Ripe Mango Chronicles

Please be praying for Pierre, who is one of the newest additions to the Hope House family. Some of you will remember his story, he was abandoned at our clinic a few months back. He was admitted into the children’s Hospital Saturday with an extremely high fever and some other complications. I don’t know all the details yet, as I just got back in country this morning, after a weekend away. I hope to go back to the hospital tomorrow and talk to the doctor to find out more. They are thinking possibly meningitis. Please keep this little guy in your prayers and I will keep you posted as I find out more. Peace, love and miraculous healing (Please Lord!)

I sometimes wish we could be done talking about the Earthquake. I wish we could just move on. I wish that it could be done with, in the past tense, but the truth of the matter is that the Earthquake has become a part of who I am, who we all are here in Haiti. As most of you know in April I was experiencing some pretty bad anxiety, still couldn’t sleep inside and was experiencing symptoms of PTSD. After a few months of therapy and rest in Texas I came back thinking I was “healed”. Adjusting back to life in Haiti has gone relatively smoothly. I am not going to lie, I have definitely had my ups and downs; there have been days I’ve felt overwhelmed or frustrated but my anxiety had been under control, until this weekend. I don’t know what changed or why all of a sudden I was losing control but for the past 5 days I have been having intense panic attacks numerous times every day. The attacks have been more intense and happening more frequently than ever before. I did my best to keep this t...

The past few weeks have been pretty wild for Haiti. It started off with the cholera epidemic then came hurricane Tomas. Our team here has been extremely pro-active and once again we were prepared for disaster. I brought the kids up on Thursday to stay in Maggie’s Kitchen, the kitchen of the new orphanage facility, so they would be close by and in a safer building in case the winds really picked up. We brought up mattresses, MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) and of course the projector! Instead of sitting around worrying we had fun! The kids played on the playground (when it wasn’t raining) and made good use of the new pavilion, playing soccer and hanging out. The kids played cards, dominoes, checkers, Uno and we watched Mighty Ducks 1 and 2, Alvin and the Chipmunks the Squeakquel and this amazing documentary called Babies which the kids and I both LOVED. We were expecting the worst and so we waited, and waited. It was windy, but not enough to break any branches or anything. It rained,...

There is an unseen world that co-exists with ours. It’s called the spiritual realm. Before moving to Haiti I really never gave it much thought. I had heard of voodoo of course, but I thought it was make believe, hocus pocus stuff. I didn’t think people really practiced it, and I especially didn’t think anyone actually believed any of that stuff was real. Fast forward four + years. Voodoo is real, and it is nothing like the movies; people die, animals are sacrificed, alliances are made between this world and theirs and people can be possessed by evil spirits. We have a new pastor (my good friend Patris) at Mission of Hope church and things are changing drastically in a good way. We have a prayer service every week day at noon, a 3 hour worship service every Tuesday night, a 6 hour prayer and worship service every Saturday starting at 6:00am, and Sunday morning service is standing room only now. The spirit is moving in a huge way. The past four days have been especially spiritually s...