We have arrived in beautiful Port-au-Prince Haiti! After getting settled into our rooms here at Cote Plage 16, our lodging for this week, we had an orientation meeting and spent time preparing for the week. Be in prayer for us as we work this week! More updates to come soon!

Today we traveled to Bertin, to begin working at our ministry site. When we arrived, we were greeted by numerous smiling faces that were ready to work and play with us. We shoveled dirt and cut wire until we ate our delicious lunch of hotdogs, french fries, and fried plaintains.

After lunch, we finished up the dirty work and began to spend time with the fun-loving kids that came to vacation bible school. We acted out the story of the Arc of the Covenant, and decorated rocks to remember the altar that Joshua built. We even got to teach our new friends how to play baseball!

Today, we are thankful for a beautiful day in the sun. We will pray tonight for a restful night so that we can go have more fun tomorrow.

Today we arrived at our site and started working in the dirt. We used shovels, pick axes and sledge hammers to break apart earth and fill a lot of buckets. We then passed the buckets along an assembly line to remove the dirt from where the foundation of the church will be poured. We worked hard, but God provided some cloud cover for us today, for which we were very thankful.

After our lunch of Haitian spaghetti, we were able to wrap up our constructions work and begin playing with he children of Bertin. We sang some silly songs and acted out the story of Daniel in the Lion's Den. Then, we made lions our of construction paper, pipe cleaners and yarn to remind the children that God is even bigger than the lions!

Today we are grateful for shade and cloud cover, and we are praying for another productive day tomorrow.

Tonight we experienced the full process of purchasing and eating sugar cane from a local vendor. After our meeting over "Coconut Moments" and learning all about sugar cane and the opportunity we were going to have, we headed downstairs to find our own personal sugar cane vendor waiting!

He carries all of his daily merchandise in a wheel-barrow and slices up the sugar cane rods right in front of you! Next, you grab on to the end of the cane and he cuts it to the length you desire. It was such a fun experience and it tasted good too!

Today we began our day by heading back to Bertin. When we arrived, we began to pass buckets of water to help make concrete. Once the concrete was formed, we passed it to the site to begin the foundation of the church. It is so encouraging to see the difference we've made in only three days! We are excited and ready to begin our fourth day of construction there.

After lunch, we left Bertin to go to Good Shepard Orphanage. When we arrived, we were greeted by Sister Mona who told us a little of the history of Good Shepard and what its mission is right now. We got to play with kids from the community and wished we could have stayed longer! It was a blessing getting to spend time with the children of Carrefour.

Today we passed more buckets of concrete to continue the foundation of the church. We enjoyed working with the Haitian team as they worked hard to combine the cement, sand and gravel. We were so happy to be able to see the progress throughout the week and know that we had a hand in building this church.

After we finished construction for the day we were able to spend the afternoon with the children of Bertin. We passed out balloons and played a game where you try to not let it touch the ground. Then, we were able to share the story of Jesus. The children responded well and said that they had heard of Jesus and that He was King. After talking about what Jesus did for us, we made a craft of paper airplanes. We threw them all around the church and had competitions to see who's plane flew the farthest.

Tomorrow we get to explore the beautiful country of Haiti! We are excited to see what God has in store.

For our time of rest, we took a drive up into the Kenscoff mountains to Lookout Mountain. Here we got to look over the whole of Port-au-Prince and buy some souvenirs from the local vendors. We then stopped at Eoidor, a local Haitian chain restaurant and had Cheeseburgers and Fries! Can you believe it?

We then went to a beach on the Southern side of the island and spent the afternoon relaxing and reflecting on the past week.

We topped off the night with a closing meeting with our staff, Pastors, Ministry leaders and everyone involved in making our trip a success.

It's been good to serve the Lord in Haiti.