After long flights and a bus ride across the country, we have finally arrived in Granbouchi, Haiti! Upon arrival, we ate a quick dinner and went straight to bed. After a great night's rest, we were blessed to be able to attend church and worship with the Haitians in their native creole language.

We spent Sunday afternoon walking through the village, getting acquainted with the locations we will be ministering in this week. Our walk ended at the beach, where we had a chance to play soccer, football, and other games with the children from the community.

We are excited and looking forward to a great week!

Here we are learning about the community and ministries we will be involved in this week.

Once we finished our walk through the community, we had a trail of kids behind us!

This morning we began work on our two ministry projects. One of the projects we are involved in is doing the finishing work on a home that is being built for a woman in the community named Adelene. She currently lives in a small, one room home with seven of her children. The home being built for her is almost complete!

We began by sifting sand and preparing to mix concrete to finish the floors and stucco walls. We will also be finishing the ceiling of the porch and hanging several doors. It is exciting both for our team and for Adelene as her new home is nearing completion!

While taking a break from sifting sand, one of the boys in the community showed us how to build a kite.

We also continued our afternoon ministry with the children on the beach. In the shade of an almond tree, the kids showed us how to break open the seeds to eat the almonds inside.

We enjoyed showing the children how to play American football. They thought it was great!

This morning we continued our projects that were started on Monday. Aside from the construction, we are also blessing the community by planting trees along the road and in people's yards. When the trees mature, they will provide much needed shade along the road for people as they walk, as well as provide an additional source of fruit to eat.

We had several varieties of trees for the people to choose from, including coconut, lemon, cherry, and mahogany. It was a blessing to see how happy the people were as they decided which variety they wanted and where the trees would be planted in their yard!

Here is our group planting a tree in someone's yard. As you can see, many of the children in the community followed along as we planted!

We were able to plant a few trees around the new house we are finishing for Adelene. It was great to see how excited she was!

The construction on Adelene's house continued this morning also. Here you can see Matt, Keith, and several other of our adults sifting sand for the concrete that is being used to finish the floor inside the house.

We took a little break after lunch to go on a tour of Les Caye, one of the larger cities in Haiti. We learned a small portion of the 500 year history of the city, saw several of the landmarks, and visited the coast where they load sugar cane onto boats and ship it to other countries.

Today was our last day of ministry and it was amazing! We were able to complete both of our projects, which means we finished the construction of Adelene's house and planted over 300 trees throughout the community. God has truly been at work as we served in the community and shared the gospel this week. We are thankful that HE gets the glory for our labors!

One major project we worked on this week was hanging the interior doors of Adelene's house. This was quite the project, as the door frames had to be built from scratch. We certainly missed our power tools from back home, but the blessing of working alongside the men in the community was well worth the effort invested!

While the guys were out planting trees and working on the house, the girls decided to invite the children to the church for games and crafts. We had over 100 children that showed up for a couple of hours of games. It was a blast!

Here you can see us helping the children with their crafts. Once we began, it didn't take us long to learn several helpful creole phrases, including "Wait", "Finished", and "Beautiful."

After a week of ministry, we got the opportunity to travel to a couple of beautiful places in Haiti for some rest, relaxation, and swimming. Our first stop was the Saut-Mathurine waterfall in Camp-Perin, Haiti. It was a long, bumpy, winding drive to get there -- but well worth the effort!

At 90ft, the Saut-Mathurine waterfall is the largest waterfall in Haiti. It was an incredible experience getting to climb up a short way and jump into the rushing water. More incredible was watching the local Haitians climb to the very top and jump!

After a time of swimming and a picnic lunch, we got back on the bus and headed for Port Salut, one of the most beautiful beaches in Haiti. We were able to spend a couple of hours swimming, souvenir shopping, and just enjoying the sun and the sound of the waves.

All in all it was a great end to an amazing week of ministry!