Well, there has been a lot that has went on, and no chances until now to write about them.  Things are getting busier and busier as school winds down to a close, and it is hard to believe that we have already been here for two and a half months.  Wow!

As far as recent developments are concerned, we have some new things that both Lorraine and I have been getting ourselves into.  The exciting part about these new things is that they are much more active, and they are outside of school hours.  About a month back I started swimming a little bit in the ocean on the weekends with another one of the teachers.  The water is beautiful and pristine, except for the pieces of trash floating in it, and it just feels superb.  Then Thom (the other teacher)  invited his sixth-grade class to swim, and invited me to help him teach them how to swim.  So I was able to help them for about two Saturdays in a row, which was quite nice.  Now, we didn’t end up doing more than two Saturdays, because some of the kids brought friends that were a little rowdy the second time, and we were more like lifeguards than swim instructors.  Whatever the case, it was still a great time and I was able to meet and bond with some of the younger students, which is good since I mostly only deal with High School and older.

Lorraine did some fun things this weekend with her class, but I think that she wants to write a post about that in the near future.

The other thing that I have gotten myself into is basketball.  Now, I haven’t played basketball for real in a long time, but I still have some skills.  Granted not many skills, but some skills.  Ok I at least have fundamentals, which go along way with people who have none.  Anyways, the High School boys have been trying to get me out for a while now, but they always invite during the week in the afternoon, but I have Bible College, so I always have to turn them down.  Finally, though, they invited last Saturday and I agreed to go play with them.

This is a big deal, because there are not many basketball courts in PDP, and the ones that PDP does have are always crowded.  I become somewhat of a spectacle then being the only light skinned person playing basketball.  I will say this, though: I held my own, and they soon realized I was trained in Indiana and I got fundamentals.  Anyways, I gained some respect in the eyes of my students, and was able to form a bond with them outside of just being their Bible teacher.  As their Bible teacher they expect me to say certain things, but now I have another avenue to speak truth into them, which I find an answer to prayer.  The basketball fun then blossomed, and our school got invited into a city-wide tournament.  Consequently, the boys asked me to help coach them.  I said that I would be honored to help out, and we had our first practice yesterday.  Now, they have a main coach, whom is a student who recently graduated.  He plays basketball but doesn’t know that much about coaching.  This allows me to not be fully stretched, but to help out provisionally without all of the responsibility.  Not that I would mind the responsibility, but I do not speak good Creole, and in order to communicate with the other coaches, referees, and other officials that would be necessary.  So I can help, but not be inextricably bound to it.  The students are excited, Gepson (the graduated student coach) is excited, and I am very excited to help whip these boys into shape, and give them fundamentals.  And trust me they need those fundamentals.  Like I said, I truly feel that this is an answer to prayer, because it is an avenue I have to form relationships with all of these students.  Praise God for this answered prayer!

Alright this is all I have for now, but I promise there will be more soon.  Maybe some more pictures too.  Oh .. and maybe a guest appearance by my lovely wife.  Blessings!

Well the first thing I want to say is that I am sorry that the posts have been a little few and far between recently.  I promise, though, that there has been good reason for this; reasons that I will be sharing throughout this post.  The biggest reason I am able to write this post right now is because I am home sick for the day.  No need for alarm, I just got a small bug that had been circulating around all of the other missionaries.  This bug has affected my stomach and intestines, so needless to say I have spent a lot of time at home today.

Now to the more pressing matters.  For those of you who have not heard any news reports recently about Haiti, there are some major things going on here.  First of all, there have been riots in Port-au-Prince, consequently leaving several Haitians dead and damaging lots of property.  People in Haiti are rioting because of the outrageous food prices experienced in most third-world countries.  The average Haitian lives on two dollars a day, and that’s it.  The price of rice has gone up itself to more than this, and this is just rice (unfortunately one of the staples of the Haitian diet).  Over the last year food prices have went up some 40% which is not good for a country that is already extremely poor.  The burden of these prices is threatening starvation all throughout Haiti, and so consequently people are starting to react.  Fortunately for us, though, we live in a very poor, but very peaceful city.  People here hardly ever riot or anything like that, and if they do they do not seek out the Americans; what they want is to change the minds of their leaders.  Because of this, I want you all to know that we are very safe here; in fact, where we are it is hard to tell that there is anything going on.  We here the buzz on the street and from our students, but life in Port-de-Paix is no different from the day which we arrived.  Many of you have already expressed concern for us and we appreciate your concern, but truly the best thing you can do is pray, and trust us when we say that things here, where we are, are good.

Now with all of this said, one can never predict how a situation will escalate.  One does not know, for sure, that when they drive through the streets of South Phoenix that a gang won’t attack them, or when jogging through the streets of Boone, NC, that someone may accidentally run into you – you just don’t know.  With that said, as far as instability is concerned Haiti is up there with the worse, and so I will, as best as I can, keep you all updated on our situation here.

One last thing about all this.  Because of the food and fuel crisis here, we have started to conserve fuel.  This means that we do not have power for a good chunk of the day, and if the situation gets worse we will have power even less.  Obviously, without power we have no internet and so updates will be hard to find.  Also, we have satellite internet and it is not always the most reliable (in fact, sometimes I think it specifically targets and boots us off – just kidding – kind of).  All this to say, the internet has been goofy for the last month and half really, and it probably will not get any better, so just because you do not receive post, do not get too worried it may just be the internet and our power-less circumstance.

Just to reiterate … everything is great here and we do not feel on any level unsafe; in fact, we feel quite safe.  One reason for this feeling is because our mission and ministry is very well-respected in this city; two, we live in a very peaceful city; and three, because we have all of you praying for our continued safety.  Thanks for your prayers, your concerns, and your faithfulness.  Blessings!

Kyle and Lorraine

Well from my previous post it almost seemed like Spring Break was nothing but work for us. However, Lorraine and I did get our hands into some fun.

The first piece of fun we experienced was going to the beach. Now, to set this up I must say that we live no more than a quarter of a mile from the beach, but the beach by us is not a beach you would take friends for a chance to get your feet into some sand. First of all, there is really no sand, because up to the very edge of the water there is dead coral. And more importantly the beach is completely covered in trash and there are pigs roaming through and munching on this trash. To this I must say that I am not kidding, and I am telling the truth. All this to say that this Spring Break beach trip would not just be a walk up the road to hang-out with the pigs, but it would be a journey to another part of Haiti that has a sandy beach.

In order to make this journey, everyone who went (and there were a bunch of us) needed to fit into a big ford truck. For the ones that could not fit in the cab, there responsibility was to ride on the back of truck. I decided to be a gentleman and let Lorraine ride up front, and I offered to ride in the back. I did not truly mind that much, though, because I excited about the adventure at riding to a new area of Haiti in the back of a truck. As it turns out, the journey to the beach took about 45 minutes to an hour. We drove through Port-de-Paix, drove literally through a river, drove through the country, and finally arrived at the beach. The vegetation in the area where the beach was looked very similar to the vegetation that we experienced on a daily basis in Arizona. This, I think, was a little surprising to both Lorraine and I; because for the first time since we left Arizona in January, we saw a cactus.

The beach was pretty nice (as you can see from the pictures below), but still not as nice as what I am used to. The water is beautiful and clear, but there was not much sand at the beach at this time. We through the frisbee, we laid out, and we swam, but we could do none of this without an audience. Because of the color of our skin we are quite an attraction anywhere we go in Haiti, and because of our skin color people also just assume that we have money. This is something that we have just had to get used to since we have been here in Haiti, because being a spectacle takes time to get used to. Even though, in can get annoying at times we also understand where the people are coming from, and we never feel threatened by the people; for they are all sweet and good natured people.

On the way back from the beach, we started to have a little trouble with the brakes on the truck. Obviously in any place or situation, this is not good, and especially so if you could have seen where we driving and what we were driving on. Anyways, on our way back we returned back to the river to get ready to cross, when all of the sudden our brakes went out and we crashed into a fence. Yikes! Luckily, at this point we were not going very fast at all, and no one was thrown out of the back of the truck; we were all just scared. I need to make one other observation about the back of the truck: in the back of the truck we road by sitting on this side of the truck. This is not something I was used to, and is not something I necessarily want to get used to. After riding there and back on the side of this truck, my rear felt like I would need to carry an inflatable donut around with me to ease the discomfort. Eventually, though, I got used to the ride, and this helped the overall trip to be very fun and very eye-opening.

Posted above this post will be some other pictures from our beach journey. Spring Break Shenanigans Part III will be coming soon.

Well, for those of you who didn’t know, last week was our official Sonlight Academy Spring Break.  Spring break has always been a glorious time of year, but my previous point-of-view has been that of a student.  Now, for the first time, I was able to experience Spring Break from a teacher’s perspective; and let me tell you Spring Break was almost sweeter to me as a teacher than it was to me as a student.  I am pretty sure Lorraine feels the same.  Whatever the case, Spring Break was an extremely relaxing and restful time for Lorraine and I, but it did not come completely without some action.

Our Spring Break first started off by Lorraine and I moving into a new residence.  One of the missionaries, whom has been here for 10 years left to go the Dominican Republic on a spiritual retreat and allowed us to stay in her apartment.  This was great for Lorraine and I, because this allowed to have our own kitchen and to cook our own food.  Previously, we had been eating all of our meals at Roger and Norma’s, the founding missionaries, which has been good, but it is good to have a break and be on our own for food.  So we moved some of our stuff from our other room over to April’s and enjoyed several days with some space to ourselves.

That same day, Good Friday, I attended a Good Friday service at our Haitian Church.  This service included several special things: a play from some of our high school students, a song performed by our 8th Graders, worship, and a sermon provided by my Bible College friend and Director Lenny Lowe.  This service was extremely long, and lasted around 2 and a half hours.  Wow!  Plus, there was not seat in the whole place; they had to continuously go into classrooms and pull out more chairs.  There were several hundred people there for sure 98 percent of them being Haitian.  Now, I am sure you are wondering how they understood the sermon since it was done by an American, but the Church has an interpreter, who is actually a Bible College student.  I have been to regular Sunday Morning services since I have been here, but none were as crowded as this Good Friday service.  Seeing this many Haitians gather together too celebrate the death and Resurrection of Christ was quite an encouraging and inspiring thing.

One last thing for this post and then I will add a Spring Break part two later on …

Keeping in theme with Church, I had the wonderful privilege of giving the Communion meditation this last Sunday at the early morning service.  I will say that I was a little nervous, even though I had done this before, because the procedure and the structure the communion meditation is slightly different at the Church here.  I was basically worried that I would mess things up.  I didn’t, of course, but I was still worried.  The message itself went pretty well, and for the first time I communicated publicly with the help of an interpreter.  Now this was interesting.  It is hard to get into a rhythm when you are waiting for the person to communicate your words into a different language; and so in that way it felt rather limiting.  However, it was a great experience and I will look forward to doing it again, which coincidentally is two weeks.  Anyways, communicating through an interpreter is something that I am not used to, but I am grateful to have had the experience.

Look for more Spring Break Shenanigans in Part two …