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

Three

Three, 3, trois, twa, twee, une,deux, trois, triez,

Oh the many wonderful things about the Number 3 : For instance:

3

3 is a prime number.

A triad, triplet, trio, tern or hat-trick...

Tri- means three. So triangles have three sides, tripods have three legs and the dinosaur triceratops had three horns. The French flag is a tricolore because it has three colours. Trigonometry is a branch of mathematics based on measuring triangles.

Three-dimensional means that something has length, width and depth.

There are (usually) three school terms in a year.

Oaths are traditionally repeated three times.

A three-legged race is run by two people each with a leg tied to their partner's.

The letters A F H K N Y Z are all made up of three lines.

There are three barleycorns in an inch, three feet in a yard, and three miles in a league. Barleycorns and leagues are some old imperial units of length which are no longer used today.

Once upon a time there were three little pigs ... three billy goats gruff ...

So, you can see what all the excitement is about the number 3!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
And 3 is a big number in our house today as it is Maia's 3rd Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday Sweet girl, so thankful for the three years that we have had with you and excited to see what the Lord has in store for you in the coming year.

Love you!

Home Building Project



A few weeks ago on the Adoration blog we posted about the Building Committee going out into the community and assessing families for a Building Project that we were hoping to start.  Well the project has been started!  We have received funding to build 50 homes for people in the Adoration community.  This project is exciting, stressful, and needed.

The building committee, which consists of Abner, Reminais, Evenz, Asselhomme, Alix, Cadeau, Pastor Octavius, Cornelius and Randy, has been working for weeks already finalizing the list of beneficiaries, making the budget, looking at land titles, finding foreman, signing contracts, preparing the supplies list, and the list could go on and on. 

But today was the first day of being out on the field with the beneficiaries digging in the dirt to start the foundation.

This project is a rehabilitation project to build houses for people currently living in tent cities or other unsustainable interim housing because their houses were destroyed by the 2010 earthquake.  Each beneficiary of the project will be required to participate in a repayment plan where they will pay back a small percentage of the house in the next 5 years.  They are also responsible for working alongside the construction crews with the building of their house, putting their own sweat and tears into their new home.

And the outcome of this project will be families will have safe, dry and warm housing.  Families are included in the project and will have a sense of ownership over their house as they help with the building process, as well as, financially contribute to it.  They will be loved and shown value through the project.  And the committee will bring the families and their new homes before the Lord in prayer, asking that He would be the Rock on which the home is built.

Please join us in lifting up this project before the Lord.  There are a lot of obstacles standing in front of the committee and a lot of things that still need to be figured out.  Pray for wisdom, strength and perseverance for those hot sweaty days when the block truck loses his breaks and can’t make it to the house, those days when the shovels go missing because the little children around the corner stole them, those days when the supplies can’t get to the job site because there is no phone service and they can’t find the supervisor, those days when you just don’t know if the headache is worth it.  Please pray.

Mud Puddle!

We went up the mountain to a friend's house today for a playdate and it rained for a little while we were eating lunch.... so our children spent the afternoon running around in the puddles.  For these four little ones it was a dream come true!


Everyone sitting in the puddle



Priceless!



As Maia says it "putting my hair in a muddle"

 

Taking a break from the puddles



And they are clean again!



Check it out!

Yup, it's proof, the seeds are germinating!

Haïtî, Couleur, Creole

The Special Education classes put on a special program last week Thursday.  It was the first edition of 'Haïtî, Couleur, Creole'.  A program dedicated to recognizing the achievements of the special education class as well as the dedication and help of their parents.  The whole school was invited to participate in the festivities and afterwards there were special treats and display tables of the students artwork. 

Wislande, Grade 1 teacher, was our MC for the afternoon.  She made volunteers come up and explain what the word Haiti meant to them, the special education classes sang us a couple of songs, parents of the students were given beautiful corsages, thank yous were said to the teachers and their assisants, special awards were handed out to parents of students who had outstanding achievements and thankfulness was shown for each unique individual.

I'm not sure I realize the full extent of what it means to have a child in Haiti with special needs.  These parents and families face HUGE obstacles.  There are no wheelchair ramps, handicapped buses, special community programs for these children.  A lot of them are rejected by society and become outcasts.  I recently interviewed a mother of one our students and she explained the difficulty of trying to get her son into a school and the huge weight that was lifted from her when she found out that Adoration had a program that her son could be a part of.  

Please keep our staff Ketia, Magdalyne, Annelle, and Ylda in your prayers.  Pray that they may continue to pour out love on these children, that they may have patience and wisdom in teaching them and pray that Adoration can continue to provide a loving, safe environment for our special young brothers and sisters.

First Edition of 'Haïti, Couleur, Creole'

Randy explaining what the word Haiti means to him

The parents receiving their corsages

Outstanding Achievement awarded to three different individuals. 
These mothers received the award for their child.

Pastor Octavius hanging out with some of the students after the program

Cherry Pickers

We have 3 luscious cherry trees in our yard and Maia and Levi LOVE picking cherries.  Unfortunately the ladder is a human ladder so we can only pick when Daddy is around but nonetheless we spend countless hours every day looking at the cherries, planning to pick them, picking them, and making cherry cheesecake.  Love our cherry trees!

 

Fete de l`Agriculture

Today is Agriculture day, which means yesterday we did a fun activity with the students to teach them a little about Agriculture.  Randy got this great idea off of Pinterest (what did people do before Pinterest?!?!?!)

Each student was asked to bring in a used plastic bottle.  They, or their teachers, cut a square in the top of it and Cornelius drilled some holes in the side, for the string, and some holes in the bottom for water drainage.  Then Randy gathered the class around the wheelbarrow and got students to shovel in the dirt, remove the rocks and garbage, mix it with the fertilizer (some lovely cow manure from next door) and scoop it into their bottles.  Then they made little holes in the dirt and we planted the seeds - melons, peppers, tomotoes, flowers, radishes, onions, so many different varieties! The students loved it and it will be fun to see the little plants come to life.

After their bottles were made Cornelius, Cadeau and Beuger hung them on the wall for the school so when the little seedlings grow we will have a beatiful display of plants, so excited!!

  



Guess who this one belongs to....