blessings!!!

Hiking … (Us this time)

Hiking …