Nap Boule!

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. ~ Romans 15:13

So the Malaria is gone, and it turns out the medicine to kill it is nearly as bad as the disease itself. I felt much better Friday but felt much worse Saturday and Sunday due to the side effects of having taken 12 Chloroquine and 8 Doxycycline in the previous 4 days. Just made me feel weird, and I’m convinced it was messing with my head.

Our journey back from Gonaives on Friday was an adventure, to say the least. We got stuck in the mud for an hour and a half and convinced our driver it wasn’t worth giving it another shot (it had taken us that long just to BACK out to where we started). So, we decided to march on without him and took off on foot with hardly any water in the middle of nowhere. We luckily came upon a moto and paid him to take us to civilization. Turned out he had like a 50 cc deal, so we had to dismount at every slight incline. An hour and a half and another moto later we made it home, exhausted. I was lucky that the Malaria had been pretty well taken care of.

When John and I got back, there was a team of 12 people here from Virginia and Pennsylvania who were putting on a soccer camp. It was cool to meet all of them and part of me wishes I could have spent time with them all week. I got to lead some worship and sing with the older guys for hours – they LOVED it, and I actually had to tell them I was done, which doesn’t usually happen when it comes to singing. We also played some Risk, which almost ended in a destroyed friendship. I will not say more, except that the game was never finished.

In other news, it turns out that the team that was here ate (1) all our animal crackers (2) 10 of John’s cliff bars and (3) all our gatorade mix. Turns out they basically rampaged our faces while they were here. Oh well.

This week we’ve been working around the yard and doing a lot of surveying. We’re trying to get a diagnostic on am irrigation canal that currently serves 250 families and could serve up to 500 after some repairs. Its a huge job but its pretty cool because we’ve come some awesome Haitians helping out and basically destroying the brush with machetes so that we can work. They could go forever, I’m convinced. We also got the chance to check out a spring which Bruce hopes to cap in the near future. It currently puts out 135 gallons of water a day and is not in the most sanitary of conditions. While we were there we saw people drawing water with gas cans about a foot from where mosquito larva were breeding.

As for the last post, I have been reminded that to us it seems hopeless, but to God nothing is hopeless. Romans 15:13 is a good reminder of this as I put at the beginning of the post. I’m going to thank my mom for that one. It has been hard for me to look at upsides when the world around me here is crumbling and I am feeling sick. My goal for the remainder of my time here is to observe and soak in the joy that so common in the people here. I think God has a lot to teach me still.

I am also looking into traveling to Port-au-Prince to work with IOM there for a week or two after my time here. I think there is a lot to gain from experiencing the cleanup/rebuilding process first hand, and I hope that I would be able to help out.

Please pray that I am able to see God’s light in my last 2 weeks here in Passe Cateboix and for the rest of my time here in Haiti, and that God can use me as his tool. Thanks for the prayer and support through my Malaria episode and continue to pray for the health of the guys here. We think another one may have gotten Malaria. Take care and God bless. I’m thinking of all of you and love you dearly.

Hugs and love,
Josh

PS “Nap Boule” means: “We’re boiling”… a common way to say “all is well, dawg.”