Boats and Internet Posts

Hey there, friends!
I'm gonna switch things up a bit and do your Creole lesson first:
degaje (day-gah-jzay): doing what you can with what you have

The crew spent Thursday in Port-de-Paix, about an hour from St. Louis.  We visited House of Hope first, which is a short-term orphanage mostly for children who are severely malnourished.  They're not a part of NWHCM, but we visit anyway because the kids are so dern cute.  :)  We did get to visit the NWHCM Port-de-Paix campus, but the majority of our visit was spent at Melonnie's (the intern leader/trainer) favorite places: the prison and brothel.

The prison has ten cells with about 30-40 prisoners in each cell.  Most of them are in for debts they can't pay... Melonnie comes every week to do Bible studies with them, so each of the interns got to share a little devo with one of the cells.  I know it sounds weird, but they're honestly really awesome guys.  The "brothel" is also more than meets the eye.  Papa Yo, the owner, would much rather just have a club, but he can't really afford it.  Although currently there are no girls working, I'm sure at least partly because of Melonnie's ministry there.  In the meantime, Papa Yo has taken in some orphan boys and has been mentoring them.  Like I said, more than meets the eye...

On Friday, we went to my favorite place on earth: Tortuga.  After a beautiful boat ride over, I got to see my little friend Wencha!  Yay!  She didn't recognize me at first because of my lack of hair, but once she realized it was me, we were attached at the hip.  She invited my to her home, so I got to see her mom also, who is really sweet.  I was so excited to be able to spend some time with them.  :)

Obvious observation of the day: ants in your towel makes for an unfun end to a shower...

Yesterday, we left to spend the weekend out away from campus.  First we went to Beauchamp, mainly just to see it and eat lunch.  At Salines Mayette, we got to see the kids at the orphanage.  At one point, a boy I was walking with completely stopped and bent down to pick something up.  He came back to me and put something in my hand that looked like a leaf.  He said, "Papyon."  Butterfly.  And it was.  The life gone from it, but just as beautiful.  I can think of a few things that are similar to that... Can you?

We spent the night at La Baie and went to their church in the morning: officially my favorite church in Haiti.  It was so dang cute.  It was very small and they started by memorizing a Bible verse.  Anyone from kids to adults were fair game to be called on to recite it.  During worship, they sang a fun song just for us that made us "kanpe" (stand up) and "shita" (sit down) a bunch of times.  It was cute.

Going out to the beach, I saw a boy playing with a toy sailboat he had made out of a flip-flip and a styrofoam take-out box.  It actually sailed.  If that's not degaje, I don't know what is.  We had a good time at the beach, mostly passing around my scuba mask to check out the fish and try to find shells (no luck).  We got home in time for dinner and for me to call my mommy.  Thank goodness that's the last bit of travelling for awhile because I have Tap-Tap Butt like nobody's business...

I'm sorry this was late and long... My computer has pretty much crapped out on me.  I'm typing this on a friends computer right now.  But you know what they say... degaje!

Prie (PREE-ay)/Loue (LOO-ay)
The fundraising for Niason's new home is going incredibly so far!  Last I checked, John had raised $6,400 toward the $10,000 goal.  Praise God!  Thank you so much for those of you who have donated.  Please keep praying for the funding to come and if you are led to give, here's the link!  Watch the video John posted for more info.  :)
http://www.crowdrise.com/bdayhome

Love you all!
Melissa