Hello,

I spoke with Mike earlier tonight. The team is doing great. And Yahoo!!! the kids are finally in their rooms and sleeping for the first night. We received the beds in February, but did not have enough nanny's or supervision for them to sleep in the rooms. On the January trip Mike and I were able to hire and arrange for 3 nanny's, but we have 7 of the 11 rooms filled with children, so we needed a minimum of 7 nanny's. 'Grandma,' the mother of the cook we had that died, has said she would be willing to be our 4th, she is a very sweet older lady. Nathan and Mike were able to arrange for three temporary nanny's, so the children are finally moved in. We have one girl who has been to Haiti with us, that will be moving to Haiti when the May team goes. She will stay until July and come home with the July team and then decide if she wants to move to Haiti for a long term stay. So she will be a 5th nanny. We are trying to keep the orphanage more family style instead of institutional, which is why we have separate living spaces instead of one or more large ones. We have about 6 children per room and nanny. We are hoping this will result in better care of the children with no one slipping between the cracks. We will have all of the children eating together though, so that we know nutritionally what each child is getting. Please pray that Mike is able to find and hire a couple more nanny's. Anybody up for sponsoring nanny's :) Tonight the team had a great prayer and worship time with the children right before bed, but I bet the sleeping is short tonight due to excitement and the newness sleeping in their own bed. They are used to sleeping on the ground together like sardines. Some of the little ones will probably miss the comfort of sleeping together. They also will have light in the rooms for a few hours in the evening which is a new thing. In Haiti when it gets dark you just keep on going like when it rains around here. If you let the rain stop you, you would never do anything. In Haiti they don't let the dark stop them. So lights from our new generator will be a big deal.

Nathan also hired two new security men to watch over the orphanage. The security wall is almost completed, the large gate our welder made just needs to be installed.

The team was able to put in the gas piping for the stove, and they poured one of the cement mop sinks for the laundry room. Two of our cooks are willing to learn how to use the propane stove, so please pray for them to learn quickly, it will be quite a bit different then cooking over an open fire. It will be healthier for them also.

The team worked on projects and was also able to go into town today, which is always fun and interesting.

Tomorrow the team will complete some of the projects they started today. Also tomorrow Mike will be teaching our Good Shepherd pastors, and Mike will be meeting with the two pastors that are head of the pastor's association we have, in regards to the pastor's conference during the May trip.

So please pray for God's presence in both of these meetings.

We also are looking into adding a couple of children to the orphanage which will bring us up to 46 children, 30 of which will be boys. Thanks for your prayers.

Blessings,

Chris
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Hello,
I just got off the phone with Mike, after a delay at the New York airport the team arrived safely in Port-au-Prince.They had their first Haitian dinner half way up to Marose just before dusk. They are sleeping in our new orphanage dinning room. Which is great, it is just freshly painted. So it will be lighter, cleaner and will have less bugs :)
Tomorrow the team will be working on installing the commercial propane stove and building some desks for the office and possibly some shelves for the kitchen and laundry. We have two medics on the team and one has a wife that is a good organizer, so they will be organizing and restocking the medical clinic. We took 28 bins and a couple of suitcases on this trip so the team will be organizing the contents of the bins. And then the idea is that each child in the orphanage will get his own bin to act as a dresser in his or her own room. They are the largest we could bring on the plane so they are pretty good size. We have taken about 40 bins down there already, so there should be enough for all of the children and nanny's, and still leave some for the kitchen and storage depot. Rubbermaid bins or totes tend to be pretty tough and will keep out the dust, water and rodents hopefully. Thanks so much to all of you that helped with towels, sheets, toothpaste, toothbrushes, ect. It will be great to be able to create a bin for each child to hold his clothes and things. Another new concept for the children :) For a while now we have wanted to paint different scriptures along the tops of the walls up by the ceiling of each room, now that the rooms are painted we can. So tomorrow part of the team will be stenciling encouraging verses around the rooms. Mike will also be meeting with the contractor, welder, painter, electrician, carpenter, tile setter, and generator man to plan out the final punch list for finishing up the first 2 buildings completely. If you have ever been to Haiti, you know that most buildings are never completed. He will also look at what is needed for building number 3. So tomorrow will be projects around the orphanage and time spent playing with the children and interacting with our staff.
Prayers would be appreciated for productivity and all the necessary tools and items needed to finish these projects. Also for a lot of love to be given to the children.
Blessings, Chris

Hello everyone,
Our March team left last night.Please pray for safe travel and that the Holy Spirit goes ahead of them and prepares the way. It is a great team and we are excited to see what God has planned for them.
Blessings and thanks,
Chris

This is our March team.

I read this in the newspaper last week and thought I would share it, as it is as
applicable today as it was in 1577.

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life:
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Distrub us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes:
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.
Sir Francis Drake

WoHOO! Finally photos of our uniforms to share!

These are uniforms from our Peru school!!!!!!!!

These are uniforms from our Marose school!!!!!!!!!!!
The photo is actually our orphanage children :)
Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the outside of building two, boys shower and bathroom, food depot, kitchen, dinning room, laundry, clothing and storage depot, generator room, and the office.

This is the outside of building one, the children's rooms.

YEAH!
We received our beds for the children! They came complete with Mosquito netting and bibles. Notice the Caribbean blue walls and our splashed concrete floors.
Don't they look great. We are so excited for the children, many have never slept in a bed EVER! Building # 2 is being painted as I write this. We are hoping building #3 will be finished by the March team trip! Thanks so much for all of your support to
help make this happen for the children.
Blessings, Blessings and more.
Chris

YEAH!

Finally our beds are here for the orphanage.

Our tye-dying efforts,kind of wild but turned out great:)

Please continue to lift this boy (from one of our communities) up in prayer. We believe his healing will be made complete and one day soon he will walk and run with the other children.

Our Peru school eating food that we received from Feed my starving children.

The children look forward to letters from sponsors and team members that they have developed relationships with.

Haiti's version of jacks, one of the girls favorite pastimes.

Caitlin doing "nails" one of the girls favorite things to do with us.

A rats nest in a tree in Peru, Haiti. When birds land near the top of the nest to check it out, the rats tunnel up and get them. Very creative.

Assembling the benches in Haiti, that the team here built last fall.

Hello
This is Chris writing. I wanted to let all of you know that we have arrived home safe
and sound and with no missed, late or changed planes. Second trip in a row. Never before has this happened maybe we are setting a new pattern :) We had an awesome trip.
The team consisted of just 4 of us this time. We usually have about 10. The March trip already has 15 committed and paid team members. The smaller size of the team allowed us to do some things that a larger group would not have been able to do, like walk through the town and markets a couple of times and shop for the orphanage. Jeremy shared some of the trip highlights, but I would like to add a few more.
Besides the healing of the blind girl, Nathan also prayed for his cousin over the phone who was wheel chair bound. After about 20 minuets his cousin was able to get up and walk, very exciting. Praise God!!!
In Peru after the weddings(which I enjoyed, I love being a part of other cultures)we hiked a couple of miles down the road to a deeper part of the river to do the baptisms. We had a full band with us marching along. The parade kind of collects people from the community as it goes along, so there was quite a large gathering by the time we reach our destination.It is a pretty good witness and testimony to the rest of the community. After wards we returned to the church for the last night of a 7 evening revival held in Peru. There were salvations and healings. Mike prayed for a young boy (maybe about 9 or 10 years old). The boys legs were deformed and he was crippled and unable to walk. Not much seemed to happen that night that we could see. I felt like we were supposed to pray for him again the next day. So the next day we visited our school in Peru and handed out snacks, backpacks and gave the school some supplies. Then we asked where the crippled boy lived? We were told and walked to his
home. We prayed again for awhile and then went back to the school. About an hour later the boy and his mother came hobbling up to the school to find us. He was slowly walking with her support. It was not a complete healing but some none the less. I sat with my hand on him and quietly prayed until we had to leave. Mike and
I have been prompted by God to pray for him ever since. I am believing for complete
healing for him before Mike goes back in March. I cannot wait to hear how he is doing. Please join with us and lift him up in prayer. Haiti is such a hard place to
live I can not even imagine how much harder and hopeless it would be for someone who is handicapped.
I had been told before I left that I would be sharing while in Haiti. It did not look like I had thought it would, but I did share some at the pastors conference,
and with our Good Shepherd pastors, and in church Sunday evenings. The rest of the team also shared at church in the evening. God loves to stretch us.
We also did some interviews for nanny's and a director for the orphanage. We have hired the director and it looks like we have two who will work for the nanny positions, possibly a third :) We do need more though, so we would appreciate your prayer for this hugely important need to be met. We also have some others that we will be hiring for laundry, cleaning and cooking helpers.
We were also able to spend some time with Nathan on vision. In May we will be having a teaching conference for our Pastors association. We will have a team of pastors
from around here that will be going with Mike to teach. Also Nathan would like to have a youth conference. He believes we will be able to have between 500 to 1000 youth come. It will be both a teaching and encouragement for the christian youth and an evangelistic outreach to the youth that do not have a personal relationship with Christ. It will also involve worship. So we would also appreciate your prayers for
the planning of this event. We are hoping to be able to have the conference in September. Super exciting.
Well I know this is a very long update, I appreciate all of you who have read through it, we really are thankful for your prayers. Many, many Blessings,
Chris