The Usual

Last Sunday Chris, Leslie, Olivia, Erik, Susie and I went to church at Canaan.  It is unique there because the service is in Creole but one of the children will translate to English.  It was kinda warm though since the service doesn't start until about 10 am.  There are no fans and no wind passes through the building so it is typical to be drenched in sweat very quickly.  EDH (Haiti's electricity company) has not given power for a couple months now and Canaan only runs their generator a few hours at night.  We have heard rumors, which are the common way information is passed here, that EDH won't be turning on power until the national highway is finished.  That looks to be around another five or six months.  Kinda inconvenient, but there isn't a whole lot you can do.  After church we went back home, changed into shorts, and everyone came over for the missionary meeting.

On Monday we went for an early morning hike to the fort in Saint-marc with Erik and Susie.  On the way back we stopped to buy more cinder blocks so work could continue on the apartment construction.  After work we headed to the light house beach.  This is the one Mark and I tried to get to a few weeks ago and had a terrible time with the road.  There are two ways to get there and we tried the route that Mark and I hadn't.  It was passable but there was one spot where a 40 foot section of the road had been washed away and dropped 10 feet until solid ground.  We found a path that had been made to get around, but it was amazing to see what the water had done.  Once we made it to the beach we noticed how far the water had come up and how much sand had been washed away during the hurricanes.  Erik and I ventured out into the water and did  some snorkeling since the water is so clear in this area.  It was the first time I had gone snorkeling and I really enjoyed it.  There were some small reefs off the coast that we could see fish and conk near.  

This is a picture from our hike to the fort. 

There were a lot of goats roaming around there. 

This one seemed a little mischievous and was starring me down.

 

On Tuesday Erik and Susie left to go back home.  That night, Pastor Henry, Sister Gladys, Mark, Bobi, and Elsie stopped by after they ate at Club Indigo.  It was Elsie's birthday and they had taken here out for a special dinner.  They came over to have cake and ice cream...since we are one of the only places to get ice cream.  Chris has an ice cream maker and it seems to make us a very popular spot to have celebrations....for any reason.

The rest of the week I worked on the drawings for the new biosand filter mold.  Since my computer died, that work had come to a haul, but we wanted to get them finished so we could start using the new design.  I finished them up on Friday and we are currently building the first mold using this design....hope it works.  

Yesterday, I went with Mark, Bobbi and some others from Canaan on a hike.  It was fun because we had about 15 of the kids at the orphanage come with us.  I think they enjoyed getting out and being "free" for a couple of hours.  It was a pretty intense hike and with the heat and sun, we all got tired quickly.