Our team has been in Jacmel, Haiti, a beautiful resort town(by Haitian standards ;)), for two weeks now. It has been a cool time of unstructured outreach. We saw this as one of the last hurrahs for ministry, so we decided to get in deep with our friends here.
The living situation here is the worst one so far. Once again, we are staying in a place with no running water, no electricity (except when the city turns it on) and…its gross. Our water to clean ourselves with is littered with cockroaches and dirt. We have to go to the beach and buy a drink so that we can take a shower with running water in our bathing suits every three days! But, we are finding that making friends and being able to talk to them has been worth any living situation.
We have been splitting up into groups for the morning time. Half of us go to teach English at a café and the other half go to downtown Jacmel to talk and pray with people. In the evening, we do a community outreach– and last night was our big one– a bonfire on the beach.

Kids ready for the bonfire

Bonfire at the Beach

One of our English students is a 14 year old girl named Emilie. She is about 8 months pregnant. From Port-Au-Prince, she was moved into a house when her parents died in the earthquake, and her uncle raped her. She is now in Jacmel, living with a Canadian midwife who is taking good care of her. It has been incredibly difficult to be with her and watch her. She’s just a child herself about to have a child.
We have made some friends outside of the English class, as well. We have been proud of Alicia and Melina this week, especially, as they have taken some people under their wing. Alicia and the team met Dickens, a teenager whose parents died in the earthquake, one morning at the café we frequent. Since meeting him, she has helped find people to pay for art school for him and has mentored him as well. Melina, whose heart is in helping people create ways to provide for themselves, was able to teach Jean Mark basic business principles. Before we left, he was cleaning houses and earning money. The guy team members really invested into a moto-driver, Junior and a teacher, Miguel. Both of these guys are so nice. We learned a lot from them and two of them dedicated their lives to Jesus, and we were able to place them in a discipleship group, too!