Today was a great day.  I woke up around 6 am after getting about 10 hours of sleep.  I got dressed and headed over to the house and Veronique was already preparing breakfast for the group.  She made pancakes for us today.  I asked her if she could make a ze (egg) for me.  I finished breakfast and settled down to catch up on news as I waited for the rest of the group to come over for breakfast.

After breakfast, we headed down to the workshop/storage shed for a day of painting and roofing.  We spent the morning painting.  Mr. Bolden and I took a few breakfast from painting to help the guys with the roof supports as they were finally ready to work on them.  After we got everything prepared for the roof, we went back to help the ladies with the painting.  We had to wait for the painting to finish in order to put on the roof anyway.

At about 11:00 am we ran out of paint…..break time!!  Linda had Lucien go out and pick up some sugar cane for us.  Most of the group hadn’t tried sugar cane before.  Minister Tina really liked it and dug right in.  Linda also had one of the guys climb a coconut tree and get some coconuts for us to try.  They were dry, so there was no coconut water, but the coconut milk was just right.  We headed into to lunch to enjoy some of yesterday’s leftovers.

After lunch, Jimmy had returned with more paint.  We pent the afternoon finishing up.  It’s amazing how much the concrete absorbs the paint.  We had to put 3 or 4 coats of paint on to get a good look.  After painting we cleaned up and had dinner.

Tonight’s meal consisted of fish, banana bread, steamed plantain, rice & peas, and some other stuff I don’t recall because I don’t eat them.  After dinner, Minister Tina rounded everyone up to start our short 15 minute devotion a bit early.  About 60 minutes later we finished.  Tonight’s devotion was on 1 Corinthians 12:12-22.  Min. Tina asked us to think about how the scripture related to us and what we were doing here.  Min. Tina also had us think about our spiritual gifts and share them with the group.  My gift is service.  Min. Tina has us do one more thing.  She passed around sheets of paper with everyone’s name on them.  We were to write one or two sentences about the person on the sheet, fold it, then pass it along to someone else to write.

After devotion, I discovered I’d be able to watch the State of the Union on my iPad.  There seemed to be enough interest, so I connected it to the television so all could see.  Some of the group started a loud card game.  Realizing I was unable to hear the president’s speech, I disconnected my iPad and went to listen to it using my headphones.  Mrs. Hobson was watching and spoke up loudly when I disconnected it.  She let me use her Android tablet to watch if I reconnected my iPad.  This seemed reasonable, so I tried it out.  It worked for about 5 minutes, then the CNN app on her tablet kept crashing.  Of course the card players had gotten much louder by this time.  I was frustrated, but I figured, I could just replay it after it finished.  After they finished, I got my iPad and began to search for a replay.  60 minutes later I could find no replay, so I headed of to bed a little disappointed.  Maybe tomorrow would be better.

Today we embarked upon our second mission trip to Haiti.  We arrived at the Kansas City airport before the break of dawn. Everyone was excited and tired.   On the trip from Kansas City to Dallas most of us slept. Once we arrived in Dallas we found Melissa’s father.  He had flown in from Atlanta to join us.  He had to wake up earlier than the rest of us, but and managed to arrive before us even though he came from a greater distance.

While In the airport in Dallas, most of found something to eat.  You could tell we were starting to wake up finally.  Conversations broke out and people started to talk about the trip.  Min. Tina made friends with fellow passengers on the flight from Dallas to Florida. The rest of us slept a bit more on this flight.

Upon arrival in Florida, we got our first taste of what we might expect in Haiti. The air conditioning in the airport wasn’t working very well and there were lots of people.  Finally we boarded our flight and were on our way to Haiti.  I sat next to Franck, a gentleman born in the Dominican Republic with parents from Haiti.  He currently lives in Haiti and was returning from visiting his children living in Florida for Christmas and New Years.  He was glad because his oldest child was in college now.  Franck owns a small construction business near the Baptist mission. He had quite a bit to say about the corrupt politicians and businessmen in Haiti that were stealing away the aid dollars that were meant to rebuild the country. He was very happy about President Martelly however. Martelly had managed to get funding for 9000 children to get educated and had gotten them in school. He saw this as a first step toward a brighter future for Haiti.

When we arrived in Haiti, we got our luggage and headed out to the Heart to Heart vehicle. The porters agressively tried to carry our luggage. When we arrived at the vehicle, the swarmed us again trying to help with our bags.  LaTonya got upset because she paid a man in the airport to help us with our bags thinking he was from Heart to Heart. Ufnfortunately he was simply impersonating Edwidge from Heart to Heart.  We scrambled to scrape together a few dollar to tip some of men. Thankfully Linda was there to greet us. She explained to the men that they should go find the other guy, he had the tip.

We left the airport and took the main road back to the Heart to Heart facility.  This road was in much better condition than the one we took on my previous trip. We arrived at the facility about 30 minutes later without incident.

Once at the facility, we were given a quick tour and got settled into our dorms. At dinner we socialized a bit and discussed what we would be doing. Our task would be to finish building a storage facility.  After dinner I encouraged the team to blog about our trip so the congregation could keep up with our activities.  Many said they would, but none had been to the blog site yet. I was surprised how much grief people gave about even getting to the blog.  There is a link on the homepage of the church website which I thought would make it easy for people.  I need to pray about this.