Mission trip report and Q&A

0:00 Some of don't know who Harold is, if you spend a week with him you'll never forget. We were delighted to have Harold with us. He's been to Haiti four times. This is his... He says it's his last trip with...

0:11 Emily? Where is Emily? Let's grab a chair and make yourself comfortable. We're going to answer some questions from you, and I'm going to maybe ask the team some questions. But, Scott, hang on to that, please.

0:26 Sure. Just last thing I want to say before we open it up for you guys to ask some questions, and if that's not working, then I'll ask the team some questions, is the daily schedule. Harold's experienced enough to know you got to beat

0:41 the heat. So we'd get

0:42 up at about 06:00 in the morning, work for about an hour and a half before breakfast, which was about eight We pushed back breakfast to eight And we'd have a relatively efficient breakfast and try to get back out. Because when the kids are gone, you can get more work done. And they were gone all morning from eight to noon. So we'd push it through to about noon or 12:30 first, then we'd have lunch, and after lunch we would take a siesta, which was just a couple hours for ourselves, whether we spend it sleeping or reading or drinking water or or... I don't think we usually spend much of that time working.

1:20 But and we'd work... We'd push through... Well, after CESTA, we'd go back and work. On Monday, we went back to work. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we had craft time for the kids.

1:33 And Scott, why don't you give the mic to Karen? Tell what craft time. Just summarize, Karen and Emily selected some crafts that actually were illustrative of the gospel.

1:43 Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the craft time lasted about forty five minutes. And we did a necklace, a beaded necklace for the kids. And then the second day we did, we had a cross that they... It was a scratch art cross. And they were able to make their own design and then have the color show through that.

2:07 And the idea was that there was darkness, then the color shown through would be the light of Jesus shining through. We had to keep things pretty simple because there was a lot of them, and these guys all have big hands, and it was hard to do little things. So we... But we managed. And and then the third day, we did a a little...

2:27 Yeah. Emily's got one on here. It's a little bracelet for them, which they loved, and we gave them extra materials so they could continue making these. We found out that they actually ended up teaching us more of how to weave these, and we taught them. But that was pretty much, you know, what we did for craft time.

2:47 I'll add a little more realism. The one day with the bracelets, we were handing out the extras, I think I went outside. Karen comes out, You gotta help me. You gotta help me. They're mobbing us.

2:58 And I came in there, Emily's got this scrap that she's holding up, and they're clonoring. I'm kinda like, you know, back up, you know, back up, and it wasn't really working. And Will, Hilton came in

3:08 and he goes, go, go, Lee, chew, chew.

3:11 And they all kinda backed up a little bit. I forget, everything is just an octave, louder and bigger. They backed up, it didn't scare them, they just backed up a little and then they came one at a time and they got the leftovers and then that was that.

3:25 Kids are still kids wherever you find them. And after craft time we would work till dinner, we would push dinner back to seven because it got dark about 07:30, we wanted to capitalize on those last hours of light where it was a little bit cooler. And then we'd have dinner. Usually, was pretty leisurely dinner. We...

3:43 Nobody choked on their food. That was good because we had a lot of comic relief at dinner, which we won't tell you about in public. And then after dinner, we would clean up and relax, and I to have tell you, Haiti is very advanced. All their all their all their plumbing controls are single handled. They don't have any two handle faucets there because there's no there's no there's no hot.

4:21 So we we spent time as a team together playing.

4:25 I'm gonna get interjected. Harold was not numb. Harold had been there. This was his fourth trip. He knew all about what we were getting into.

4:32 He just didn't share it with us. Harold just... Yeah. Yeah. I I know what you're going through.

4:38 I know. Yeah. Yeah. I I feel your pain. He knew it.

4:41 He knew it was coming. He just didn't wanna share that until we we

4:43 landed. But as we began to warm a little bit, toward the end of the week, we spent most of our evenings with the kids just hanging out with them. They they love just being with us for some reason. And lights out. Lights out there was very was very cut and dried.

5:00 When the generator generator went off, the lights went out, and I think about half the week, we were actually in bed when the lights went out. The other half of the week, we were... Pulled out our flashlights and found our way to our rooms. But... Okay.

5:16 Any other remarks guys would like to make before we open it up for some questions and maybe ask you some questions if they don't have any?

5:26 I I guess, like, I I was not ready for the poverty. You know? First of first off, I'd like to say thank you for everyone here because you all supported us. I know in prayer and financially, and we really appreciate that. I felt that support, through some text messages and just really felt the hand of God on us, protection on us.

5:46 I mean, like Harold's saying, what... I mean, how did these rafters get up here? These things are heavy.

5:50 Do we... And did we put these up here?

5:51 Like, I don't remember, I guess. They just kinda... I mean, they were true two by fours, heavy lumber. We didn't plan on building trusses. When we went there, we were just going to do a flat roof.

6:01 Right when we got there, it changed. And they said, You're going know. We really like to do trusses and a sloped roof. And so Roger's doing all the calculating and figuring out the rafters and we thought, Wow, this is... We didn't have any ladder.

6:11 If you noticed in the very first picture to set the truss, we're standing on bunk beds. Roger's on a bunk bed. Maybe Harold and the girls are holding the bunk beds from flipping. So we had one ladder that didn't... That opened but it didn't have the cross braces so it could go at any, you know, level of openness or collapsing.

6:28 And we had the wooden ladder that they had made and then we made another wooden ladder. But I mean, very limited tools. But when we got there, you're not five minutes from the airport and there's dogs eating garbage, there's people picking through garbage, there's garbage burning. The smells caught me a little off guard. It was 95.

6:46 It was hot, burning garbage and kind of... It wasn't really sewage, but there was some kind of water running down the street that didn't look good or smell good and and the animals. And and I I... We looked over to Emily, I I didn't know what she was thinking. She was just sitting there taking it all in.

7:02 I I thought... You know, I I don't... Wasn't really bargaining for this much realism, but I asked her if she's okay, and she said, Yeah, I'm fine. And I guess I thought, Maybe I'm the only one that feels sick to my stomach. I wasn't gonna throw up in front of those guys.

7:15 But it was, I mean, the poverty level was stunning. And what... As Harold said, it was a 100 times better than it was after the earthquake four years ago. So I can't imagine what it was like then. But it was still right in Port Au Prince.

7:31 Amazing, just the level of poverty and the living conditions.

7:37 Do any of you have questions you'd like to put to us? Bob?

7:40 I've got actually a whole bunch of them.

7:42 Let me ask the first one.

7:44 A story about the Crocs. The kids were in Crocs. Well,

7:49 two trips ago... Can anybody hear me without it? We noticed that they were playing soccer on rocks and bare feet, and Crocs seemed like a great solution to that. They're pretty much waterproof. They're soft.

8:03 So the church that I belong to before here, we filled... I think we took 200 with us. And I think that there was a mission in November that took another 200. They'll wear them out in a month. You know?

8:15 So a continued stream of Crocs is good for them. It's the perfect shoe. So that's why they're all wearing Crocs. Crocs, actually, the company donated 200 also. So they were pretty good to us then.

8:27 What's the best way to get them

8:33 We've taken stuff. The only way to get it after the earthquake was take it with you on the plane. But we think now that we might be able to use a few locals like DHL. We saw DHL now open at the airport. We might try to use that system.

8:50 There's a team going in November. So if we can get some stuff together, we might ship it to the airport and then Wilson can pick it up there. So that we're gonna try that avenue. I don't know how expensive that is or what that entails, but we're gonna give it a try. AB.

9:12 That was Honduras. Us.

9:13 Honduras? Yeah. Yeah,

9:25 we too were early. Was funny. Will ate them all.

9:40 I

9:51 I actually believe that the the buildings were rotting more than the termites were getting them. But there's limited materials. I mean, you only can use wood there. I think it'll last pretty long because I noticed... I don't if you guys noticed.

10:05 They had termite stuff up in our room. So they're actively trying to kill them, and I think they're doing a good job. Because I really didn't see... In in Honduras, it's worse. I think that since the complex is mostly rock, mostly concrete, the termites are kinda kept at bay.

10:19 I think we built a thirty year roof. Yeah. So that's a long time in Haiti.

10:26 Donna? I can't

10:28 figure out

10:29 how you've got so much

10:30 done. Was it was...

10:34 We even got to say yes, Donna. How did you manage that?

10:41 Well, we got a lot done because you guys are praying, and we and we firmly believe that. We... When he we got there and he gave us the design change, we were we were kind of stunned. Now this fellow that was the team leader, so to speak, his name was Wilson Cahoon, and we think he's just a caricature of mister Meeling, but we'll have to tell you those stories later. But for him, it's no big deal.

11:03 Okay. You guys gotta do it this way, and and and he's trying to tell me what materials are available. I said, no, no, no, we got you can't you can't do a 12 foot roof with a 10 foot piece of metal. So we had to work through a lot of just what's available too, and Harold put his foot down and said, hey, we got to build they wanted to use a corrugated roofing that was about twice as thick as aluminum foil. You know, we didn't want to come back in five years to replace it.

11:29 So Harold said, no. We're gonna put a good roof on that building and and we did. And we think it'll last thirty years.

11:36 I couldn't grasp how we were gonna get it done. I was very stressed the first three or four days because the trust thing threw me off completely, and I I didn't believe it could be done. And I I laid awake. Well, not really.

11:48 I slept good. Laid I laid awake.

11:52 When I woke up I worried that it wasn't going to get done. Just didn't see it. Usually I can see it and then I can plan when we're going to sleep and if we're going to sleep. And we slept a lot and it got done.

12:05 It was Harold's idea that we get up at six in the morning and that was that was a real good one. I had a dream last night that I was working a project with a bunch of people didn't know what they were doing, that...

12:14 Must have had this one. Are you

12:16 sure it was a dream? And that the neighbor was trying to tell us we couldn't take their electricity, But to answer your question, we hit it hard on Saturday. Saturday, we've made our trust

12:28 Friday when we got there.

12:29 Yeah. Yeah. And then by by Monday evening when we stopped, I knew that we had made enough progress that we had... We could do it in three more days. And the tickets crew was magnificent.

12:39 Karen told me after we were done, I really don't like being up in the Heights. So she she she faked it. Faked it effectively.

12:47 I think one of the positive things that came out of it that I didn't really see was we tore down two buildings. That seemed pretty good, and I was a little worried about it because I'm like, Gosh, it feels so weird to tear down here. But it actually created a lot of play space. They ended up having a jump rope, little place, and they are gonna move the basketball hoop, they'll have a little concrete. That worried me, but once I saw that they had more space, it kinda...

13:12 I did notice you jumped the rope in

13:13 that one.

13:14 Yeah, it's called death rope, because it hurts. Hurts. But it worked out. The wood is very dense. Do you wanna speak to the wood?

13:41 Roger. Because it's me.

13:51 that was... I don't know.

13:52 That was like ironwood. It was... You could drive a nail in it half the time you'd have to pre drill it, but we didn't have to drill put many nails in it fortunately. Tammy?

14:03 What are some the

14:06 things we had to eat?

14:09 We had goat, stew, Haitian stew, which is just a, I think mostly vegetables.

14:15 We don't

14:16 know what's in it. It was very

14:17 good. The food range

14:18 A lot of times what was in it, but

14:20 it it tasted pretty good.

14:21 So monkey brains, though?

14:23 No. We

14:24 had some fish that I don't think I would have wanted to see

14:26 the fish when it was alive judging by the bones that were in it, but Yeah. It tasted alright.

14:31 The food ranged from good to great, and and we we really were very grateful for that. I walked through the kitchen a few times when she was appearing, and I I just took it by faith that it was gonna be edible when

14:42 we got done.

14:44 Yeah. I saw her walk with a chicken, a dead chicken once. I I knew that was dinner, and it was it was good.

14:49 It was all good.

14:50 We had... Let me tell you a quick story. Sunday night, they just have a snack, and they had popcorn and Spam. And I and I thought I was putting one on the team by going first, and I said, hey, guys, I'm taking the thin pieces. And I did.

15:05 And they they ended up not taking any.

15:08 It's Haitian spam. Doesn't matter.

15:11 I see the eggs in the next morning. So

15:16 we could keep you another hour, but we won't. But before we go, you guys wanna make any further remarks or...

15:23 There are a couple more questions.

15:25 We'll take up more questions. So you guys, it's... Being late's on you. Josh.

15:31 Josh? Yeah. What's the the religious culture like? Is there Christianity or indigenous religion?

15:36 It's... I was going to

15:38 look that up. That was...

15:39 That's a long answer. A voodoo is very prevalent. And Friday night, when we got there, Wilson told me some stories. I hardly slept Friday night. I was I was half terrified of what could or has happened.

15:51 And he said there was a standing threat on the orphanage, and I was just... I prayed most of the night. I slept good. He slept good. But but we knew you were praying for us, and and we know the power of light stronger than the power of darkness, and...

16:06 But it... Yet, it's real. It's voodoo Lent, if you can believe it, and so they're more active. They were active over the weekend, and they had some marches, and they... We heard the drums, and it's it's not something you'd mess with.

16:17 Yeah. Voodoo drums in the middle of the night, I didn't hear those, I... Karen heard them, but I heard the chanting. The groups... I don't know how many people, but around three or four in the morning you heard just mumbling and just outside the walls.

16:32 And it didn't scare me. Will Hilton said, well, if I was going to pick an opportunity where I could be afraid, last night would be the one where I would have picked. And the next night was the same, we were a little more used to it. But yeah, it was experience and it was I guess what I shared a little bit this morning is I was all thinking about construction, construction, construction. We got to build this.

17:02 What tools are we going to take? And we're focused on what are we going to need when we get there. And when I got there, in the truck and the sounds and the smells and I was ready to kill Harold and I thought, you know, there's we spent a lot of money in airfare. Wouldn't... You know, and I asked Wilson later in the week, wouldn't we be better to just send the money?

17:25 Well, number one, I probably wouldn't have sent any money, you know, because I didn't know the place. And Harold's been there and has and, you know, has given a lot of support there. But he said, you know, to these... To the people there, it's it's... The the the construction is great, but what they really are encouraged by is the fact that we come there and just support them.

17:47 And were so happy that that we came from America. They know what we're giving up. They know what we come where we come from. It meant a lot to them that we came, from The United States to just show them love and and to care for for them. And that was probably the most important thing that we did, think, to show that love to the orphans and to the staff.

18:08 The roof was great, and we felt probably, you know, better about the roof, but they really were blessed just to have the encouragement of the people there. And that was something that I wasn't really thinking much about or really ready for, but that was really a benefit. And, of course, it was a reminder to me of everything that we have. And it's a constant battle. It's a constant challenge.

18:33 And I struggle with it a lot. My job, what do I, you know, what am I doing in my in my job? It's a construction management job. And how much of it is focused on Christ? And that's a constant conflict within me.

18:45 And I think it's within all of us living in this culture. But I just would challenge you to just revisit that and and to think about everything that we have and and what you're doing with what you have, and what you're doing where god has placed you, to try and make what you do what you do for Christ the focus. And it was easier for us there because every day was... You know, we were up and we were working and we were working with the kids, and now we're back to normal. And, you know, I'm ready to come in the house and go, what do you have that iPad for?

19:21 Put that away.

19:21 Don't you know that amorphans don't have anything?

19:25 I'm gonna start... Next time I preach, I'm gonna, you know, be ready.

19:30 What are you doing? What are you doing here?

19:34 It was loud enough. I know. I know.

19:37 I'm not

19:37 loud enough.

19:38 What are you doing? That's about what it was like. The speaker

19:41 cranked and... Anyway, in three hours, but it was it was really challenging and encouraging, and so we would just encourage you that you are all a part of it, and prayer is so vital, and you can continue to be a part of it. We all can through prayer and just what through through support that we have. So.

20:01 Hey, Drew. If you can make your way down, come on down. We'd like to pray with you and Diana before you launch out tomorrow because that's we can relay a little bit and Carol make some remarks.

20:09 Yeah, I just had two quick things to say. I just was... I marveled at how, little the children had and how much they loved us and how much they just spread their love. It was just absolutely amazing. And the second thing I just wanted to mention is I just wanted to thank Harold and...

20:31 For giving us this opportunity to go with him. He committed to going to Haiti, I think, four times and doing these certain projects. And he carried it out to the end, and this is what he set out to do. And at the beginning of the week, you could tell this is the goal, this is the mission, and and he, you know, pushed us in a great way to get it done. And he had, you know, developed great relationship with Emily and Will and just was a really great leader for our team.

21:02 And I wanted to thank Sandy also because I know she she has a lot to do with that back home and put together the craft for the one day for us, the one that they were all, you know, grabbing for. And so I wanna just say thanks to both of you. It was really great. I'm so glad you cornered me that day. Half the time I wanted to kill him, appreciate it.

21:24 Come on up, Drew. Diana, why don't you come up? And, Donna, I'd that to you to come up too and just... And pray... And close in prayer and and also commit Drew and Diana's trip trip to in the Lord's hands.

21:36 Father, we do thank you for this wonderful this wonderful time we've had together, listening to the trip to Haiti now. We want to commit Drew and Diana. We know they'll they're going for a little different purpose but it's still a purpose of wanting to encourage and wanting to to share with those that are over there. We just pray that you'd be with them. Pray that you keep them safely and that that you'd direct them and we pray for Drew that you'd give him wisdom and discernment as he looks at the faith, the the opportunities of faith, and that you would direct them, Lord, and that your will would be done.