The last Few Days

Here's a short video of my lunch outing with Junior-The guy with the great smile and that is his real name. The food was really good. He said they have been there for about 40 yrs and the restaurant is now run by the daughter. They only had a very few tables- it was more of a hallway than a room, but the people were as usual all very friendly.

The music was an almost in tune banjo and one of those drum-boxes(?). But it was a good time with good food. We had some chicken that was falling off the bone and in some amazing sauce with fried plantains, and a kind of 'oniony' garnish and a bowl of rice. Usually they mix some black beans or peas or both with the rice. Very yummy!

Unlike we hear in the states everyone isn't starving and there actually are plenty of trees around here and very beautiful areas. Altho it is a fact that there are severely denuded forest areas and of course there are hungry people. Haiti is the poorest nation in this hemisphere and I think it has been listed within the 3 poorest in the world. But we at home mostly see the request for aid which of course should and does focus on the severe needs, yet tends to give us a partial unreal view of all of Haiti. The haitian men that help here don't really like that the world thinks that all of Haiti is in these conditions. Like anyone else they love and have a pride for their country and want people to have a more positive view also.

Junior and I had a good part of a day just driving around just so I could experience Haiti - and because I have been so busy here that I haven't had much of a chance to do that.. seeing some sights. We went to the Museum here too, and for a tip I had a personal tour of the small museum with an english speaking tour guide. It was very interesting -and also very saddening about the slave history here. The haitians were the first and I think only slave nation to revolt and succesfully get their independence from France in 1804. The picture of the Presidential Palace shows a rebelling slave  calling to arms on the conch shell.

Below you can see what happened to the Palce after the earthquake-a whole story has collapsed and disappeared in the rubble.  Still nothing has been done to repair it.

 Center and right side of palace

Center and left side of the palace

 This is a monument to the 200 yr anniversary of their independence. You can see the tent city in the park below it. All around the palace in the public parks and  other areas such as around the museum there are still large tent cities.

The time here is getting very short. I come home next Tues and this is Saturday night. Tommorrow we'll use about 1/2 a day at church, so it really only leaves that 1/2 day on Sunday and Monday to work. The time has really gone by-and there is still alot to do. But there are other teams coming that can help and Eric also said that they are running very low on funds to get any more materials for fixing and doing construction around here. (hint-hint)

I'll probably just finish doing some shelves and a little cabinet work in the rented bldg they will house the orphans in and that will be about it.
Today I did a little of that but I also was able to teach the Bible one more time to a few men. When we started there was just my translator, Jon  and one of the men I've been working with here. But we were talking about how important the word was so we just had the study for our sakes and then after a little while some more men came and altho it was not large, it was a very good time in the word with good interest and interaction from those godly Haitian men.

I was 'appointed' sign painter while I was here. I also painted a "danger sign pass quickly" because the kids going to the school in the back have to pass right by this severely damaged orphanage bldg. That danger along with -just needing it cleared -so they can rebuild is why they so much want this building demolished.

Below Eric (pres of 3 Angels) and Alex (school headmaster and manager down here) are praying and asking God to help them to demolish this building.

Please join them in this prayer and for the many other needs to get everything back and running here. Cash wouldn't hurt either!! But prayer is always number one with all of us. This is a work of God's-of His mercy and love for these people. To those who are willing to help and give of themselves-however that could be- they can know that as Jesus said,"Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me." Matt 25:40

Blessings !!!  Bob

Sweet Bible study

This video shows a very sweet little Bible study  that a fellow visiting missionary (Steve) and I were very priveledged to attend. Steve had given some fundamentals of the Bible teachings at 3 Angels and one of the students asked for some Bibles for his bible study he was having. So steve asked if he could come and see it(some people ask for things and we must be careful and discerning) since it was the next night. He asked me to go with him and I'm so glad I did! We went way up the street that 3 Angels is on and turned down a small side street, and then turned onto  an even smaller dirt and rubble path which meandered very narrowly between  various earthquake damaged bulidings . It was very dark by now too, so all we could go by was fashlight. Eventually we came down a hill into what appeared to be, in the dark, a small gully in which a few damaged partial walls of concrete block were standing. Above these they had strung a canvas tarp of some kind and under that we could see a light as we came down to it. Then we heard the singing! As we struggled and slipped to get down this steep path we couldnde see that under that very rough "structure" about 25 people-adults and some children- were having such a sweet time of worship. As the night progressed more showed up. One was hanging off of the wall where it dropped off into the study area. Another came with some type of scratching instrument you'll here and was sitting in an opening in the wall that used to be a window? So this is what this video partly shows. Steve and I were so blessed to have witnessed the power and the faith of this humble gathering in such a place. The greatest "mega-church" had some big competition that lovely night. I hope this little bit on this video can help you share with us this sweet time in the Lord. 3 Angels needs Bibles too!

Blessings!!

Here's some more stuff for ya

Here's an interesting picrture for you! The piece of tree is actually still holding there and about to be pulled down. What's really amazing is that the man chopped this whole very large tree down with a machete in his bare feet and wit no safety ropes! We saw him bringing rope up thinking he was going to use that for himself but it was just to lower the large branches he would cut through. He was amazing. The amount of hrd wacks he took with the machete was beyond beleif! If I did what he was doing for a couple of hours even I think I'd need some time inthe intensive care unit! THe cuts were very smooth too, because he was mostly kind of shaving them. You can see how smooth in the v shaped opening in the picture. He would sing alot and rythmically with his chopping and I noticed one song was obviously a praise song to 'Jezu" (pronounced 'Jayzee') or to Jesus. I said to him, "oh Jezu, yes and pointed to the sky and smiling and he said "woui" and pointed smiling to the sky too. I think he is a friend of Alex's.

This is James Manzo and I building a shade structure on the roof to raise the small breadfruit trees for the Haitian people to be able to plant and have a source of food or income from them. Breadfruit can be used in many ways -boiled, fried, dried and ground into flour. 3 Angels is working with Trees That Feed. What's great to is Eric and Christine Helgemo couldn't have more experience with raising trees as they previously owned and operated a large tree nursery business in the L.A. area.

These cuty pies are part of a few classes that meet outside because there isn't enough classroom space. That is why they are chopping down the tree (the chalkboard is leaning on) because it was right in the middle of this area and eventually when they get the funds (hint!  hint!)they want to build at least a kind of patio cover to start for them and then enclose it into rooms as funds come in. 

This is Alex. Please keep him in your prayers -he does so much here running the ministry and the school and helping his own church to grow also. He's standing in front of an area outside the damaged orphanage bldg.

 This is also where we have a time of prayer and worship everery morning.

Madam Valet leads the worship time. She is in charge of the women staff who cook and clean for the school, the grounds, and the missionaries lodging house-where I'm staying. She is so full of the joy of the Lord! It's amazing -the picture of her standing in front of this earthquake damaged bldg and poor in material things by our standards yet so rich in the Spirit and praising the Lord like you wouldn't beleive! She is a widow with 3 children and lives in a very small one room home- that was just constructed for her by another team- I'm going to try to get a short video of this praise time for you all to be blessed by.

Blessings Ya'all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!       Bob

God's Awesome Work Cont's!

Here's a sweet video to start off with. This is the beloved Alex the school master with his school. He trys every friday to have a time of singing and praise with them before the class day. Not a bad voice either!

Alex also is a worship leader at his church and he gives messages also. Obviously a gifted elder in his church.

The kids are soooo cute. I know! I've said that before! That's how cute they are! We had hooked up water to their bathroom and because they had just been flushing the toilets with buckets of water the toilets were in some disrepair to say the least. Well the water was turned on and nothing was noticed at first but overnight the a couple of toilets leaked enough to flood the classrooms! So the next morning I dove in---not into the toilets!!--into the work on those toilets!- and finally got them all fixed up. In Haiti it can even take longer than normal because sometimes you even have to fix the new parts your putting in to fix the old. Any how to make a short story really long the next morning I go out where the school bathrooms are to see if there were any leaking problems and all was ok, but remember I started out with how cute the kids were? They are not only cute but very sweet and so loving. When I came around the corner to check the bathrtooms, about 5 of these little ones who were there early for school swarmed me and just all started hugging me and grabbing my hands to hold them. It made my day to say the least.

Awesome view of Port Au Prince from our roof. This is a great place to pray in the mornings. It's also cooler and breezier there of course.

This is a "Tap tap"--it is the main type of transportation here. They call it that because you tap on it when you want to get off. If you notice it is a small truck with a camper shell that was extended higher so that people could sit up in it. Almost all of them are built like this. There are some bigger trucks but most are like this.

This is a short post but I'll do another quickly tomake up for it. Blessings, Bob

God's Good Work!

We are continuing our work on various fix-up/construction projects around the existing property and we are beginning to start on the newly leased temporary orphanage.

Looks like I'll be mainly doing alot of shelving, some tile work, a large island type of cabinet for the staff to prepare the large meals on and maybe where they could also sit at and eat their(staff's) meals. It seems we're always busy with alot of things--there is so much that really needs attention. But I don't know if I can list them all.

Eric and James have been working quite a bit on redoing the severely scrambled up wiring in the medical clinic and the school office. They have got it all finished there, but are still going to go over the system in the classrooms also.

(The classrooms are packed  and the kids are so focused on their work. You can hear them going thru verbal practices in unison all of the time and it sounds almost joyful! I don't remember that kind of attitude too much in my school years!!  Notice that there is just some tack boards seperating the classrooms. They have a total student pop. of about 300 children. People can sponsor a child's tuition.)

They have also finished relocating the water tanks and the pump, it's wiring and the pvc piping. This needed to be totally reconfigured because of the future demo of the orphanage building.

They also built a breadfruit drying rack. This was done because they have started a program in conjunction with the 'Trees That Feed' ministry. They already are growing a large amount of breadfruit saplings on the roof here which they will distribute to people in need and even help teach them how to care and propagate them. 3 Angels is also planning to use the new property, they have just aquired, as a growing/farming area for these same reasons until any construction there could be funded....(hint, hint!)

*****By the way- I should make clear that any offerings made to the ministry here should be over and above your normal church tithing. 3 Angels nor I want this ministry to take from the needs of anyone's home churches.****

I have been doing alot of smaller things since finishing the kitchen relocation and I have even been blessed to be able to do a little ministering too.

 -I put in a door and door jamb for a bathroom which just had a curtain-for little better privacy.
-I helped in relocating a telephone pole to be able to have better clearance to the vehicles from the power lines in front of the property. -They were actually so low they could come in contact w/the vehicles coming and going here and  the guard would have to use a board or whatever to hold them out of the way!
-I worked on an exterior cabinet and tool shed (the hatians call a "depot").

Security here is important. We have a 24 hr guard. It was made clearer to us just lately when the guard caught someone trying to go over the front fence in the early morning hours. So I helped to get it much less climbable by cementing in the places that could be used for a step. It was an open decorative brick w/a ledge on it, but is now smoothed sloping concrete which has no footholds. We had some very poorly installed razor wire but now we are fabricating steel spikes out of pieces of rebar and welded to the tops to be much more of a deterrent.

I've been really blessed to be able to do some ministering here also. I was able to share what real faith was wth one of the haitian men that helps us here and was able to pray with him to open up his heart-not just his mind, to the Lord. A couple of days later he said he had people that he knew wanted to come and hear some bible teaching! Soooooo .....I was very available to give them that yesterday! We had about 30 people including some kids! So pray for them, we are going to do it again next Saturday. It really made my day to be able to minister to them. I hope and pray it made theirs!

 The Lord seems to be bringing opportunities for teaching too. We went to the church that the Headmaster of the school here attends. It was a very humble yet such a spiritual church! Some of their benches were made of a few twisted 2x4's.

Alex, (the headmaster) is helping to improve his little church. He has been, little by little, helping to change these benches out to a nicer smoother wood bench like you can see in front of them in the picture below. ---Alex has also even helped some of his own students at the school with their tuition!

This church had a tin roof with one light bulb. The concrete at the altar step all along the front was all broken--you can see the feet of one that came for prayer standing there before the podium.

They had to use a noisy generator in order to use a microphone, and of course no air conditioning and yet they were so full of the love of God  and praising him with their voices lifted with such a ringing devotion to God that it testified to all of us of the true riches that were really there, and that we "rich" Americans could do very well to seek more of for ourselves! They were so warm and loving I wish you all could have been there with us. As a visiting pastor they asked me to say a few words. All I said was that 'they were ministering to me with such a love for God".

Afterwards the sweet loving pastor came up to me and sincerely said how glad he was to meet me and maybe we could get together again personally. He also asked me to come and give a message to his flock next Sunday! I told him what an honor and blessing that would be for me. So pray for that time. Also please pray for the other times to share in the word. It is really a blessing to serve the Lord with my hands here and now also with some wonderful opportunities to minister the word.

BLESSINGS!!

Bob

Beauty for Ashes

We took a break from work for part of a day to go over to the new property 3 Angels purchased to eventually build a new school and orphanage site. Altho I haven't seen the famous earthquake damage in the main area of Porte Prince with the damaged Presidential Palace we defenitely saw some very sobering results to this day of the eartquake that killed at least 250,000 people and left well over a million homeless. See some video below:

There is actually some very damaged buildings adjoining the 3 Angels site (including of course their condemned orphanage building .... see in my first post). An interesting picture below is of a devastated building with the 3 Angels play area in the foreground:

The picture to the right is from the roof of the condemned orphanage - you can see another neighbors house just behind the palm tree where the roof line is not level-that is a second story that collapsed and crushing the first story-it has just in the last couple of days been demolished.


 It's kind of amazing- they will hand demolish solid concrete structures here-even some with small sledge hammers made up for by large groups of men doing the hammering.

This is a collapsed house also right next to the newly leased  house that we are preparing for the new the orphans to be in while the old is demolished and rebuilt. This newly aquired bldg, needs alot of finishing work-cabinets, shelves, doors, tile, plumbing, elec. and more! You can see the plants beginning to grow in the rubble after almost 2 year's time,...the earthquake occurred Jan 12, 2010.

Beautiful little ferns and other plants are also growing in the EQ cracks in the old orphanage!


Maybe a way to try to look to new life and hope and new begginnings again?

There is beauty to be found all around still,though. The people themselves are so friendly and such a good manner to them. And maybe I could say they are a very... 'handsome' people? They have a certain beauty in them!


The babys!! Forget it!!! They are so cute, it's rediculous! Above is some cutys being dedicated to the Lord at a wonderful church we go to on Sundays. And guess what ? This local church is sending missionaries out to other countries! Wow you should here the worship here! They sing out praises!


The people themselves are very easily loved.


 I'll try to get some closer pictures of the kids real soon.


The new property they have purchased for future use is an awesome piece of beautiful Hatian land:

There is a cool old style Hatian house on the property that our Hatian driver, "Junior" says he loves! But it will need ALOT of work to make it really useable. You can see the rough classic beauty of it below:

Lastly I just wanted to share some of the Hatian art that has really caught my eye. You can see that it is very stylistic & also very beautiful.

This wood carving is kind of a fitting bit of beauty in Haiti to end this post with.    Bessings!   Bob

Day9

Still working our little hearts out. Getting alot done! I finished the move of the kitchen--really just doing a small counter,shelf and a couple of sinks then relocating the  large propane gas stove. On the right is the reverse osmosis system for drinking water.

They like to do all of their cooking outside,-- but it was too close to the orphanage which we hope will be demolished very soon with the help of the U.N. So we moved their facilities for that to the rear exterior of the "guest house". The guest house is where we and all volunteers stay on the property. It's really a pretty nice place to stay. A few Hatian ladys alternate cooking and cleaning in the house. The other guys relocated a pump and water tank w/it's plumbing and electrical from the damaged orphanage bldg. Eric Helgemo (the president of 3 Angels and  a very good friend, brother and business partner has pretty well gotten the main electrical system including, a battery backup system using a generator and inverter all up and going on his own.

We took a ride up a mtn on Wednesday. Check out our leasurely driveon this short video below. Along for the bumpy ride here was James Monzo, a great young man down here for about a month helping us, and the young daughter of Eric and Christine Helgemo, Becca. Eric, and his family including Becca's two brothers, David & Will are all down here on an extended stay to help here. Christine is homeschooling them while here and you can clearly see the kids are loving this time here!-----Anyhow...the last person there is Dominic who is one of our hatian helpers here who is giving you all greetings and is saying 'Bondye beni ou'-- God bless you!!

This is all of us right now volunteering down here -as seen from the top of the hill above the mission. We are at Fort Alexandre Jaques an approx 200 year old fort to fight the French during their fight for independence. They are actually celebrating their day of Independence today!

From the left is Dominic (from the video), then Will(10 yrs old), his mom Christine Helgemo, little David,(7 yrs), then their father, husband & head of 3 Angels, Eric Helgemo, below him is His 9 yr. old daughter, Becca,(from the video) next to her is another Hatian helper, our driver, "Junior" and above him is James Monzo who has been a really big help here for us old guys! Finally Sandy Miller who manages the guest house and is such an awesome woman of God and hostess. The last guy I think was some picture crasher or something.

 Blessings be posting you soon. Feel very free to comment or ask questions.

First week

Sunrise over the ocean heading to Haiti. Suitcases packed with tools, hardware and various neede itemsto help out at 3 Angels Children's Relief which includes an orphanage, medical clinic, & school, in Delmas, Haiti.

The orphanage was wrecked by the eartquake so we are working on getting that ready for demolition while moving a kitchen area to another part of the property for the feeding of the school children and staff. There is not only an orphanage but also a school and medical clinic. The last two are still in good enough shape to continue. The school has 300 students and is top rated here in Haiti! The clinic serves thousands of people a year. Here's some pictures to better help you see what's 'all goin on' down here:

EQ damaged & condemned orphanage on the left (Blue). Guest house (for volunteers) and school and medical clinic on the right(green)

Parts of major damage orphanage which must be demolshed and rebuilt. Until then they have rented a large house on the next street to house the orphans. They are being cared for with the help of another ministry while we prepare this house. It is without plumbing, elect,cabinets, shelves etc, we must get into there.

The school has 300 students and is top rated in Haiti! The orphanage must be demolished as soon as possible because it is precariosly standing right next to where the students come and go to school.

The medical clinic that serves thousands of people a year. We are going to help them with more storage/shelving for all of the medicines they store.

Please keep all of this work and everyone here in your prayers. That is number one! If you wnat to help in any way let me know here or better yet go to http://www.threeangelshaiti.org  They have some good video there too. I'll be adding pics and even some videos hopefully every day or so on whats going on. Blessings!!  Bob