HungryForLifeInternational

The team arrived home safe and sound very early in the morning Friday morning. And yes all their bags did come with them!
The last 12 days have been a journey of physical and spiritual challenges and triumphs. The morning we left one team member was baptized in the ocean with a few others planning to take the plunge of faith in their home churches. You don't come back from a journey such as this without being changed spiritually as every team member could attest to.

That's the business we are into: Changed Lives.

Each one of these travellers lives have been touched, molded and made anew after working within the community of Grand Goave. The challenge for the team now is to impact their communities here at home and continue to change lives.

I praise God for the work that we were able to do through him in Haiti on this trip and continue to give him ALL the glory for the change he can make in all of us.

~HFL Team Leader

Today was our final work day at HAM. We did morning devotions and got straight to work, as the pictures show.
We worked until lunch time and than began our cleanup. What a job that was! Needless to say some rooms (notably the boys) were much messier than others. The rest of the afternoon was spent packing and saying good bye to the new friends we had met. We took a short walk around the community at dusk to learn even more about all the amazing things Haiti ARISE is doing here. It was a great time to reflect on what we have learned on this trip, how we've grown with God and how amazing he really is!
My prayer as this trip draws to a close is that the lives that have changed here in Haiti would produce even more changed lives at our homes in Canada.
~HFL Team Leader

Freshly back from our day off in Jacmel, we spent all of Tuesday hard at work. We unfortunately did lose power in the evening which made for a different type of bible study. I put some pictures up of everyone hard at work and let them do the talking...Enjoy!~HFL Team Leader

Today we visited the ocean town of Jacmel. Jacmel is rich in remnants of the French culture, with many old buildings adorned with French architecture and design. One of the team members remarked that it reminded them of "Pirates of the Carribean"!
We arrived by bus shortly after 10 am and quickly tested out the blue water. It was amazing! The beach stretched out into the ocean quite far, which allowed us to play some ocean football. We ate lunch with all the staff from Haiti ARISE, which had travelled with us as part of a day of recognition and appreciation for them. Lunch was fried chicken and fresh bbq'd fish! I took some photos of the fish, it may not look like much but it was quoted as being: "The best fish I have ever had!". It was so good in fact that a few team members even ate the eyeballs!
After we ate our delicious meal, we started out a game of football (Canada Football). It was pretty cool to play in sand, in the sun and using the ocean as part of your playing field! We even got a bunch of the local kids to play with us, which only added to the experience.
The day ended with a spaghetti dinner back at the compound and us guys rubbing Aloe Vera lotion on our very red bodies.

~HFL Team Leader

This morning we headed to church bright and early. Pastor Aaron preached on "Leaving a Legacy" which resonated with the very full Haiti ARISE church, which had to find more chairs as the pews spilled over in the back. After church we visited with some of the people who we had met earlier in the week during our home visits where we had asked them to come to the Lord. It was great to see them in church.

We spent the afternoon playing soccer with one and another as all the staff have the day off on Sunday. Later on we headed up to a small community in Tapion where they do a kids church for over 80 kids. This class was very impressive, more than half of them could recite John 1 – 14, and the whole class knew all the books of the bible in order! We closed the afternoon with some fun and games (as the pictures show) and headed back to the compound for some lasagna!

We head out on our day off to Jacmel tomorrow morning, bright and early!

Good night!

~HFL Team Leader

What a day!
Today we held a youth camp for over 100 youth from the local community and the church. We spent the morning in prayer, asking for the day to be blessed and lives to be changed. Then a few of our guys quickly put up the last piece of our basketball puzzle together: the hoop.

Now we were ready.
3 of the team members shared their testimonies with the group and pastor Aaron preached on "The song of songs" , with an interesting "bread" analogy and a solid talk on dating, relationships and sex.
You can watch some of the video below:


The afternoon included a lunch for everybody and then groups of 3 from the team presented seminar topics that included: AIDS, dental hygiene and personal hygiene. The girls that performed the AIDS seminar are shown below:


The rest of the day was spent playing games, soccer and basketball. And to top of an amazing day of fellowship and community we ate together. Shown below is the amazing food the staff at Haiti ARISE prepared for all of us:

We ended this day the way it was started, giving thanks and praising the Lord.

~HFL Team Leader

Today's morning started out like every Wednesday and Friday mornings here at Haiti ARISE with a morning devotional at Marc & Lisa's house (directors of Haiti ARISE) in Thozin. After devotionals we walked back to the compound for breakfast and began our day of work. We had the girls making paper mache balloons for the youth program that will be going on tomorrow here for over 100 youth. A group of the guys were also busy making a basketball hoop, back board and the most fun part: digging a hole for our post. Shown above are the guys problem solving as the only welder we had to make the hoop busted on us and we were running out of time as the hoop needed to be ready by first thing tomorrow. Luckily we were able to get our hands on a gas welder that got the job done. Below is a photo of Brandon posing with the newly placed & cemented post for our basketball hoop:


This kept us busy all morning so at 1pm.....we headed to the beach....I'll let the pictures do the talking, I can only hope that it is snowing back in Canada as it will make the water feel all that much warmer.



~HFL Team Leader