When Helping Hurts

Randy has recently been taking some courses through the Chalmers Center. This all started shortly after the earthquake when evaluating what our organization was doing... really doing. As a result of this evaluation we, as well as those involved in CDIA, were encouraged to read the book When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert. This book is extremely challenging and thought provoking (we highly recommend it). After reading the book Randy signed up for some courses that are offered through the Chalmers Center. He was recently asked if they could use some of his thoughts for their monthly newsletter. To read the article in the Chalmers Center monthly newsletter click here.

dEar daDdy,
i can't wait tO see yOu. onLy tWo moRe slEePs!
loVe yOu
mAia joy

First day of Lekol!

Proverbs 22:6 "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it."

1 Timothy 4:7,10 "Rather train yourself for godliness. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God..."

Well, today we had our first day of school! Praise the LORD! We were excited to open our doors again and welcome the students back as we begin our new school year. Most of the students showed up, packing the classrooms. The first day of school is always hard though because there are so many parents who still show up with their children trying to get them into the school - but we do not have enough room, and can't take them all. It is heart breaking to turn people away.



On the first day of school the children receive all their books and cahiers, they get introduced or re-introduced to the school’s rules, meet their teachers and get settled into their class-rooms. You can see on some photos the stack of new books that the students receive this year. Because of the earthquake most students’ books were destroyed or lost, and so this year we had to purchase new ones for them all. Thank-you to everyone who has supported Adoration through child sponsorship or disaster relief. The books are included in the sponsorship.

We are also blessed in that through your support we can offer 2 meals a day to these students. They receive breakfast and lunch. It was good to have the cooks back, working hard to provide these meals.The students will be given uniforms as well, when they are finished being made. We provide 2 shirts for them, and they are responsible for their pants or skirt.

Maia enjoys the school, and enjoys playing with the students and sitting with them. She also enjoys organizing the school office, as Kim always needs a hand tidying up.

Many things still need to be done to the Centre to make it fully functional. We do not have any electricity yet, and we are still working on building classroom dividers, enough tables and benches, getting the pastors office, the church, and the medical clinic up and running. Please pray that in the next little while we would be able to get all these things operational.

God is good... all the time!

Anticipation

So the "little" bit of work has been done and Adoration is almost ready to open it's doors Monday morning to 140 very excited students, 11 very pumped teachers and assistants, 2 amazing cooks, 1 fabulous gatekeeper, 1 great errand guy, 4 extraordinary directors and 1 cute little blan. This week was extra busy but lots of different people came and helped out and because of that, di Dieu vle, we can open our doors on Monday!
They were able to totally clear and clean up Charles' propertyFix tables and benches (under Maia's supervision of course!)Supervise entry exams for new students who are hoping to attend Adoration this year Maia also helped out with the supervising of the entry exams

as well as countless other jobs that we didn't get pictures of... moving all the wood around, cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning, preparing for class, organizing books, tables and benches, buying supplies, setting up the kitchen, painting, moving furniture around, picking up garbage etc, etc.

On the personal side of things Maia and I are packing up and saying the dreaded good-byes.

Besides missing her daddy A LOT (he'll be flying in a little later than us) Maia is especially going to miss "Uncle" Cadeau, he spoils her rotten!

Happy Thanksgiving!

To our all dear Canadian friends and family, Happy Thanksgiving!
We were able to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner yesterday up the coast with fellow Canadians and a fabulous turkey dinner put on by Samaritans Purse. It was fun to meet and fellowship with other Canadians.
And today we were able to celebrate Thanksgiving by having our first meeting at the "new" Adoration Christian Centre. It truly is a blessing to have a building that school, programs and church can call "home". Although the building needs a bit of work we are hoping and praying that Adoration Christian School can start next Monday. This will require a lot of prayers and a lot of hard work but we know that our community can do it!
Below is staff and volunteers helping move Adoration's stuff

and... our little dutch girl :)

"What goes up must come down"

Unfortunately this statement is true of all the temporary structures that were put up for Adoration Christian School. Although we knew they were going to be temporary we never dreamed we would be taking them down already. But we know that in all of this God has a plan. So we've received access to the property and in two days most of the buildings were down. We are waiting finalization on our next location for Adoration Christian Centre and then we will be moving all of our stuff over. In the meantime plans are in the works so that as soon as the next location is secured school and programs can once again start up.

And a couple of weeks ago we went to the "zoo" here in Haiti. Maia LOVED it.