A hard days service!

2nd Full Day,

We are about to call it a day and head off to sleep. We are in a new guest house that is mostly finished. The eight guys are in 2 rooms that share a bathroom and 10 bunk beads. A couple of snorers but not going to mention any names. The 10 girls are in 3 seperate rooms that have their own bathroom. There is a gravity feed water system that is stored on the roof. If you shower in the morning the water is very cool but if you shower at the end of the day it is just cool. It feels very good after a long and hot day. About 28 to 30 degrees and there has been no rain. There has been a water shortage at UCI. The agriculture program has not been growing trees and fruit for 5 months. We brought a pump down with us and we are laying a new water line today. This water line will solve some fairly mojor water issues.

We raised a lot of money in Canada to have a second floor on the boy's dormitory. They have made a bunch of bricks and yesterday we moved a large amount of bricks over to the building site. These bricks weigh about 25 to 30 pounds and we have a chain of 12 people moving the bricks. There was more manual labor to be done but we took a break to do some crafts with the grade three children. The girls made paper pockets that were decorated and the boys made these ping pong ball guns. We couldn't find the elastic bands and searched everywhere. Finally I remembered the basic principle that we should pray. As soon as I prayed, Pastor Rod called out that he found it. Maybe just a "coincidence"!

We brought a keyboard down that I had told the locals that I had at home. They forgot about that. Just last week the keyboard at the church broke and they were not sure what to do and they prayed. We showed up with one. Maybe another "coincidence". 

In the afternoon we went to another nutrition center. It takes 20 to 30 minutes to get there over an incredibly bumpy road. The government of Haiti gave a company 50 million dollars to finish this road but the money is gone and the road is not fixed. That is what happens here. At the nutrition center we sang some songs and had a bible story with about 100 children. After the story we had various carnival games. Our team used some of our funds to pay for a meal for these children. If the children have a bowl, we have a team member that takes the child's bowl outside to get it filled by the fire with rice and beans with an onion tomato sauce. We then bring it back inside where the children eat. This is the only meal some of these children will have gotten today. 

We came back to the compound and started to get ready for the Wednesday night community church service. We snuck away to play some volleyball and were joined by a few locals. The ladies cooked us a Canadian meal of spagetti and tomato sauce that was enjoyed by all for supper. Our youth did an amazing job with the Drime that they had prepared for the evening service and it was received really well. There were about 150 to 200 people at the service. 

The girls at the dental clinic had very positive report today. Some of the nursing students came by to observe and Isabelle remembered that one of them was in the choir so she had them sing as a procedure was happenning in the dental chair. In Haiti you get live entertainment in the dental clinic. At the start of the day the compressor started overheating. We tried to fix it but couldn't find anything wrong so we prayed and it started working. One more "coindidence". Sure have a lot more "coindidences" when we pray. All team members are in good health and attitudes have been great.  We are looking forward to another great day tomorrow.