Merry Christmas!

"Joy to the world the Lord has come,

let earth receive her King.

Let every heart prepare him room,

and heaven and nature sing."

 

From our family to yours we would like to wish you a blessed Christmas

and the Lord's richest blessings for 2013. 

May our hearts be filled with awe and joy as we celebrate the day that heaven kissed earth.

Love,

Randy & Karen

Maia, Levi

Love the labels

You've gotta love the labelling!

Truly Canadian

Even though we are living in the Caribbean and the temperature is almost always over 30 degrees celsius... we are still Canadian at heart and enjoy making snowmen and drinking hot chocolate! 

pants... optional

When you look this cute with your underwear over your diaper, pants are optional!

Belly War

As you may or may not know Randy and I are expecting baby #3 at the end of February!  Maia and Levi are excited about having a baby in the house and Maia is fervently praying to Jesus for a baby girl.  We are working on convincing her that a baby boy would be fun too since the chances are 50/50.

A couple of weeks ago Maia said to me in total seriousness "your belly is almost as big as Daddy's!"

so... The Belly War is on!  

Yellow House Project

Following the devastating January 2010 earthquake, an initial damage assessment process determined whether buildings were safe (green), sustained limited damage (yellow), or were unsafe (red). For the highest immediate impact, yellow tagged houses have been flagged for repair and are being repaired through various programs. (*taken from the miyamoto website)
Miyamoto, a seismic engineering company, has repaired over 9,500 homes in the last 3 years following the earthquake.   A few stats that I gathered at the cocktail that Randy and I attended to celebrate this huge achievement by Miyamoto and their partner orgnaizations (of which Adoration is one of them)

• Total Houses repaired to date 9,902
• Total Households affected 14,952 (Average 7 people/household, 52% women)
• Total People affected 104,664

Adoration was able to partner with Miyamoto shortly after the earthquakce to do a yellow house project.  Miyamoto worked in the community of Cite Aux Cayes and Cite Jeremie, where a number of families from Adoration's community live.  And so Adoration partnered with Miyamoto for a 200 house project (total project cost was $300,000 USD)  We were able to do this project with generous donations from supporters, individuals and companies from Canada who responded with financial donations after the earthquake.  One of the things that we really appreciate about Miyamoto is their focus on educating the Haitians, that is our whole purpose at Adoration and so we felt that this project fit in well in helping in our community while meeting the goal of education.
It was exciting to attend the cocktail a couple of weeks ago, meet the people who are making a huge difference in how Haiti is being rebuilt and see how our small organization was able to contribute to the rebuilding and relocation of people back into their homes. 
For some interesting videos and more information on the work Miyamoto is doing in Haiti check out this link.

Happy American Thanksgiving!

 To all our Dear American Friends, Happy Thanksgiving!  Or as Maia said this morning "Happy Snakesgiving!" 

We also took some time today to remember God's goodness to our family.  Some of the things that we are thankful for are:  God, Jesus, Each other, Friends, Trucks, Dirt, Sticks, the Sun, Toys, etc.  We have lot to be thankful for and pray that everyday we may live with thanksgiving in our hearts.

 

Our Thankful Turkeys

Our other Thankful Turkeys

Happy Birthday Evi!

It's been a LONG time since we've posted... I have good intentions of doing some posts about what HAS happened, we'll see if those intentions turn into actual blog posts...

but today is a special day...

Happy 2nd Birthday Levi!
Leviticus/Leviathan/evi,
you are one very special little man that has brought a lot of love and laughter into this household.  Your little mannerisms, spunk and character keep us on our toes and keep us laughing.  Praying that the Lord continues to bless you, and us through you.  Excited to see how the Lord will work in your little life!
Love you Little Man!

A House Becomes A Home

The Philippe family was one of seven families who received a new home during Phase 1 of Adoration’s Home Building Project.  Hendy and Dendy, twin teenage boys, are in Adoration’s sponsorship program in Grade 7, and attend the Reformed Presbyterian Church at Adoration. Their home, a typical 2 bedroom model home, is located outside of Port-au-Prince. The Philippe family will be required to pay back a percentage of the cost over the next 5 years, which in turn will be used to provide housing for more families who are need.

Enjoy some pictures of Hendy and Dendy with their mom in front of their new house and join us in thanking the Lord for providing safe and secure housing for the Philippe family as well as 6 other families in Phase 1.

Photo Fanmi Nou

Kati recently took some family photos for us and posted them on her blog.  I, very legally, have copied them onto our blog.  Thanks Kati for taking our photos and for letting me steal them!  Here are a few of the favourites

Kati = sanity

I don't think I've mentioned much about Kati on our blog these past seven months but Kati is a very importatant person to our family and has blessed us immensely these past 7 months.  Kati hails from Grand Rapids but came to serve in Haiti last November.  She had a busy schedule while she was here teaching at a few schools in the neighbourhood, helping out with youth group at Quisqueya chapel and helping lead a youth Bible study AND on top of all of that she willingly volunteered to come and play with Maia and Levi two times a week... yes you heard that right TWO times a week she came for a couple of hours so I could get out of the house and get some work done for Adoration Christian Centre.  It was heavenly!  Kati has left Haiti and headed back to the USA but we wanted to make sure that we told you all how much we love Kati. 

Kati, we love you and we miss you and we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being such a wonderful babysitter and friend.  You have spent countless hours playing play-doh and Barbies and colouring it should last you for the next 5 years.  We miss having you around but we pray for the Lord's blessing on you as continue to serve Him lòt bò.  Your welcome to come visit anytime, the door is quadruple locked but we'll open it for you!  Blessings and Love, Randy & Karen, Maia, Levi

Flamingo Lake

We headed out to Flamingo lake last weekend with some friends.  Unfortunately the flamingos were out of town but we still had a fun little excursion.  Check out Kati's blog for pictures!

Teacher Appreciation

On May 17th, the day we celebrated flag day, we also celebrated our teachers for Teacher Appreciation Day.  In my, humble, opinion Adoration Christian School is a great school.  You don't have a great school unless you have a strong, committed, energetic, educated, capable team behind the school.  We, at Adoration, have all of those things.  We have a great teaching staff who wants to make an impact on their students and on their community.

Thank you Rachelle, Node, Ketia, Annelle, Wislande, Carline, Roodvens, Reminais, Abner, Evenz, Magdalyne, Ketie, and Alix for all of your work that you do for Adoration Christian School.  We know that your job is challenging and frustrating but we thank you for all the time, energy, prayers, sweat and tears that you invest into your students each and every day again.  Thank you for being a blessing to Adoration. 

Alix, school director, giving a short appreciation speech

Some of the ladies enjoying their lunch and cake
Node, Magdalyne, Carline, Rachelle



Flag Day Parade

As promised here are the videos of Adoration's Flag Day parade.  Enjoy!

NB  Thank you Kait for being our videographer/photographer for the parade!

Saturday Swinging

Maia Swinging high in the sky!

Photo courtesy of Maia... the fact that she had my camera makes me just a little nervous
but check out how centred and clear this picture is! 
I think she's got talent... just don't want her practicing that talent with my camera....

Fête du Drapeau

Tomorrow, May 18th, is Flag Day.  Flag Day is a national holiday here in Haiti.  Below are some quick facts on the Haitian flag.

• First Haitian Flag was adopted on May 18, 1803
• Revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines created the flag by ripping out the white in a French flag

• The blue represents vigilance, loyalty, perseverance and justice, and the union of black Haitians and mulatto Haitians
• The red symbolizes hardiness, bravery, strength and valour
• The coat of arms in the middle of the flag consists of a trophy of weapons ready to defend freedom
• The coat of arms also has a royal palm that symbolizes independence.  The palm is topped by the Cap of Liberty
• On the white scroll on the flag is the nations motto; it reads L'Union Fait La Force ("Unity Makes Strength")

At school today we celebrated flag day with the students.  The older classes started of the morning with some trivia about the flag.  Grade 3 & 4 were very evenly matched!  There was lot's of cheering and yelling going on down there as the classes displayed their intelligence.

And around 10 we started our parade!  This is the first year we have done a parade in the community and judging by how much the students enjoyed it, I don't think it will be our last.  Roodvens (Grade 3 teacher) has been preparing the students for the parade for a couple of weeks.  Throughout the last couple of weeks during recreation as well as Phys ed you could hear and see the students learning the chants,  songs and routines that go along with the flag day celebrations.  This morning the school headed around the block and down the hill waving their haitian flags and proudly singing about their flag, their independence, their country.  Hopefully we'll have a short video for you next week showing you their fine performance but for now pictures will have to do.

Practicing before we left the school yard

Marching out into the community

Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right

Roodvens, proudly leading the parade

L'Union Fait La Force!

Birthday Puddle Party

To celebrate Maia's third birthday we had a birthday BBQ bash on Saturday with some dear friends.  We were hoping for a nice evening in which we could hang out outside playing bocce ball and ladder golf and the kids could run around the yard... while instead the rain came pouring down and the kids ended up entertaining themselves by jumping in the puddles.  It was great fun!

Enjoying the outdoors before the rain...

  

"Happy Birthday dear Maia.."

Yummy!



Had some serious puddle jumping going on!

Maia handpainted the goodie bags for all of her friends