Sheila called Sunday night while we were praying for Moses to say that she was in labor. Because of major road issues it is not easy for our pregnant ladies to get to us right now. It is not easy for anyone to get in and out of our area. We are thankful that John found Sheila in the darkness of evening as she was treading through shin deep water and picked her up to get her to the maternity center.Sheila labored all night last night and delivered her third child (her first daughter) at 9:45 this morning. She is a very big baby for Haiti. She is the biggest Haitian baby we've ever delivered in our program. :) Please pray health over Sheila and her new (yet unnamed) baby girl. Two big brothers ages 6 and 11 will welcome her home.
Emmanuella's baby boy is still in the hospital. As far as we are concerned this is great news. The longer they keep him on antibiotics the better. Beth wrote about them here today.
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I do not understand the quality of this photo of our road, but it seems appropriate for a crappy road to have been photographed crappily. In some places the water is deep enough to make certain drivers almost poo in their pants for fear of getting stuck. It looks like this without rain. Once it rains, forget about it. Stay home.
Sunday most of us piled into our truck and left for church. The boys were waiting at home to be picked up by Heather and Aaron for a beach day. We attempted to go left out of our neighborhood but the road was blocked with large pieces of cement pulled out into the water. We went right to take a known detour. Once we were onto the detour there was another road block. We turned around to go help the Hendricks find their way in from another way through the labyrinth of "streets" in our area of Tabarre.By the time we got back to the road we'd exited on, it was blocked off with trees and rocks making it impossible to get back home.
The Hendricks bailed out while they could and we told them that the boys could handle the disappointment.
Troy went to work negotiating our way back into our neighborhood. The exchange started the way any good Haitian debate starts .... With lots of yelling and posturing and ridiculous behavior. If you don't understand culture you might be afraid, but we knew it was just a typical day of communicating in Haiti. The twenty or so guys that Troy was negotiating with had to stop yelling in order to hear why we were asking to wreck their work of blocking the road.
In the end after some friendly name calling (that's a thing) the guys did determine that Troy had a point ... that both sides into our neighborhood were indeed blocked off and that just sitting there all day wasn't probably a realistic solution for any of us. Troy told them he understood why they were mad at the never ending problems on this road. He told them he supported their desire to get the attention of some government type people. The yelling ended. They moved enough rocks for us to pass. The insults were forgotten. Troy said he'd pray for them. They said "May the heart of God bless you." We headed home and laughed about our trip to church that wasn't meant to be.
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Thank you to each of you that prayed for Moses last night. We know for certain that at least five countries were represented and we're guessing that's not the exhaustive list. All the Heartline peeps gathered at our house for a few hours to ask God for miracles for this boy we've all come to love. Tomorrow we will take him for a consultation at Handicap International. Our friends (fellow MN peeps) Al and Deb Ingersoll met us on Saturday and while we talked they mentioned that they could help set up a time for Moses to be seen by a therapist.
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The kids have presentations every Monday at school. They are learning to be comfortable with public speaking from a very young age. I couldn't go because of the labor/delivery but Jen went in my place and Troy and Jen took video for me. Today they needed to share about themselves. Isaac had notes upside down and out of order and he dropped them and generally acted as a "what not to do" lesson for the rest of the kids. Paige and Hope did pretty well. Noah ... Let us just say .... some are not so comfortable with this quite yet.
