Our house, and a few other things!

Our second day has been a good one! We went to church this morning, and had to stand up front to be introduced. Kris translated for us as we greeted the church family and told them we are glad to be here to serve the Lord with them. They were all very smiley and friendly! Then Kris also translated the sermon for us, so we could understand most of what the pastor was saying.

We also got to watch the Jesus film (in French...so we just enjoyed the visual aspect haha) with a building full of kids this afternoon. Anna is a huge help as we try to communicate with people since she speaks both Creole and English.

We are falling in love with our house also. It is just the right size for us! Minus the rather uncomfortably large spider we encountered this morning, we are starting to feel more at home.

This week we will start doing some of the things we were anticipating before we left. Chris will have the opportunity to go to the clinic tomorrow, and I will begin my first attempt at helping teach Eli and Anna. (I am nervous!) But we are excited to start our first week. Please pray for Cory as he is traveling to Port au Prince this week.
Here is a shot of the inside of our house...it's hard to get a good picture in there! But that's our bed with a mosquito net, and as you can see we have nice curtains.

We will upload another picture of the house when we can. The top picture is of Chris and Anna and a few kids we met around the compound. There were about 10 kids pushing their faces against our door the first day we were here...they are very curious!

First days in Haiti

We have arrived in Haiti and just spent our first full day here. WOW..talk about a lot to take in and process! It is truly a different world down here. We are doing well...but it is a lot. It's really hot and there are people around constantly...most of which we aren't able to really communicate with. But we had the opportunity to meet a lot of our neighbors and they are so kind and receptive. They are more than willing to help us with our Creole too! So we have learned many new words already. Also, the Thede's have been so wonderful to us...inviting us to eat with them and treating us like members of the family, which is such a blessing.
Here are some pictures of our like house--La kay Cheri. We love having our own little house, we're so thankful for that! And suprisingly, we love the cold showers!! (very refreshing!)

So we tried to upload some pictures....but for some reason they aren't loading. We will try to have them up tomorrow!!! SORRY!!!

Anyway, we are using the Thede's living room and internet so we should probably get going (everyone goes to bed by 9...it's too dark to stay up!) But we will try to have some pictures tomorrow. We are depending on God to carry us through each day. It's hard to depend on him so much, but we know he's faithful and he's HERE. more later!
love to you all!

Plan B...actually about Plan E...

We are now going on to our 17th day of delay...and the 5th scheduled departure date! What is going on?? If we are still in the States in November...we might rethink going to Haiti...

However, we are sure that God is in control! And we ARE thankful that they didn't try to fly us through a hurricane or something. (we were delayed due to weather) So we are working on patience and enjoying an extra day in Florida, though we are anxious to get to Haiti.
Interestingly, our three Haitian taxi drivers have given us various bits of advice and Creole phrases that might come in handy. There seem to be many Haitians in this area, we even heard a conversation in Creole at McDonald's last night! So we feel we are at least a little closer to Haiti than we were :)

Now we are scheduled to leave Friday at 11:15 am. Please pray that this will go smoothly!

Oops....

As our plumbing is being worked on in Haiti, we encountered a little plumbing project of our own this morning. I happened to knock a little bottle of soap into the toilet as it was flushing (too much information? I don't know haha) and thought it surely wouldn't go all the way down...but sadly, it did. Good thing I married a handy man! He had the pleasure of removing the bottle while I did what any good wife would do--took pictures :)




The Thedes have had quite a time breaking and fixing cemented in pipes, trying to find PVC pipes, and digging up a drain which will allow us to have a working toilet when we arrive (we are thankful!) So maybe God is helping prepare us in case we encounter unexpected difficulties with our plumbing....


What a great husband I have!

Wishing and Waiting...

So much for plans based on man's timing :) Kathleen and I were scheduled to leave Aug. 4, but it was not to be. After putting holds on flights, waiting for insurance companies to mail our needed paperwork, and getting ready to go to Minnesota to meet the new in-laws we decided not to force it and take a one week rain check. This was done with much prayer and still disappointment. We are ready to go, but it seemed that nothing was going the way it needed to for us to get to Haiti. The one week delay has now turned into a two week delay until Aug. 18 (and that is not definite). Now, we wait. Kris Thede told us from the beginning that we were going to need flexibility this year, but we didn't think we would need it untill we got TO Haiti. But the Lord works in mysterious ways. Who knows what He has protected us from or will do with the time we have in the states. We are prayerfully trusting that this will glorify Him.... it is his show.


Because we didn't leave on Monday we were able to spend some extra time in Wisconsin hanging out at Grandma Heneghan's house with Kathleen's parents. We started off the week going to see Kathleen's Grandpa and Grandma Moody in Minnesota. It was the first time I had met them. We spent the day listening to stories and learning about the Moody's life. It was a great day trip.


Then my parents came up for a couple of days (thinking it was the last time they would see us). We were able to go climbing at Devil's Lake one day and spend another day on Lake Redstone... both days were gorgeous. It is always a joy to spend time with family! We are thankful we will get to do more of that because of the delay.



left: That's my beautiful wife on a climb called Watermarks at Devil's Lake

Below: The climbing group Caleb, Jon, Kath, Chris, and Ron

So until we leave we will be continuing to finish up Wedding thank you cards and getting ourselves ready for Haiti. This week we were able to obtain 70 suture kits for the medical clinic in Haiti from Parkview Hospital. They were very generous to give us these much needed supplies. We are excited to see what else is in store for the remainder of this crazy year.

Faithfulness

The wedding is now over and life seems relatively back to normal. We had such a great time with all the wedding festivities! Many lasting memories were made :) We especially enjoyed having far away siblings come! Marriage is awesome and we are learning a lot! (The picture is a bit fuzzy, but you get the idea!)
We had a fabulous honeymoon, too, by the way!

We have had a great week in Kendallville spending time with the Sloans and seeing friends and enjoying the beautiful Indiana country. Leaving for Haiti has inspired us to be more intentional about spending time with people and it makes me want to be more that way all the time! If only we could quit jobs and responsibilities and just hang out with the people we love. Anyway, we feel really blessed to have this time. Chris and Caleb and I took Uncle Dale's boat out one morning and had quite the adventure!

One of the most important things we are learning is the true faithfulness of God. He has provided all the finances we need to go to Haiti which is beyond us. Whenever God provides it becomes clear that we should have trusted him without doubt all along. I think it is harder to trust that the decisions we make are in His will....and that he would want to provide. We (well..kath more than Chris usually...) have worried and wondered through this process whether we are doing exactly what God wants us to do. Being 100% sure about decisions and steps of faith are not exactly my (Kathleen) strong suit, but Chris's faith and boldness have encouraged me to trust God so much more and believe that He won't lead us astray.

We are really being humbled by all the support and encouragement being shared with us. It's crazy being on the receiving end of things! But we are so grateful. On that note, we still need prayer supporters! :) Global Partners encourages us to have 100 between the two of us, who will commit to pray one time per week for Haiti and our time there. Let us know if that is something you might be willing to join us in. The Thedes have shared that our prayer supporters are highly valuable to the ministry going on in Haiti. Everything needs prayer there...the plants, the roads, the church, the clinic, the Thedes (Cory, Kris, Eli and Anna), the weather (pray for rain!) and anything you can think of, as things tend to just be hard in general in Haiti. We will share more specific requests as we learn them. Thank you for your partnership. .>

honeymoon pic-->

We still do not have a departure date, but are hoping for the first or second Tuesday of August. Time is going to fly by, and we will be there before we know it but for now we are soaking in all this great time at home. We got an email from Joy Irvine (the Irvines are missionaries in LaGonave, field directors actually) giving us some details about teaching English, which is very exciting! Chris and I will get to co-teach 2 classes and are encouraged to bring English Bibles over to assist us in teaching. We won't actually need to know much Creole to teach the classes, which is a relief!

We can't thank you enough for however you have supported us, whether through prayer, through reading our blog, or whatever. Please keep in touch and let us know about your life too...we are getting tired of talking about ourselves all the time!! :) God bless, He is good!

Thanks for visiting our blog! Although we don't have many exciting or interesting stories (yet!) we still want to share what's going on and a little of what we are learning.

As of now, we are a little over halfway in our support raising--which is awesome! We have just over 5000 dollars left to raise. This has been a really interesting, humbling experience. We are getting married in a little over a week (ahhh!) and planning a wedding while simultaneously asking for support and all that has been quite an interesting process. But while there are some ups and downs, overall we have had a blast getting deeper into what God has laid out for us this summer.

As the time gets closer for us to leave, the reality of Haiti and what it may be like there is setting in a little more. It has seemed far away until recently. We had the opportunity to meet and talk with the Thedes this last week, and it was a great visit. They answered lots of questions and shared more of what their lives are like. We learned a ton about where we are going and the culture--but I'm sure we won't know even the half of it until we get there! Dr. Kris shared something with us after we had been asking whether we were really going to be able to do anything worthwhile. It was so encouraging that I put a little snapshot of it below:

"I've found that sometimes it is hard to predict the impact we can have in life when following the Lord's will. In the USA we're raised to measure and count this and that. How many mission reports have you heard "we saw x,000 patients, pulled thousands of teeth, showed the film X times..? Which can be great-but maybe the Lord asked you to touch 1 life the whole day-would that be enough for you?? Sometimes the 'cup of cold water' just doesn't seem enough-but Lord can't I do MORE?? Don't you trust me???? This is a lesson I'm still learning-would I be willing to be in Haiti for 5 years to help 10 people find the Lord, what about 5, or just 1. What if I'm just to be planting the seeds and working on my own relationship with the Lord and never hear of one finding the Lord? If that is the Lord's will is that enough for me??

We are learning to take this to heart. While we are dreaming big about what God could do in Haiti, he may be asking us to touch just a couple lives. Surrendering to whatever he has will be the most challenging, but most FREEING of all that we do there!

That is all for today...more to come! Here are a few pictures of our amazing trip with the Sloans to Alaska. (Notice Chris's questionable medical techniques... :) What a beautiful place.