Maia Joy's Baptism

"The Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with joy"
The Lord has indeed done great things for us... yesterday we were blessed to present our little daughter before the Lord for baptism. What an amazing thing to be a part of God's family and to hear his promises to her. We pray that the Lord may give us strength and wisdom as we are responsible for her here on this earth. As friends of ours wrote on a card for her ..."May the Lord guard and keep you in his love, dear one. May you always know the sweet presence of your Saviour who graciously calls you His own. May His Word dwell richly in your heart." That is truly our prayer for our daughter.
Although our family was greatly missed yesterday we were able to celebrate with our church family as well as close friends here in Haiti who have become like family to us.
Here are some pics: our little family, Pastor Ben Hopp, OPC missionary, baptizing Maia Joy, the back of the church (quite a few blans :), fellowshipping after the church service.
Enjoy!

Teacher Training Seminars

Last week we were extremely blessed to have three teachers from Canada come down and share their knowledge and expertise with us. The teachers at Adoration thoroughly enjoyed the seminars and we really appreciated the time and effort that Keith Verburg, Ruth Meerveld and Al Stares put into the seminars to make them such a success. Feel free to come down again and see how the teachers are putting into practice the things that you taught them. Enjoy the pics!

Keith doing some phys ed training with the teachers. He did an excellent job teaching us some new games and different techniques to developing skills

The teachers proudly displaying their artwork.

Ruth enjoying a meal with the teachers

Al and his translater, Samuel Masseus, teaching us how to teach BibleRandy leading us in morning devotions on John 4

Ruth, Maia and I with some of the young ladies from church

The directrice... what'd you say?

Family Picture :)

...and before we get the next team in tomorrow (3 Canadian teachers for teacher training seminars) I thought I'd put up some pics of the little princess. She's cooing at us lots and smiling and growing and this morning she rolled over!
Maia's favorite toy! the second you lay her down in front of it she's grinning from ear to earFirst time sightseeing in Haiti, she did great... slept through all of it!

Au Revwa!

The team has been and gone for a number of days already. They did A LOT of work while they were with us. Thank you VERY much Joel, Natalie, Rachel, Jim & Curtis for giving of your time and talents to Adoration. We thoroughly enjoyed having you and you were a real blessing to the school.

Group shot up at Fort Jacques

We had UN protection one day as some UN soldiers from Peru were outside our gate

Priming the inside of the tikayThe tikay, finished on the outside, still needs a bit of work on the inside, but it's coming along

And, this is what the classrooms are looking like. The guys worked hard at parging on the outside yesterday as you can see and after I took this picture Randy got the roof on, it's looking REALLY good!

Visitors!

Our team has arrived and has been here for a number of days already. Working hard with us we have Jim Kamstra, Joel Helder, Curtis Bowman, Natalie Plantinga, and Rachel Ysinga. They've had some good times already... nights of no electricity and the invertor dying, being able to enjoy the neighbours music till 5 in the morning, sweating at 6:30 in the morning b/c they are brushing their teeth... all the fun things about Haiti :)

But... they've also been working hard. They are working on building a tikay (little house) on the roof of the school for the four young men that live at the school, as well as building tables, staining, counting books etc, etc. While they are working on that a bunch of our sponsor students, some of our employees and some hired help are working on the concrete for the new classrooms where the old tikay used to be. Here are some pics to show you the progression of these projects.

The original tikay

The demolition of the original tikay
The New Classrooms
Jim and Curtis working hard on the roof of the new tikay
Joel and Guerdeson working on the foundation of the new tikay

Natalie building us some new tables for the Special Needs Class Rachel Paint'n it up

The Project Supervisors...

The New TikayBig Picture View - New tikay on roof
And that's it for now... but don't worry we are all still working and sweating, and sweating and working!