Hello from Haiti!

We are safely here at the Ailegue mission.  Our two days of travel were exhausting -as might be expected, but our family didn't miss any flights and we were able to spend the night at a hotel in Florida which was refreshing after being in airports all day.  Lydia, however wasn't able to travel with us as hoped.  We had an unexpected problem with her tickets and she actually had to sit in the SF airport from 5a.m. when we arrived together until 5:30p.m. when she finally flew out.  We met up the next morning at the Florida airport where we flew together to Haiti.  Poor girl was very ready to meet up with us.

Our trip through Port was one of running errands, weaving through typical Haitian traffic, escaping a near miss with a big Mack truck that would give us no room but to veer off the road.... Ahhh! Poor Julian- our driver- was gracious with my involuntary exclamations. My(Kara's) later exhaustion might have been equally from stimulation as from lack of sleep - ;-).

Here at the mission we are finding our place after getting unpacked and rested up.  The children are thrilled with the play place they have.... The compound is fenced and there are lots of aunts and a couple uncles to interact with.  There is even a playful puppy and a cat to run with.  Life at home might seem pretty tame when we go back. :-). They like to watch the goat, pigs and rabbits by turn too.

Tabitha is doing great also.  She has done surprisingly well with the Haitian people holding her.  She had become pretty shy at home, but somehow she prefers the black skinned friends here and loves to be held and jabbered at by them.  We think it might be because of Eugene and my personality being similar to their animated conversation.  The children are learning some Haitian greetings and brushing up on how to speak respectfully.... Good opportunities to keep forming life skills and character.

Eugene has been learning the ropes doing a little of this and that... He fixed the faucet in our kitchen here and sharpened a local man's axe head, did something with some tanks of propane.  Soon here I think he will be taking the boys and going for an errand with one of the vehicles.

I(Kara) feel more settled as I am finding a place for everything and getting a feel of the schedule and my responsibilities.  I made breakfast for our crew today which felt good.  We had visitors for supper and breakfast... Grandpa Harold came with his daughter Esther and her husband Eldon Shenk.  They were a joy to host.

By the way... Internet is quite a challenge here so if we don't post often or don't have pictures uploaded it's probably due to connection problems.  It has taken us a lot of spare moments to get this far with the blog.  We are also trying to get our list together so we can notify you of updates when we have them on here.  Thanks for your patience and prayers!  The staff down here is having a very busy time with Clinic.  They are spending long hours there every day.  They have some Cholera patients again as well so that creates a new dimension of care with hydrating and sanitizing.  We are hoping it doesn't spread more.  Haiti is also having demostrations again... this means anything from planned protests to bus burnings, forced road blocks, etc.  The people get outraged due to high gas prices or no electricity or mistreatment in some other area of life.  Hans Hertzlers' brother is due to arrive Tues of this coming week and Rhoda Eshbach is due to fly out the same day.  We found out there are planned demonstrations planned which mean the people will be trying to force everyone to stay off the roads.  It could be dangerous for those needing to drive...  Your prayers are apprciated!