An Interesting Week

Hey everyone. Chris and I have now completed almost a week as full time school teachers. Our two students are doing well. They miss their mom of course, but are working away and doing better this week. Homeschooling is such a big job! I don't know how moms do it by themselves, and with more than two kids...wow. We are all still waiting, holding our breath to see how the earthquake is going to continue to affect Haiti and our Haitian friends and neighbors. Life continues to go on here, which is a good thing, although it seems strange! Today I was hanging our laundry on the line and it was such a beautiful day...sunny and cloudy, with all the mountain edges looking spectacular against the sky as always, and I saw a helicopter speed past overhead, going south, and it was just a weird feeling. Knowing that it was probably bringing supplies (which is a praise!) but to people who are still suffering greatly. This picture above is from a funeral we attended yesterday. It actually wasn't for anyone involved in the earthquake, but the dad of both our Creole teacher, David, and one of our students. As you can see there were a ton of people there. We could only stay for an hour (we had to get back for class) but the whole time we were there different groups of people did special music. It was interesting. We learned from our class later that people who do not attend church do not get a funeral at all. They don't have funeral homes as we do in the States. They were very interested to know what happens when someone who doesn't know God dies.
We learned yesterday that Chris's dad will be coming to Port au Prince on Thursday for about 10 days to work in a field hospital somewhere down there. We aren't sure if we will be able to see him, but are hoping and praying that we will. We are waiting to hear from a mission that is driving down there every few days if they have space for us, and from Ron when he arrives, if there is anything we would even be able to do where he is. Dr. Kris continues to do well and work hard at clinics in Port. You can read more details on their blog: www.portmargot.blogspot.com. Cory has been updating where she is and other info. She seems to be doing well, though she told Cory it just seems unreal. Please keep praying for her. She isn't sleeping great and being in such a high stress/traumatic environment has got to be so draining. (The wood picture is of the same charcoal still in process...our compound has been filled with the aroma of it for about a week now)
I (Chris) worked on the diesel generator with Bill a few days ago. It was having trouble starting because the starter wasn't working quite right. They were having to manually engage the starter, but they didn't push it in far enough each time causing the gears on the starter and the gears on the flywheel to just grind each other as you can see in this picture. So we filed the teeth smooth and put some graphite in the starter so the arm will engage without human assistance and it started up great. This is important because this generator powers our compound! We run it to either directly power everything including the church and clinic or we use it to charge a bank of batteries that are hooked to an inverter so we can power lightbulbs without running the generator. It is great to have Bill here to help us take care of such things :) Thanks so much for your prayers and encouragement. They mean so so much to us. We are really trying to trust God as we go about our long days here right now. It's hard to be faithful in the little things. But we're so thankful to have each other, the other missionaries here, and the Haitians around us who demonstrate such resilience and who still sing loudly on Sunday (and at other times) praising God in the midst of such a storm. He's still good!