Jordan Update...

Hey everyone this is Jordan, and I’m finally getting around to doing a blog post (Crystal won’t stop bugging me about it). It’s Thursday the 23^rd and there are a bunch of little kids around me fascinated by the computer. They have no clue what I am writing because they hardly know English, but they are still trying to read it. Anyways it has been really fast, exciting, and busy little over a week here in Chaveneau. 

Crystal chronicled a lot of our activities in her previous post. Since she wrote that we have been doing much of the same. In the mornings when school is going on we hang out with the kids. We feel like rock stars, or animals at a petting zoo most of the time.  We joke that we are going to charge them 5 gourdes to play with our hair, or watch us swim in the river. We are a huge attraction simply because we are probably the first white people that they have been in contact with for this amount of extended time.  This week is exam week at the school so from what we can understand they only have to be in school for the time that they are taking a specific exam. That means the kids are hanging out a lot more than they did last week when they had to be in school from 8-1 each day. It has been a lot of fun getting to know them and laughing together when we try to communicate and fail. We have gotten closer to the kids from the family that live on the school property because they are here all the time. They are awesome kids and we have had a ton of fun with them.  Their mom is out “host” while we are here. She cooks our amazing food, and makes sure that we are comfortable in our sometimes uncomfortable living conditions. 

At night, under the generator lights, we are holding English classes for the community, and it is so awesome. The turnout has been overwhelming, at least 50 people every night. We are teaching some basic conversational phrases that you learn whenever you learn a new language: How are you? I am good/bad/so-so, Good morning/afternoon/night, “What is your name?,” “My name is”, etc. If you’ve ever learned a new language, you know the drill. Speaking of a new language, my Creole learning is going very well. Building off the basic phrases I learned last year, I’ve learned some new verbs and tenses of verbs, and some vocabulary. My most common phrase is, “I don’t understand’.  

We got to the river almost every day to relax, and cool off. We aren’t sure if it’s the cleanest place in the world (it IS cleaner than the river/garbage dumps in Carrefour) but another line we have been using a lot, “Oh well we have Cipro”. We always sleep under the stars instead of our stuffy tents, but sometimes we have to rush back inside when the rain starts pouring down.  Some of the days have sporadic rain showers and we have to run to the roof to cover our tents, but that’s rainy season in Haiti for you.

Yesterday, Crystal, Michelle, Zick, and I went on an adventure to Les Cayes to get water and oatmeal. It is about a 40 minute drive, most of it being bumpy rock and dirt roads. Crystal was driving for the first time in the jam packed Haitian streets. I’m told that Les Cayes looks a lot like New Orleans due to the lay out and architecture because of the way the French did common things in all of their colonial cities. We had to stop and ask for directions at nearly every corner, back up, go the wrong way down one way streets, but we finally arrived. We were really excited about our find, the prices were so reasonable. Once again it’s exciting to be a part of seeking stuff out for future teams and missions trips that, God willing, Hearts United will be running here in Chaveneau.

Well that is all for now!

In the power of Christ alone,

Jordan