After a long couple of days of travel, we arrived safely in Haiti and met up with the rest of our team and our staff at the airport. We hopped on the bus and headed directly to Life is Hope Orphanage where the kids greeted us with singing. It was wonderful! We shared with them the story of Jesus and gave them each a coloring book to keep for themselves. As our time went on, the kids played with us, showed us around their home, and gave us just as much love as we could give them--maybe even more.

We loved our short time with these wonderful children and they are in our hearts.

After a brief stop at our lodging facility to grab our first wonderful meal here in Haiti, we headed to Mariani where we will be serving this week. It was our first of many visits there. It was raining a little, but that didn't stop us from playing soccer, getting our hair braided by little girls, and just getting to know the community a little bit. Pastor Valcourt came by and talked with some of us for a while to tell us about the church and the community. We look forward to seeing him, the kids, and even the work again tomorrow.

Now, we are headed off to bed to get a good night of sleep before we begin the work project tomorrow!

Today we arrived at Mariani to begin working on our construction project. We were greeted by a steep hill that led up to the site, and when we arrived we met several school children that were getting ready to take final exams. As soon as we put down our belongings we began to pass buckets of gravel to begin the floor of a water reservoir that the school will be able to use. To make the work more fun, Scott and Carson began to interact with our Haitian partners by making animal noises with each bucket. We started with bucket number one but by the time lunch arrived we were almost to bucket 700!

During our lunch of hotdogs, french fries and fried plantains, we learned a little of the history of the site and how the community of Mariani has together to support their local school and church. We are excited to see how the church will continue to bless and unite the local community.

After we finished passing our 954 buckets, we decided to go have some fun at Good Shepard Orphanage. We were greeted with smiling faces that were ready to play! The children from the surrounding community joined us we began to throw frisbees, play basketball and even learn a little Creole with our new friends.

We learned from Sister Mona about the orphanage and what its mission is. God is doing great things. We are excited to see what He has in store for tomorrow!

Today we arrived at Mariani ready to work. We lined up right away to pass many buckets of mortar down the hill for the guys inside to flash the walls. In the afternoon, we moved upstairs to start pouring the beams for the balcony of the church! It was a nice change and the buckets were going around much more quickly. Brittany and Ria were our designated counters and kept going all day long. Some of the kids started repeating them from time to time too. It was fun to see connections being made all around the work site. From the guys in the hole, to children playing on the soccer field--today was a day of great connections and another thousand buckets of mortar or cement. Our grand total so far is 1,969 buckets passed!

After a long day of work and a delicious meal of turkey and rice, we headed to church--all dressed up. Tonight was a prayer service, so there was a lot of praying, singing, and preaching about how we can always go to God. He will always understand everything we are going through. We were invited to share a song and Pastor Cory introduced the group as a whole. It was such a blessing to be a part of the service and see the joy of the Lord on people's faces and hear familiar tunes of hymns with words in a different language.

Praise God for a great--but long--day. We are resting up for tomorrow with earplugs in our ears so we will be able to sleep tonight!

Our time was flying by as bucket after bucket got passed from one person to the next for our final day at Mariani. We were in our very familiar spots and seeing familiar faces now. It is so amazing that in just three days we got to know so many from the community. After another 1,000 and some buckets of mortar and concrete, we looked up at our Haitian friends who were filling buckets for us to move and they said "fini" which means finished. It was so exciting to see over the past days the progress that was made in the cistern and on the beams for the balcony! Praise God!

Before we left our friends at Mariani, we took a minute to take a picture with our new friends, thank them for letting us serve with them, and pray for them. It was bitter sweet to leave today. We know we will miss these people a lot and we know that the building isn't done and there is more work to do, but we have joy in knowing that what God had in store for us at Mariani 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!

Today we had a chance to see more of the beauty of Haiti. We drove down to Jacmel over some of the gorgeous mountains here and spent the afternoon at the beach. It was good to have time to fellowship together and relax after our days of working at Mariani! We can't believe it's the end of the week already!

We know that our mission does not end here in Haiti, but God really has shown us a lot that we look forward to sharing with you!