Haiti Trip, June 2011 - Day 4

Bonswa…

Today I made it out to Jeremie is a quick 30 – 45 minute flight from Port-au-Prince.  In Jeremie we are building a university, which will include a seminary for training pastors and a village nearby in the area of Lundy.  The Lundy village has a church, an orphanage with 138 children, a medical clinic, and a school.  Long Hollow Baptist Church in the Nashville, TN area has partnered with us by adopting this site.  We will soon be adding 5 more classrooms, a cafeteria, and 2 more orphan homes to the site.  Below is an overall view of the facility from up at the boy’s orphan homes.

One of the projects that I was inspecting was a retaining wall.  The boys’ orphan homes (three buildings on the top of the picture) were built before we started applying more rigorous construction methodologies.  The hillside is fairly steep and thanks to a gracious gift from the Rotary International group in the Dominican Republic we have been able to put a retaining wall in to protect the hillside.  Without this in place we have not been able to occupy these homes.  We have some final details to finish on the wall, a little bit more removal of the hill behind the homes, and some repairs to do from a mudslide to complete and we can then start moving the boys into their new homes.  Below is a picture of the retaining wall.

 

The other project that I checked out was the chapel that we are building on the university property in Jeremie.  This is about a 12 acre area where we will be building a complete university (classrooms, dormitory, administration building, cafeteria/fellowship hall, and chapel).  I am reworking our designs so that some of the buildings can have a second story added in the future when enough funds come in.  We are in the process putting together the funding for this project.  Our desire is to have departments such as a seminary, business management, construction management, and language when we get fully ramped up.  We hope to have enough in place to start teaching the seminary classes this September.

Below is the latest picture of the chapel.  Dony hopes to start having church services there in 2 to 3 weeks and expects to start off with 100 to 200 participants.  It was exciting to walk through the chapel since this is the first larger building that I have designed for down here.  The guys have done a great job with it.

The final activity today was to drive out to BonBon (about 5 miles further out) where we are planning to do a church plant.  BonBon is considered a remote place by the Haitians.  It is pretty far from any larger cities.  Below is a picture of a typical home in this area.  There is a river that divides the area, which floods on a regular basis.  We will be partnering with a Baptist church on one side of the river where they will be building a small church to replace a small, forty year old preaching point that they have.  We will building a larger church, a school, and a micro-business on the other side of the river where there is more people.  This way when the river floods the people on both sides of the river will still have a place to worship and fellowship.

 

Well it is time to sign off for today.  I can definitely tell that I am at the halfway point in the trip.  The body is getting tired.  Tomorrow I fly back to Port-au-Prince and hitch a ride with Pastor Louis to head to Les Cayes where I have 3 sites/projects to visit.  Thanks for your prayers.