Tropical energy fills the air around here. Familiar, yet tinged with the unknown.
We're making lists, which lengthen and shorten as things come to mind and accomplished items are struck through.
There are the unmistakable sounds of preparation:
bringing suitcases out of storage;
rustling through files to find the illusive paperwork from years past;
checking the clothes in the "Haiti" crate;
appointments being made at the appropriate medical and dental offices;
completing a myriad of forms for Global Partners, the mission arm of The Wesleyan Church;
checking and double checking those lists....
The time is drawing nigh - we'll be leaving for Haiti the week of May 15 - in fact, if all goes well, three weeks from today!
Now that the term at Clemson is drawing to a close, Larry can turn his provisional planning thoughts to a group of nursing students who will be in his statistics class at the Wesleyan University of Haiti, College of Nursing Sciences. In fact, it is the two-years-older class of the students we welcomed on the opening day of the God-ordained nursing school. In a reunion of sorts, we will be putting names and faces together again, pulling up those memories that laced our last sojourn in Anse a Galet, LaGonave.
In addition to relating to the nursing students somehow (not sure of the assignment yet), I will be filling the time (I hope) with work on a writing project - documenting the history of the mission presence of The Wesleyan Church in Haiti . Hopefully the effort will include travel to the other mission stations in the country to bring a real-time spark to the history.
Both of us have been shaking the cobwebs off our Haitian creole, too. And that is a biggie! I have been working through the components on the HaitiHub language site. We have been brushing up on reading skills - pictured is a great book an independent missionary artist friend wrote, compiling pictures taken on LaGonave and words and Bible verses in Haitian creole and in English - a great review.
Reactivating this blog has been toward the top of the list. The plan is to keep it up to date with the experiences and activities and challenges and successes we experience for the six weeks or so we will be in Haiti. So, we hope you will keep up with us through it.
We also covet your prayers. If you would like to be on our prayer team, please let me know via phone (654-0771) or email (lmgrimes@bellsouth.net). I will need your email address and will send notices and needs as they arise. In a place as spiritually dark as Haiti, we sure appreciate the prayer coverage this team faithfully gives us.
OK - just marked "crank up the blog" off the top of the list.
Now, moving on.....
