Road Trip with 68 kiddos to St. Marc

This is me catching up on the AWESOME stuff that went on during the summer and beginning of the school year. So sit back, relax and pretend it’s the beginning of October.
Here we go!
We eat rice pretty much every single day at the orphanage: sometimes for breakfast, sometimes for lunch and sometimes for dinner. We eat it cooked with beans, white with bean sauce, with vegetables mixed into it, with sugar and milk cooked into a sweet porridge. To say the least, we go through a lot of rice each month. The majority of the rice we eat at this point is imported from the USA. We decided it would be fun to head out to the rice fields in St. Marc to see the amazing rice fields of Haiti and learn how it is grown right here, in country.
We had a great time on the almost 2 hour drive North to St. Marc. Kenol, the boys and I drove down in the canter with all the little kids. They were hilarious! I think we heard, “What’s that?” at least a hundred times. The boys were especially funny when we got into the town of St. Marc. There are tons of motorcycle drivers on the main roads through town, but instead motorcycles they were driving scooters, which the boys thought was the funniest thing ever. I couldn’t help cracking up watching them laugh so hard they were falling off the benches. 

We met up with one of Mission of Hope’s HaitiOne partners who took us all over St. Marc to show the kids all the hard work that goes into growing rice. We learned how rice is grown, picked, beaten on large mats, left to dry in the sun and then put through a mill to remove the husks. We also got to soak up the amazing beauty Haiti has to offer. This is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been!
All the little kids rode back in the bus and Kenol and I rode again in the canter, except this time with all our teen boys. They had me laughing even harder than the little tykes. They were cracking jokes the entire two hours we were in the canter. It was like a stand-up comedy show, except we were sitting down.
We had such an amazing day and the kids and I all thoroughly enjoyed a day off campus learning something new!

Peace, love and rice fields,

Rachel

Comments

  1. MeNovember 25, 2012 at 1:14 PM

    I sure do miss those kids! I am so glad you had such an amazing experience! Love you guys!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Baby Sized Miracle

Image
Today I witnessed a beautiful miracle. I saw God's love poured out in a lovingly selfless act. Today I saw the hands and feet of Jesus at work. Today in Leveque something amazing happened. It started with something terribly sad. A newborn baby was dropped into a latrine and left to die. Something I cannot fathom and which shatters my heart. I cannot even begin to understand what went through this mother's mind as she let go of her baby and watched him fall into the dark pit. Thankfully God has a wonderful plan for this little life and his sweet cry was loud enough to be heard by a good samaritan passing by, who quickly called Pastor Williamson, the deaf pastor from Leveque. A group of people worked together to smash the cement cover off the latrine carefully so the baby would not be injured. Then they somehow used some metal bars and a net or basket of some sort to lift the baby out of the pit. Miraculously he only had a few scraps on him. The community came together to care ...
Read more

How to Be More Effective in Cross Cultural Ministry

There is a sad truth I would like to share with you. All too often people with great intentions do harm in Jesus' name in cross cultural ministry. In my ten years on the mission field I have seen a lot of amazing things happen but I've also seen a lot of hurt caused by well meaning ministry workers. I have compiled this short list of things I have learned, and that I think you should know to help you be more effective in cross cultural missions. 1. Always remember that YOU are the foreigner. This is not your country, you are a guest and should act like one. 2. The people you are serving know SO much more than you ever will about their country, culture and needs. 3. Your way isn't the only way, or necessarily the right way. 4. You better work your butt off to learn the language, and quickly. If you have been living or serving in a foreign land for a year and still can't communicate more than basic greetings to those you came to serve you need to make some chang...
Read more

Gross, gross, gross!!

I can handle mice. I can handle rats. I can handle lizards. I can handle cockroaches. I can handle snakes. I can handle tarantulas. I can handle flying green leaf shaped bugs that smell funny. I can handle a lot more than your average woman, with two minor exceptions: Dead things and Haitian frogs. I can kill a mouse, a cockroach, a snake or a tarantula without fear, but once it's dead I'm not going near it! A lizard on my bedroom wall doesn't faze me, but a dead one in the closet makes me run for the door. Strange I know...but dead things just freak me out! Haitian frogs on the other hand have me running around screaming like a scared little girl. I specify Haitian frogs because Canadian frogs have never really bothered me, except that one time in grade 8 when Ben Lanteigne kicked a frog and it came flying right for my face! Haitian frogs are a whole other ball game. They are the kind of frogs you would see in the Toronto zoo. They always look wet and slimy and ha...
Read more