On to Port-au-Prince

It’s been amazing being here in Port-au-Prince, the heart of where the earthquake ripped through with its destructive powers. The sights, smells, and sounds are all eye-opening. With the rubble and garbage still everywhere after 4 months, some may wonder what it must’ve looked like the day the earthquake hit on that Tuesday afternoon in January.
We are staying in tents on grounds with facilities that YWAM is renting from an orphanage that is located here. There are 2 other DTS teams whom are on outreach as well that are here: one from Los Angeles and the other from Mazatlan, Mexico. We are blessed to have internet access, running water, cold drinking water, and a wonderful cook that prepares the meals.
Wednesday was our first day of ministry after arriving on Tuesday afternoon. We went to a tent city in Delmas that holds around 7,500 people, all of whom have lost their homes from the quake. We spent the day talking with people, hearing their stories and praying with them. It was a moving time for many of us.
On Thursday, all teams helped Peterson Georges (YWAM director in Port-au-Prince) and staff to clear and dedicate 12 acres of land that was given to YWAM. We spent the morning worshiping and interceding for this piece of property and then started clearing the brush with machetes.
Friday was our day off, but in the afternoon, a few of us helped some staff members load up 2 trucks with food and clothing to be taken to an orphanage and tent city in need. It was a sight to witness seeing the people of the tent city rush to the truck when we arrived. It was hard to keep an orderly line for the people to each grab a few items of clothing and pass out 1 item of food to each of the adults. When we did leave, everyone jumped onto the mound of clothes on the floor, grasping for anything they can get their hands on. They are so desperate for anything. Not a sock was left on the floor just after 30 seconds.
On Saturday, we went back to Delmas to help Red Cross clean the area, which they do every Saturday. It was amazing to witness the Haitian people taking initiative and helping to clean up too. They were even planting flowers and putting up decorative items to make the area more beautiful! Hope is rising!!
And Sunday, we went to a church service in City Solei. Along with worship and the preaching by Peterson Georges, each DTS team did a short drama/skit and 1 testimony.

Week 2 in Guisha

The majority of this week was spent in intercession for Haiti. We had more free time than expected because there wasn’t much that we could all do on the school, so we took the opportunity to go on many prayer walks. We also just spent time hanging out with the people in the community, either that be playing soccer, sitting and chatting, playing games, etc.
Our biggest day of physical labor was on Thursday when we could pour concrete on the roof. In the morning, we all worked together to place steel ties on all the rods before we could pour the cement. Then, the rest of the day, we helped carry cement upon the roof. Many of us had a lot of fun carrying water from the canals to the big barrels at the work site to mix the cement. It was a long, hard day of work. Lionel Town as a great preparation for the work we did here.
At night during our debriefing sessions, many of the community kids would come and join us. They would sit with us in our circle as we discussed our high and low points of the day.
We had an incredible church day on Sunday. We left around 7:30am to go to another of the mission’s Baptist churches. The church we went to is actually the largest Baptist church here in Haiti. Sunday morning service started at 8:00am and finished just before 12pm. It was an amazing service - the worship, the preaching (by Pastor Almo), everything. We had an delicious lunch at the vice president’s (of the church) house. They truly served us their best: roasted goat, plantin, salad, cabbage with carrot, fruit, rice, beef stew, fries, and even cake.
Before we had to go to the youth service that afternoon at 2:00pm, we went to an agriculture garden “show”. It was a garden that had beautiful displays of trees and flowers, as well as booths that were selling various items.
The youth service was also a success. Dwain played the role of M.C. for the afternoon. We sang with them and Marvin, Michael, and Brennan shared their testimonies.
We arrived home at about 6:45pm, had a quick bite to eat for dinner, and continued on to the evening church service right across the street. It was a “thanksgiving” service for us. We were all very touched and blessed for the blessings they poured over us that night. It was touching to witness how, as a team, we encouraged this community. We felt it last night.

Week 1 complete

It has been 1 week since arriving here in Haiti. From Monday through Friday, we have been working on building a school. Unfortunately, there hasn’t really been too much for us to do as a corporate group. Most of our time has been spent playing with the children in the afternoon and during the break time at school. We’ve come up with a favorite game that is played everyday at the school. I call it, “Run and Catch”. It’s very similar to sharks and minnows. The kids would line up on one side and 4-5 of us students would be in the middle. After the count of 3, all the kids would run across to the other side, trying to avoid being caught by one of us. Since the kids didn’t get the concept of being tagged and sent to “jail”, we would literally have to capture them and carry them over to the out of bounds area. The kids loved the game and it gave us a good workout.
In the afternoons, we played a lot of soccer and sat in small groups talking with the community kids. A few of them spoke a little English and would teach us Creole. We shared stories, listened to music, and just chatted about anything and everything, from what we could understand because of the language barrier.
The biggest hit of this week has been the team’s health. Lesley became very sick on Wednesday and had to rest in bed all day. Chantel also got some sort of stomach virus and wasn’t able to keep any food down for a couple days. A few others experienced episodes of nausea, probably due to the new foods we are experiencing. Over all though, we are pushing through. God is gracious and is granting us with the strength we need to keep going.

Destination: Haiti

Our initial traveling to Haiti began with the 2-3 hour bus ride from Riversdale to Kingston. When we unloaded all our gear, a few troubles began. Initially, our plane ticket says that each person can have 2 pieces of luggage, weighing up to 70 pounds each. When we weighed a few of the relief bags, they were over that weight, so we strategically evened out the weight so none of them were over the limit. When we finally figured that out, we got in line to each check in our 2 baggage. Unfortunately, the airport personnel told us that the 2 baggage together must total 70 pounds, despite what the ticket says. This was a problem because none of us could meet that requirement. We told them our situation and what we were doing and prayed for favor, but they couldn’t waiver that much weight on the flight. They did however allow us to have an excess 10lbs for each pair of luggage. Again, we stepped out of line and worked on the baggage weight. We paired up lighter baggage with heavier ones and took out most of the rice we were taking. After it was all through, we had to leave 2 large bags of relief food and clothes.
The first flight, leaving at 5:33pm was to Panama City and only totaled 1 hour 50 minutes. It was fun since all 12 of us got to sit together and we received dinner on the plane. We caught our next flight to Santo Domingo soon after and arrived at that airport around 12am. By the time we got through customs and onto the YWAM base in Santo Domingo, it was about 2am. All of us were exhausted and found a corner of the room to sleep until we had leave for Haiti in 2-3 hours. Bright and early, we helped load the bus when it arrived after 5am with our luggage and water. We set off at 6am heading towards Port-au-Prince.
At the border into Haiti, we had to get off and confirm our faces with our passports to the security personnel. Initially, they were asking for $20 each for visas to enter into Haiti. We were able to get the price down to $100 total, which was still a lot considering that we aren’t even supposed to need visas to enter into Haiti.
We arrived at Port-au-Prince around 12:30pm to drop off Danine, a staff member from the D.R. base, the water, and our relief supplies. We had to switch buses to continue onward to La Craze. We went from a large charter bus to a 12 passenger van, in which we had to squeeze 14 people with all our luggage and loads of bottled water. It was a long 4-5 hours to La Craze. Thankfully, we stopped once to stretch our legs and grab some juice. We shouted “Hallelujah” when we arrived at the church at 6pm. The other DTS team from Stones Hope were already there and they helped us unload and gave us a tour - with flashlights in the dark. The church’s electricity was not working so we had to grab our flash lights and eat dinner by candlelight.
After dinner, we all took showers, which was greatly needed after 2 days of traveling. We went to bed early for a hard days work up ahead.

Jehovah Jirah - Our Provider!

Using YWAM Montego Bay staff and students, God took care of $7400 to cover 4 students and 1 DTS staff member who were still in need of money to go on outreach! Isn't He amazing! The 12 of us are leaving today for St. Catherine in Jamaica and fly to Haiti on Saturday for 5 weeks!

Mission's Fair

Friday, April 9th, the base put on a Mission's Fair. We represented 5 nations: The Gambia (done by us), Guyana, China, India, and Belize. At each booth, we had facts, food, and music from the country.

The beautiful sign we created as a backdrop.

En route to...Haiti?

Well... my DTS team is no longer going to the Gambia. God has closed that door and has opened another one. We will now be heading to Haiti come Saturday the 17th. I'm excited. God has given me personal peace about this redirection. I'm learning that when you're doing mission's work, you must be flexible. You never know what God is going to do. But his plan is always right and perfect.

And I know all our preparation and prayer over the Gambia was not in vain. God can do miracles and great things through intercession. I now have a heart for that nation and know more about. And who knows, maybe God will send me there in the near future. I do have a 5-year visa for The Gambia. :)

Come Monday the 12th, we will be heading to St. Catherine in Jamaica for a local outreach and will continue on to Kingston where we will depart for Haiti. Our flight route is a little odd, but it was a good price. We will fly from Kingston, Jamaica to Panama to the Dominican Republic and then drive into Haiti. I'm not totally sure what we will be doing or where we will be staying, but I think we will be doing a lot of earthquake relief type work. I'm excited!

Please pray for our team as we are encountering this sudden change of plans. Pray that God will provide the rest of the finances we need. A couple of the students, including myself, and staff are still in need of money. Moreover, pray for physical protection. The health status isn't too good in Haiti. There has been another outbreak of cholera recently. Pray that the Lord would protect our physical health.

Local Outreach - Lionel Town

For our local outreach in Jamaica, we spent 4 days in Lionel Town doing construction work for the New Testament Church. We dug a small pool for the church to be able to perform baptisms and also moved loads of stones on the land surrounding the church. I think we all felt like are arms were ripped by the end of the week with all the shoveling we did.

In general, Lionel Town is a very poor community. The land is dry, representing the atmosphere of the majority of the people here. When we went on a prayer walk, I sensed a “deadness” over the town. Many people wouldn’t wave or say ‘hello’ back to me when I greeted them.


The 14 of us stayed in a small house at the end of a dirt road. We had 2 beds between the 8 girls and a small bathroom. It was my first experience with the “bucket shower” bathing method. The cool water felt so good after a hard day’s work.

Here's a glimpse of the church that we were working on. We dug out this hole because they wanted a pool to perform baptisms.

Lots and lots of shoveling dirt!!

I didn't actually kiss the frog..but came close. He's my prince charming. What was really funny was how everyone ran away from me when I picked it up. They screamed as if I was holding a crocodile or something...guys included. I don't think Jamaicans like amphibians too much.

We put bandanas over our faces because of all the dust that would pick up from the shoveling.

Spiritual Warfare Week

Another incredible week! We had pastors Anthony and Cheryl Nelson come to speak on spiritual warfare and spiritual gifts. It was powerful!! Spiritual warfare is a complex topic but they did a wonderful job in their teachings. They are orginally Jamaican but the Lord led them to Canada to establish Faith Five Ministries, which they've been leading. I thoroughly enjoyed this week and learned so much. I know I keep saying that but it's true. :) I included the link to the song that we listened to all week. It has become one of my favorite songs now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPKvKwIZUCM

Bible Guinius

What a week! These past 5 day, we had the privilege of having Pastor Wayne Palmer speak to us on Evangelism and the History of the Gospel. This man is incredible! Any question you ask him about the bible, he knows, plus he knows a scripture reference to back it up. He's read the bible over 50 times, oversees 6 different churches, pioeering another one, runs a farm, and has a family! He is a serious man of God. He shared stories of how God saved him from death countless times: struck by lightening twice, stabbed in the chest 9 times, multiple drownings, etc. I was so inspired by his story.

I also never realized how interested I am in the history of the bible. It's amazing when you really look through the pages. (Big surprise eh?) I decided to start back at the beginning in Genesis and reread the stories. I'm finding new revelation and noticing little details that I've never read before!

A Week in Manchester

We all loaded into a bus to head to Manchester, Jamaica for this past week. It's about 3 (long) hours away. I say long because it was bumpy roads and curvy almost the whole time. A bunch of u got car sick, but at least no one threw up (thank goodness!!) We stayed at another YWAM base called Stone's Hope. It really was beautiful here. It's out in the country with lots of farm land. It was a lot more quite and peaceful verses Montego Bay. The temperature was quite a bit cooler too. It was a nice change.

We went exploring in the run-down "great house" on the base. The property at Stone's Hope used to be a coffee plantation. This was the "master's tub". The buiding we were in was about 300 years old.

Having some fun doing photo shoots. :) We found outside showers. We named the cow Josh because one of the girls thought our Josh (DTS student) was having fun making cow noises in the morning, before she realized that there was actually a cow on the base. LOL. This is Paula. She's 21 like myself and is actually on staff at this base. I got really close to her. She did her DTS a year ago in Kona, Hawaii. This base also holds a school for Jamaican kids. Many of the staff are also teachers.

On one of the days, we split into groups and had a contest. In 10 minutes, we had to blow up a big balloon and try to draw the world on it and name a many countries as we could. Our group probably listed the most countries, but I have to say, we didn't have the prettiest globe. On our last day there, Dave Harper (who was our speaker for the week) led a sexual purity ceremony. We each made covenant and got a bracelet as a symbol of the promise we were making.

Visit to Herbert Morrison High School

Today for evangelism, we went to Herbert Morrison High School to talk with the students involved in ISCF - Inter School Christian Fellowship. It's like the Christian Club on the campus.

We started off when some prayer, and then did some worship songs.

Beth and Michel shared some scipture.

Teaching the "Grain of Mustard" song. I did a short devotional on second chances.

Brennan shared his testimony.

Group shot.

Another group photo shoot :)

Theox, Charlotte, Bethany, Chrystal, Sashuana, Megan, and Josh (Brennan and Michael are missing)

We were all trying to jump at the same time, but it didn't quite work. :) Crystal is so photogenic. I just had to get a picture of Josh with his nice shirt and tie, and then shorts and sneakers. He actually went to church that way. It was priceless.