Heat Paint Love- Haiti 2012 (thursday)

Lacey feels good today and is still fulfilling her prophecy of needing to go to the bathroom every 10 minutes, so she will be staying at the mission today.

Found out the rioting has stopped (PRAISES!) and we will be going with River City from Jacksonville Fl to paint a local's house, and pick up trash.  (Oh boy).  Hallie is happy I will be going with them, and I'm glad too, I haven't got to spend much time with her, though, she has bonded with the kids from the other team and  enjoys spending time with them.  Fun stuff.

After breakfast I am walking back to the room to collect my stuff to go out, and I run into Jeremy Schuerke. This means nothing to most of you, but WOW, what a coincidence.  It's because of  Jeremy I even know about MOH.  He helps with an organization LESPWA MEANS HOPE, and they came to Norman when Kip was in college and spoke at Journey church about MOH.  They go all over the country raising awareness about MOH and help bring the teams to Haiti to work.  I mean Mission.  :)  I told him I was Kip's mom (the LESPWA team and Kip and her roommates bonded big time with Jeremy and his friends and Thundered up at a game, and played many hours of cards and had fun with them).  He was excited once he figured out who I was, and asked about Kip.  Knew she was on her big mission trip, and wanted to know how she was doing.  HOME STRETCH Baby.  She will be home in 38 days.  I cannot wait.

Jumped on the bus with all my new friends, and headed to the village.  Bus broke down, and our driver (MockAndre) jumped up, pulled the panel from the middle of the walkway, scooted under the bus and fixed us right up.  Have I told you how amazing our drivers were?  Traffic is CRAZY in Haiti.  No stop signs, no speed limits, no lanes to follow, just honking and passing, and more honking, and speeding and honking and honking.  (When we got home and were driving to Lacey's house, Austin honked and passed a lady for good measure.  I'm pretty sure she messed her pants.  We just aren't used to it here.  There, it is an all day everyday part of life.  Honking... who knew?)

Hi Ho Hi Ho it's off to missions we go....

The family sat and watched.  NO pressure.

We painted a house and picked up trash.  It was Extreme Home Makeover- Haiti.  It was kind of weird, working, while the family sit and watched us.  This is a NICE house by Haitian standards, and the children here are dressed nicely.  They were growing elephant ears by the house, and I'm afraid many of them got doused with paint, thanks to the exuberance of our team.  This is the first diaper I have seen on a child in Haiti, this morning.  It was a cloth diaper, but still a diaper.

River City gets busy painting.

How to paint a house in under an hour and a half.  

Hallie helping with the painting

We don't mess around.  

Alex Willis (in gray shirt) is the Youth pastor of River City.  What a guy.

Our new friend Amy, attracted the kids about like Kellie did.  They were kindred spirits in that department.

When we were finished we circled up and prayed peace, prosperity and protection over their house.

Headed back to the mission and had lunch.  My kankles were full blown, so I opted to stay in and rest with Lacey for the afternoon. River City was still recuperating from sickness, so Alex pulled their team out of the afternoon ministry, so Hal accompanied Austin and Kellie to the village.  It was just them and their intern and translator, so the translator took them to his village and showed them his house.  They met the man in the picture below and he spoke excellent English, had lived in Florida for a time, and had gotten an online degree through University of Pennsylvania.  He had a/c, tv and my team loved him.  

Yes, there are prosperous people in Haiti.  

Lacey was feeling SOO much better, and I was so glad.  She was back to her old self, cracking me up every second, and I was laughing my booty off at her.  She was sad she had missed two full days of the mission trip and I told her..."Hey, not everyone can say they went to Haiti and got an IV".  

We played cards (big shocker there) and had team devotion on the roof of our building (the big hangout place) and we took pictures with some of our fellow Thunder fans there from Journey church in Norman.  And this is how small a world it is.  Kelcie Wicks, one of the girls from Journey, is Hallie's favorite teacher in the world (Stacie Weichbrodt) little sister.  And Hallie was like,  "Do you have a sister that's a teacher?  You look just like her" ...  crack us up.   And of course SeanKyle Bob had his Thunder on too.  (Scott, the PA from Norman that took care of Lacey).  We got some incredible shots of them THUNDERED up in Haiti, and I really thought we should send those in to Channel 4.  Showing Thunder Pride all over the World.  :)

Not much excitement today, but sometimes less is more.  God is good here in Haiti, God is Good.

Playing cards with B'Daar from River City.  He may just go down in history as the worlds worst card player. 

Thunder UP in Haiti.  Loved it.