After a long day of flights and travel, we finally arrived in Haiti! We hopped on the bus and headed to Cote Plage for dinner, a quick meeting, and a great night to get some sleep before this week of ministry begins. It rained during the night, so we woke up to a cooler morning this morning. We are heading off to church at Mariani now--where we served last year-- and we are excited to worship the Lord with our brothers and sisters in Christ!

We woke up early this morning, grabbed some breakfast, hopped on the bus and headed to mariani to attend church. We made it there early and found that Sunday school was still in session. We then walked pass the temporary church building which is a USAID tent to the school and church building that are being built. Many of us who have worked on the building last year were blown away by the progress that had been done since we left. It is amazing and encouraging to see how it is coming along....we then walked back to the church at 8:05 and took the front seats that were reserved for us. We felt so welcomed by our brothers and sisters in Christ!

After some singing and prayers, pastor Valcourt, the pastor of the church stood up and welcomed us and called Almando to introduce the group. Our group leader, Paul Peterson went up front with him and shared some scriptures (1Jean 4 v 9-12,19 and Jean 3v16) and some encouraging words with the church. He did a great job and the church responded excitingly. We then sang All in all as a group with Almando playing the guitar and Charity playing the keys. We sang the first verse and the chorus together with the church, us in our language and the church in Haitian creole and then the church sang the second verse and we ended, singing the chorus together.

We could not quite understand all that was saying but we could feel the Holy Spirit because He was there. We were reminded that God remains faithful; He will not let us be tempted beyond what we can bear. But when tempted He will also provide a way out so that we can stand up under it (1 Cor 10.13). At the end of the sermon, the preached urged us to remain patient and strong and joyful when facing the trials.

Pray for us as we are serving the Lord this week in loving and helping his beautiful creation here in Haiti. We are excited about tomorrow!

After our big lunch we went to Good Shepherd Orphanage that is just about 5 minutes walk away from our lodging location. For some of us that was our second time there. We felt in love with the kids there last year and could not wait to see them again and have the rest of our group meet them as well. We had a great time playing with them, love on them and being loved by them. It started raining a couple minutes after we got there but that didn't dampen our fun. Basketball, American football, coloring, swinging, running....we just had a tremendous time and did not want to leave.

It is actually raining and we are enjoying the coolness of the weather and hope to sleep really well tonight so we can get ready for tomorrow. We can't wait to go to our work site.

We started today in a beautiful way! This week, we are having a moment set apart for us to spend with the Lord individually. The moment is called "quite time" and it starts at 6:30 up to 7, before breakfast. We love it! After breakfast we headed to our work site that is located in gressier, up the hill. The view of the landscape from the site is outstandingly gorgeous. We did not have any sun today. The whole day remained cool, light and breezy. The creation proclaims the glory of the Lord!

We started our day dislocating a pile of sand that was about 50ft away from the site. We lined up and passed 824 buckets of sand down to the site. We also carried 10 bags from a pretty long walking distance to the site. That last job was a little challenging. We called it the man-game:)

It is only Monday and we feel like we have been here forever. God is working in us and through us. We are excited to see what He has in store for us tomorrow. Prayer warriors, keep praying.

We slept under a gray sky last night and woke up under a clear blue sky this morning. As a matter of fact, we knew that today was gonna be different. We got to our work site and found that the load that we dislocated had been replaced by another bigger one. Excitingly, we formed a line and started our fun bucket brigade. We barely had some breeze and shade but that would not hinder us to pass 700+ buckets of sand and 78+ cinder blocks.

Today was our last day of ministry at a work site. It was bitter sweet to leave today. We know we will miss these people a lot and we know that our project isn't done and there is more work to do, but we have joy in knowing that what God had in store for Sister Mario is completed. Now, we are looking forward to a new thing tomorrow--a chance to see a little more of Haiti and a little bit of fun!