Wed. Morning

Today is a special day, 42 years ago Jane & I along with many friends & family gathered together in Waterford Baptist Church, a converted two room rural school house. On that day we exchanged our wedding vows and began a life long journey of learning to love & live with each other. As in any marriage we have had our bumps in the road along the way. From valleys to mountain tops and back to valleys God has seen us through. He has blessed us with children, grandchildren and great grandchildren beyond our dreams. He has carried us through times that were near impossible to go on. Without “Him”, today’s story would have been very different.

Last night I spoke with Gretchen our oldest daughter. She was on stand-by where she is a volunteer firefighter/EMT. She said that Erie, PA was in the grip of a massive power outage affecting some 20,000 customers. It is attributed to 92 degree temperatures, high humidity, and high power demand. While taking the ambulance into the dark city streets en-route to the hospital, Gretchen said there were many people out and about dealing with the oppressive heat. She laughed; “Just a typical evening in Haiti” [with no power], even the temperature & humidity was the same Erie vs. Cap-Haitian. I did tell her that our little Honda had our fan running and a couple of light bulbs on. She said that the fire house was on a back-up generator so we were both fairing quite well.

I’ve been riding my motorcycle more to get my cycle skills back up after a 20 year hiatus. It is scary as right-of-way is determined by vehicle size so the cycles are at the bottom of the “pecking order”. For safety & a promise to my wife I keep my “bike driving” to out of the city; so far the miles/kilometers per gallon have been fantastic!

This year I am serving on the English Bible Fellowship committee. We each take a month of leading the service and jointly arrange for guest speakers each week for the 3:30 PM Sunday afternoon service. I have volunteered for September, it stretches me but each week the message has been very challenging.

Dailey, Jane has been very busy with documenting and reporting the construction receipts of a school under construction funded by Empower Global & Joy and Hope of Haiti. She has been awaiting the start of Grace/Zion school where she will teach in October.

Along with my usual Tuesday and Thursday days at the airport with MFI, I have been trying to connect with Maurice at Global Empower to help finish welding some roof trusses and waiting for parts to arrive for Lifewater drill rig repairs.

Sammy is already into the Terrible Two’s even though he won’t be two until January he keeps us running. Now that he is walking and is constantly into everything. Jane’s pantry items and most of my tools are kept on shelves at his eye level and within reach. The words of the day are always, “Sammy NO”!!!!!! We always look forward to bed time for a little reprieve. His favorite thing is to press the spigot on the water cooler often overflowing the drain pan onto the floor. We do laugh at him repeating our words; we say that he speaks “Crenglish” as we try to use both languages while communicating with him.