Redford Aldersgate UMC

Making Christ's Love Visible

Haiti Trip 2012: Update on 2-11-12

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Pastor Jeff and Paul and their group are half way through their time in Haiti and they are having a great experience!  Here is an update written by one of their traveling companions.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

It’s Saturday night in Jeremie Haiti.  It’s about 80 degrees and the crickets are singing in the green tropical forest that surrounds our guest house.  We have only been here three days, but what an adventure so far…

 We all met at Metropolitan airport on Thursday morning by 6:00AM.  Baggage check in was long because of all the baggage we had with the generous donations from our church friends and family.  But a non-eventful flight later we landed in Miami and on to Port au Prince, Haiti.  Nothing could have prepared us.  The airport was crowded and chaotic.  Thanks to some intervention by some wonderful people we were able to get all of our baggage into cars and on our way to the guest house.  So glad that we were part of a large group and were in the hands of very loving and capable people.  I would hate to have to negotiate the Port au Prince airport and transportation alone.  Driving through the city was the next eye opener.  Very crowded streets, cars and motorcycles, taxi’s ( called tap-taps ) and people everywhere.  Driving laws seem non-existant.  People approaching the car and asking for handouts.  Quite unnerving.  But we got to the guest house and had a wonderful meal and settled for the night.

Friday morning, after a delicious breakfast, we head to a smaller airport in Port au Prince and attempt to negotiate a flight to Jeremie.  Again, only with the intervention of wonderful people, we were able to get a flight to Jeremie.  We thought that we would be leaving about 8:30, and instead we left about 11:45.  We land on the gravel landing strip of the Jeremie airport 45 minutes later only to find that our luggage didn’t make the flight.  Dismayed, we headed for the guest house.  Jeremie is a beautiful area.  Very lush, green, tropical.  Beautiful, friendly people. Very poor.  We get settled in the guest house and enjoy a wonderful lunch and rest while our host pulls a few strings and miraculously gets our luggage to the house before the end of the day.

Today – Saturday – was our first day of working.  We went to the church in Gommier and painted the sanctuary.  We had great help from local people and people from the church.  At the same time, some workers were building a wall in front of the school property.  The road that runs in front of the school has recently been improved and actually paved! How wonderful!  But along with the good comes the bad.  Because the road is so good, the traffic on the road speeds by at a very high rate of speed and 5 people have been killed in the last month.  So a brick wall is being built in front of the school, to keep the school children safe from traffic.  Meeting and working with the people and playing with the children and a full day of painting and hauling bricks was a wonderful day.  Back at the guest house we enjoyed another wonderful meal.

 

Stay tuned for more information about this amazing journey.

 

 

You can find this entry and more on a blog that was started by another group of metro Detroit United Methodists that were there right before our group, and the current group has been adding to it. 

Haiti Blog

Haiti Trip 2012: And they are off!

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Pastor Jeff and Paul, along with 6 other United Methodists from our area left early this morning for Haiti.  Almost a year of planning and they are finally on their way.  Pastor Jeff and Paul were there in January of 2011 as well.

Today the group flew to Miami and then to Port au Price in Haiti.  Tomorrow (Friday) they will fly to Jeremie, a smaller town a short flight from Port u Prince.

They will probably have internet access at their guest house and I will copy their updates here as I get them.  Check back!