Lauri’s Blog

We are officially in rainy season now in Haiti. Our only ‘lunch room’ for the students here at school is outdoor picnic tables. So usually once in the fall rainy season and once in the spring we have to figure out some other creative solution when it happens to rain during lunch hour and we have almost 300 kids to feed. Yesterday was even worse though. It started pouring at 2:55pm. Yes, you guessed it school is released at 3pm so there the teachers were..stuck with a class full of kids anxious to get out and play in the mud.

Over the last few years we’ve not had many visitors in Haiti. I guess this isn’t a top rated tourist place. But when it rains, it pours. Now we have friends coming and it’s during our busiest week.
Here’s what we have on the plate so far for June 7-13th:
- graduation for QCS. It’s going to be held at Caribe convention center this year. oh la la.
- we’re going to Sherry’s school of 100+ students to do more dental exams on Monday
- Marly’s sister has her birthday and brother has wedding anniversary
- We’re going to our friends’ David and Alicia’s orphanage Tuesday to follow up on some dental work and also do more filming for our video while Ryan is already at their house.
- Two friends are coming in with a mission group from Mission To Haiti. John is the one who is translating “Where There Is No Dentist” and we want to work with him on Thursday on the book some. Also our friend Janet, who had assisted Marly on previous teams, is coming for a week as well.
- Marly has started working out at Son Light the lovely Mennonite mission clinic near the border of the DR. He’ll be seeing patients there every Thursday. Next week I’m going along to help conduct on dental education workshop. They say some of the people travel for hours on donkey to come to the clinic.
- Our dear friend Bob and his family are moving to Boston June 11. I’ve been close friends with Bob for many years here in Haiti and will miss him terribly. He’s about the age of my dad and as active as Sam! He originally came to Haiti with Habitat for Humanity.
- Our friend Patti the counselor from the DR is coming and we have a couple appointments set up with her during that week also. We have found that blending our two cultures in our marriage is most difficult especially when it comes to how to parent our boys.
- Friday I’ll conduct ‘Book Club’ discussion at our elementary school library. Most families travel to the States or Canada for the summer vacation but I still want to offer something for kids who might be around and are bored. I’ve told them their homework for the summer is to pray everyday, read everyday and try to visit a library somewhere.

So…like I said - when it rains it pours! We’ll indeed be busy bees that week in June!

Yesterday was a day off school here, a holiday called Corpus Christi. Our family was honored to spend the day with our friend Sherry at her school, doing dental exams for the students. We’ve known Sherry from our church for years but this was the first time we visited her impressive school. The school is in Sherry’s home, or better stated, her home is the in the school. (I think all she claims for herself is her bedroom and even that one of the teachers had his computer set up in there). She has over 100 students spread out in rooms and balconies throughout her home. Sherry hires Haitian teachers who speak English and uses the A Beka curriculm. We did our dental workshop with 2 classes and then did exams and treated those children’s teeth. Sherry started a new class this year for older students who had never been in school before. Basically these are like 12 year olds who are in kindergarten. What’s amazing too is that most likely no one in their families have ever attended school before either. Most of Sherry’s students from from a very poor area known as the sewer ravines. She does amazing work, also going down into the crowded housing (if you call their dwelling a ‘house’) and finding out who needs medical care and helping them. So these kids that we saw had never seen a dentist before and some had some pretty serious issues. Marly can always tell when kids have been sucking on the skins from almond trees as that leaves a certain stain on the teeth. We will be going back to finish the rest of her students in a couple weeks. Wish you could join us. As we feel asleep exhausted after our long day of work, I was thinking how many more kids in Haiti have never seen a dentist. Then I thought of how many in the world…then I thought…
What is your profession? Can you use it in needy places of the world? Check this fun website…
www.missionfinder.org

On our way to Sherry’s house (which is close to the orphanage where I adopted Sam) we saw quite unusual displays by peoples’ houses. I have always heard that this holiday is known as Fete Dieu, God’s birthday. Here is the little I understand of this holiday:
- First Thursday after Trinity Sunday (which must follow the church calendar with Easter being early this year)
- hang out colorful sheets, silky bedspreads and tablecloths on the road (okay whatever)
- carry communion, set up strange altars (like we saw) and praise God.
Interesting. I’m glad we went on that street since I had never seen anything like it before. My best word picture still stands with ‘whatever’

We started filming for a video that is being produced for us (by Agape Flights) as a way for us to send greetings to our churches this summer since we aren’t going to the midwest this year. Stay tuned!
Love, Lauri and men (Sam is at a sleep over party tonite, I miss him already and he’s been gone 30 minutes)

Our family had a great weekend. I’ll start backwards. Saturday nite we stayed with friends Bob and Carole at the mission where they work. It’s called Love A Child and was founded by Bobby and Sherry Burnette. If you get a chance, look at their amazing work on their web site. OUr friends Bob and Carole (from Minnesota) lived in Port-au-Prince and just moved out there in Jan. They have such a lovely home that made my house feel like a mud hut. They even had remotes for the ceiling fans! We enjoyed taking showers, having a/c and Marly even got up in the night just to have more of the ice cubes! Sunday morning we went to their lively Haitian church service. The boys looked at the fish farm, petted the horses and we greeted the orphanage kids.
We drove back home (just under 2 hours) and ran into a bunch of Flag Day parades. Yesterday was Haitian Flag Day so many school had organized their kids to march in the streets. Adorable!
Saturday afternoon we first drove out to Fond Parisien which is almost to the border of the Dominican Republic (DR). We went to the compound of the Mennonite Missionaries. They have a wooded place set right on the lake. Their mission director from the States was here now and he wanted to interview Marly to see if he could come and help in their dental clinic. After a comfortable visit, we went to tour the medical clinic. Wow! It’s very nice - clean, organized and well equipped. The dental room is much nicer than Marly is used to working in so he would love to use the tools and equipement there. We are in ‘negotiations’ now about how offten Marly could drive out there, what services he’d offer, what is reseasonable to charge poor Haitian patients etc. He may drive out there again this week to meet with them again.
Friday nite here at home was one of our most fun times as a family. Some friends from church organized a ‘Family Fun Night’ for families with young kids. We had such a blast! Our sanctuary has folding chairs and just plain cement floor, so we cleared out the chairs and made it into a rollerskating rink! We brought along all our trykes, scooters, rollerblades, skateboards etc and sped around in circles. I can’t count how many times Joey got rammed into by other kids but just got back up on his feet and kept going! We broke up into teams and played some fun relay races and acted our Bible stories. We had a pot’blessing’ dinner. It was my day to be blessed indeed since I love taco salad and about four yummy taco salads showed up! yipee! I had seen some creative recipes I was anxious to try out. I made a cheese ball with cream cheese and fun ingredients. They I shaped it into a block and with black olives I made it look like dice. Then I made a scrabble board with egg salad between crackers for the letter blocks. On each I printed a letter and put together ‘Family, Games, Fun’ etc.
If you remember, please pray for Marly and this new venture with the Mennonite clinic. We’ll keep you posted.

Here’s some Haiti news from the last couple days:

- Haiti was on the TV program 60-Minutes again (second time in two weeks). The report was about how Detention Centers that the US has which pre 9/11 used to hold about 100,000 but now are holding over 300,000. A big problem we have here in Haiti are the deportees (is that an English word?) that have been sent back to Haiti. For example, a child may have been born in Haiti but then taken to the States at a young age. They grow up in the States, speaking only English. After being convicted on a crime, instead of prison in the States, they sent them back here to Haiti for us to deal with them. Not a pretty picture.

- A ferry going between two Haitian towns capsized and 13 people were found dead. The boat was overcrowded but many of the people were able to swim to safety. A seperate problem we have is that people who feel so hopeless try to board a boat to take them to the States or any other country. Most often they pay a huge amount for the illegal passage only for it to be a suicide trip. The boats never have enough food or water aboard and they often sink within hours of taking off. Meanwhile the person who sold the ‘tickets’ is sitting pretty back on shore.

- The parliament of Haiti has rejected the president’s choice for a new prime
minister, prolonging the period without a government. We’re praying that this recent news won’t add more instability to our fragile environment. During our crisis in early April, they ‘fired’ our current Prime Minister and have yet to replace that position. We’re praying for godly person to step in and help our hurting country which has the potential indeed be a pretty place.

(my theme word today was ‘pretty’!)

May First in Haiti is our Labor Day. It is a day off of work and school and usually there is a large agricultural fair held downtown. Our family enjoyed a vacation day yesterday and we took another family from school to a pool to go swimming with us. As a child, May Day for me was a fun tradition of taking homemade baskets with flowers and candies to neighbors home. We’d leave the basket on the doorstep, ring the doorbell and run home. If we were caught, well….then we got kissed!
Today at school we had a teachers in-service discussing what we use for our Bible class curriculm. It was interesting to see, especially what high school uses as they try to go through the whole main lessons of the scriptures in a year. Marly has a Gideons International meeting tomorrow. Hope you all have a good weekend and its warming up where ever you are!