Candace Writing here… We’re now in the new year…for several days already. Today is a relaxing day for us after a couple of really busy ones. Our New Year’s Eve activities were a first for all involved. Only Lacey was here besides our household, and she expressed a wish to do something she had never done before. As we were talking she remembered that she had brought some black and brown face paint to Haiti with her. She went to get it and we started smearing it on Keith’s face to see how it would work. Since several of the others wanted to use it, too, and the tubes of paint weren’t all that big, we mixed up some water and cocoa to use in his beard. Zack, Sally and Lacey got the face-coloring treatment, too, and I wish you could have been here while it was happening! It’s really good to laugh like that once in a while!
Once the four of them donned toques, hoods and unusual clothes they were ready to hit the town of Oriani and put the inhabitants to test. Keith first of all freaked Todd’s whole household out. Dallas was sure it was a thief, and Donna nearly fell over in fright. They were very certain that Keith was the ugliest black man they had ever, ever seen. Then when he stuck his face in through the brightly lit window opening of Fre Bartelmy’s store, all the children started wailing and screaming in fright about this devil. In the darkness of the street itself, no one gave a second glance, in fact, some guy bumped into Keith on his way by with never a word. The group of bad guys who stand on the corner swore at them as they passed. When they reached the little house where some of the brethren were visiting together, there was complete silence for a little minute. Then,”Who are you, who are you?” Keith just said, “It’s me.” When they all finally realized what was going on, everyone erupted into hilarious knee-slapping, foot-stomping mirth! After things settled down, they had several songs and prayers to usher in the New Year. Then the brethren said they had to go home, wake up their wives and children to pray with them in the New Year.
Too bad the rest of us couldn’t have been there to witness all that, but it would have tended to spoil the effect, I’m afraid! New Year’s Day we spent here making and eating New Year’s cookies and pumpkin soup. Keith and I took a number of plates of cookies to some of our neighbors. Pumpkin soup is their tradition and New Year’s cookies are ours. I think it’s fun mixing both. We invited the other two households and Dallas’s to our place and then in the evening we packed up wieners and wood, etc. for a picnic in the forest. The very next day, Virgil and Delma paid us a visit, bringing with them the three orphanage girls, Laura, Beth, and Maggie, plus Wichie, one of the orphanage kids, and Marie-Josie, a French sister from Quebec. Delma also brought a delicious stew with sausage from back home in it. We had a great few hours with them till they left at around 4:00. At that time I was at Donna’s with the ladies and Keith called me and asked if I could excuse myself because he needed me. I had a little idea of what it might be all about and I was right. Dallas’s had left the Oriani area that morning and he was carrying with him a marriage proposal from Trevor to Mirlene. He met with Ministers Nason and Enel, Mirlene’s dad, at Enel’s place to bring it.
After finding no objections on any of the minister’s parts, they called Mirlene in and asked her if she would accept this offer of marriage from Trevor. She immediately answered in the affirmative and so it was settled.
Dallas called Keith with the answer, Keith in turn called me home and we had the joy of telling Trevor! Wow! Trevor kept smiling involuntarily and couldn’t seem to stop…he still walks around somewhat aimlessly at times.
Maybe you are puzzled as to where Mirlene really is right now.
She left our place before Christmas to spend the holidays with her family and to prepare for her sister’s wedding which was on the 29th of December, last Sunday. We didn’t know when to tell Mirlene to come back to work in the clinic because of this proposal thing! It was almost getting a little awkward already, but that’s all over with now!
When she does come back, she will live at Todd’s place. There’s an extra bedroom outside next to Lacey’s. Tomorrow our two families will meet and make plans for the future.
January 5, 2014
Sunday morning here…an unusual time to be at home, but since it is raining and very cold, we’re sure there is no church service. The phone service is out, too, so we can hardly call around to find out what’s really happening. Last night and this morning have got to have been the coldest yet. And this rain is very unusual. Another reason to be disappointed is that we had planned to make Trevor and Mirlene’s wedding announcement this morning…oh well, not much can be done about it. We went down to Pastor Enel’s with our family yesterday afternoon.
We had a wonderful time with them…also got to see Jephte and Daphne again…who would have thought that Trev would someday be Jeff’s brother-in-law! We agreed on a date for the wedding-March 16th-and ate a delicious supper with them and just had a good time generally. Later today…we did end up going to church late, the rain finally let up for a while, at least. So the big announcement was made to a smaller than usual crowd. Everyone seems to be pretty enthused about the whole thing…everyone loves Mirlene. The idea of a white marrying a Haitian doesn’t seem to stress anyone out. Todd’s invited us for dinner which was special, especially today.
January 9, 2014
We have revival meetings starting this afternoon now. On Sunday for the first time that I can remember, we had a vote on whether we wanted the meetings to start at 3:00 or 4:00. No one voted for 3:00 that I could see.
Last time around, Fre Ozias just told us the meetings would be starting at 3:00. At that time, the three ministers told the leader brethren, maybe Fre Ozias in particular, that they needed to step back a little and let Todd take the lead since he is an ordained brother. I guess that has happened to some degree as shown by the vote about the starting time. It’s all a little awkward since Todd doesn’t know Creole well enough to speak on his own, and I’ve heard there’s some confusion among the brethren about the order of things, but hopefully, now that the revival ministers are back, things can be cleared up. The work at the clinic keeps on…Mirlene is back at her job there since Monday, the 6th. I was at the clinic several days back near quitting time, but things were still humming. There was a young woman on the exam table who was miscarrying and wouldn’t stop bleeding, so Fre Bartelmy was preparing to take her down in the ambulance. During all that, we received word that another lady was being carried in, as she was in such pain she couldn’t walk. That lady turned out to have a severe urinary tract infection. The first lady was on IV, and was put on oxygen for the ride down. As I watched all that, I felt almost overwhelmed that we actually are able to help people in this way. So many others have made it possible for this to be happening. The ambulance has not been in very good shape. Keith and the boys have been working on it to keep it on the road, but what is really needed is that our mechanic, John Beasly, come with parts to fix it properly. I breathed a little prayer that it would make the trip safely down with the sick lady so she wouldn’t die. Well, it did, but it didn’t get back up. This morning, Keith and Zack drove Todd’s truck down to Terre Froid where the ambulance was left by Fre Bartelmy, got it running again and drove it all the way up.
Thankfully, John is coming tomorrow.
January 14, 2014
John Beasly has been here and worked on the ambulance. On Sunday it made a trip down with a number of people who were scheduled for different surgeries in Fond Parisien. They needed to be taken Sunday already so as to be ready first thing Monday morning. But now the starter went, so Keith and Zack have worked all day on it. Trev was occupied with putting a new roof on the old clinic. That’s the first step to turning that place into a little honeymoon house for he and Mirlene. We also got word today that the new transmission for the Excursion is in the country.
January 20, 2014
Last Friday exactly, Keith went down to pick up the new transmission from Roch Blanch, thus missing the celebration of Trevor’s 21st birthday. I worked most of the day on a double layer chocolate cake with fancy icing. Of course I thought about Sonia and Shelly all day! I was pleased with the result, but it was still a far cry from one of their cakes. There happened to be company at both the other missionaries’ houses and Karen happened to invite us all to their place, so that’s where we ate supper. We were a group of 26, I think, 15 of which were young people. One of the CSI guys, Sheldon, has three of his friends visiting, and Lacey has her dad, sister, two cousins, and a friend here to do an eaves-troughing project. I heard that they did three different houses one morning. That’s a worthy project…anything to help people collect more water when it rains. It’s getting pretty dry…the dust flies when a big truck roars by. Last week Sunday was the end of the revival meetings. We concluded with a five hour communion service. There weren’t even any baptisms to make it take that long…I don’t know how it happens. Only three members did not go to communion. Fre and Se Jantzi have made a decision to leave our church for a different one, which makes us all really sad. Pray for the congregation here…it’s still so young. To switch subjects…Ketli comes up with some little jewels once in a while. Here’s what she said to me the other day.
“Trevor has a airplane at Canada, at Montreal.
It’s a big one; I saw it.” I told her, “No-o-o, he doesn’t.” She snaps back, “Oh, it’s Zack’s?”
January 25, 2014
Today is Saturday; I think we’re going to the market in Fore. I was up long before everyone else and have three loads of laundry drying in the sun.
The Excursion is fixed now…Zack put in many hours during this last week getting the new transmission in. Yesterday Trev, Zack, and Mirlene took it down to accomplish various things. Mirlene needed to sign for her passport and also buy fabric for the wedding.
It’s so nice to have a working vehicle again. The work at Trevor’s little house is progressing, albeit slowly. The masons have worked for two days filling in the gaps on top of the wall up to the new ceiling.
We were laughing the other day about how this house which Trev and Mirlene are planning to start out in, is far beyond the reach of any one in this area…yet at home, in North America, there wouldn’t be one, not one young man who would consent to live in a house like that! One day during the week I had gotten up, and was outside near our bedroom window which has some metal grill work at the top. I noticed that honeybees were starting to swarm around the feed sack we have stuffed in around the bars. I didn’t pay too much mind till Keith started yelling for help from his bed. He told me to pull out the sack to let the bees back out of the bedroom, but I couldn’t get near enough to do that. So he was trapped in the bed while several hundred bees buzzed threateningly around the room! Only when we started spraying them from the outside did the bees decide to start their retreat. I don’t think we actually killed that many, but they decided, apparently, that our bedroom wasn’t the friendliest place to begin a new hive. I had just made a comment to Zack that very morning that he should consider becoming a beekeeper here in Haiti and export honey to the rest of the world, seeing how the honeybees are dying everywhere. There seem to be a lot left here.
February 3, 2014
There’s been a lot of coming and going during this last week…Todd’s have guests…friends of theirs from Scott City…Casey and Jamie Nightingale. They came the day that Lacey’s crew left. Our new nurse, Angela Toews from North Carolina, arrived on Saturday. She is thirty-three, an RN, grew up in Michigan and Kentucky, and moved to North Carolina some years ago. She is a cousin of Craig, Lyndsey’s husband. We haven’t had a completely new person here for long enough that I have to keep reminding myself that no, she does not know anything about us or Oriani yet. It was hardly two months ago she heard about our need here and she’s already come!
Seems to me she’ll be a good fit. I don’t believe I mentioned that Sallie flew home for a week to attend her grandfather’s funeral. So suddenly the kids had some days off of school…an unexpected treat for them. I had to scramble a little to come up with ways to keep everyone profitably occupied.
We got a good little bit of clean-up work done in the yard.
Lacey’s sister, Jenna, wanted to substitute-teach for a couple of days which worked quite nicely. Jesse Lancour, the missionary I’ve mentioned who has settled not far from us, went with Keith the day he went down last week to pick Sallie up from the airport. Jesse’s wife, Kirsten, wanted to spend the day with me, which she did. She walked here from where they live…an hour-and-a-half walk, and she’s seven months pregnant. She actually spent the next day with me, too, because our dear old Excursion gave Keith some more fits while in Port. He managed to get to Roch Blanch and spend the night and then work all day the next day on it. Zack and Cam took Todd’s truck down so they could help with repairs. Christina had gone with Keith so it suited her just fine that she got to play with Jerrod’s girls for a whole day! Jesse seemed cheerful about it all, too. Kirsten and I had a good time…we walked around to see the school and the clinic and Donna, plus talked a lot…she’s a great talker. When Keith and everyone finally did return home, Jesse’s stayed the night. Now it seems, notice I said seems, like things will settle into a bit more of a normal schedule, what with a nurse proper living with us again. One problem we will face is what to do about a translator for Angela when Mirlene goes down to get ready for her wedding. We thought we had someone lined up but that’s not working out. Bon Dye konnen…God knows. We’ll trust Him.
An interesting tidbit…for the first time, Ketli asked how to say something in Creole. I had just given her an egg for her breakfast, telling her it was a hot egg. Then she asked me, “How do you say ‘hot egg’
in Creole?” That tickled me. I’m impressed that she’s starting to process the difference between the two languages.
February 11, 2014
I’m listening to a wild chorus of Creole singing, courtesy of Sally and Christina…they know I’m writing about them so now they’re singing gently and impressively! They both are very good at Haitian-style singing.
We’ve had a crazy weekend…lots of people around. Two guys from Ballico, California, Matt Jantz and Benny Friesen, came to see the clinic and the Lastic project. Sadly, Matt got really sick on Saturday and couldn’t go to church at all on Sunday. He felt better by evening but missed a lot. Sam Wilhite has returned to Haiti to work in Lastic and he was up here for the day with two others. The Oriani congregation has organized a ‘choral’, a choir…and the twenty-four or so of us practice at 3:00 every Sunday and Wednesday. That helps to make my Sunday very busy indeed, but it’s fun and they’re all doing very well. So, to take a look at Keith’s schedule of services in a week…Sunday morning; 3:00 in the afternoon in charge of choir practice, then the service; Tuesday afternoon from 3:00 to 5:00 translate for Todd at the doctrine class; Wednesday lead the choir again at 3:00 in the afternoon and after that the Bible Study, and on Friday translate the doctrine class for Todd again. Add to that the duties of the clinic and everything else and you’re looking at one busy man! Chase is really enthused to be in the doctrine class…there’s a number of young people. David, Mirlene’s brother, is up here now helping Trevor with his house.
Just maybe I’ll get this emailed tonight before this computer goes to Canada with Zack. God bless everyone and we’re looking forward to seeing some of you at the wedding March 16
Love to all, Candace