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July 24, 2008 Bon swa from Haiti, I hope this finds it's readers well and blessed. A few folks have suggested that it's about time for an update and it probably is. There are so many things up in the air right now that I had hoped for a little more dust to settle so that I could paint a more accurate picture of how things are here. As to a Happy House, we found an almost real nice house to rent for another year while we try to start building our own. Almost, real nice. It's not finished yet. We are supposed to be out of the current house by Aug 15th. The workers on our house to be have not been showing up regularly and it's looking extremely doubtful that the house will be ready in time. This has added a fair bit of stress in our lives as things continue to wind down to the last minute and we are very uncertain of what will happen. The house is very impressive looking on the outside but it's mostly just a shell with a whole lot of work left on the inside. Please put this on the prayer list. Food and gas prices are going up again and people that were already suffering are being pushed to the brink. Don't know how long this will go before the population take to the streets again. We still do not have a prime minister since the last one resigned. We have our summer kids program going and had so many kids turning out that we had to divide into two groups. Last year was around 140 or so. This year over 200. We are also feeding them 3 times a week. With several folks sending in extra money last month, we were able to give out a lot of rice and beans to a lot of families and send some kids to the doctor. We still have a lot of Malaria here. We have been getting very little electricity over the last couple of weeks and the heat has been a devouring monster that never sleeps. I get so weary of being constantly basted in sweat and changing shirts several times a day. I preached in Grand Goave Sunday and by the time I was done, I looked like I had just come out of the belly of a whale. Completely drenched. You could hear the splat when kids hugged me. The adults settled for handshakes :0) I am sitting in the dark as I type this. Thankfully we did have a good rain just blast through so things will be a little cooler tonight even if we don't have electricity. We have a house full of kids from various places. They are all happy to be here even if we don't have electricity. They're happy to be eating 3 times a day and sleeping on beds. My hair is turning gray and Manno's is turning loose, but the kids are having a blast :0) I would be very amiss not to take advantage of these uncertain days to learn a few lessons. Many people in Haiti go through what we are going through now. The feeling of drifting and not having a home. Few people here know the meaning of "home". Kids are constantly shuffled around. For many folks, moving is a simple affair. I have seen kids that were going to live somewhere else, put all of their belongings into a plastic bag and they are done. They go to another place to live and they just need a little piece of floor. The moving takes as long as it takes to get from the old place to the new place. I can't even imagine having so few belongings that all could fit into one plastic bag. Most folks have no roots where they are. Life is constantly about survival. And what kind of "homes" are we talking about? Tin shacks in slums that aren't as big as an average bedroom. Many of them divided by cardboard in the middle so that both sides of the shack can be rented out. Mud huts that continually leak in the rain. That are constantly falling apart in chunks. Many areas in the cities that are so crowded they resemble refugee camps more than neighborhoods. We had 16 kids from Marchasse come in this summer. All of them were thrilled to have the luxury of cool water to drink. To see the electricity as rarely as we had it was still a thrill. All of this says nothing of the families that inhabit these miserable holes. There are so few families that are together here. Children are scattered in the wind like dandelions. It is at times absolutely overwhelming. Part of the draw of the Happy House, is that for many it is as close to "home" as they ever get. Food, cool water, love. There are so many kids connected to the Happy House as a source of life. Of course the real Happy House is a more spiritual thing. It is the way we feel when we are together even if it's not here in this stack of blocks. It is the joy we see on faces when we come into a neighborhood. It is the Lord's presence blessing us and making us feel like a family. Making us feel at home. Still, it's nice to have an actual house that people can come to. We hope to have a real center of ministry on our land someday. Gonna stop for now before my computer battery dies. Hopefully this letter will get out tomorrow if I kind find an Internet connection. Please don't think from this letter that we're are all discouraged here. I'm tired, hot, in the dark, and sweaty as I type this. I'm not writing from a happy moment. Where are we going to live? When am I coming to the States? Am I going to Honduras this year? Is Haiti going to explode again over the mounting prices of everything? Are the prices ever going to give us a break? Will we get any electricity tonight? Will my fan on the batteries make it through the night? All of these questions have the same answer. I don't know. Being tired as I am, I am VERY hesitant to try to say anything very profound lest it come out like babble. There is one little thing I want to try to say though. We are very, very blessed. I don't feel real blessed right now, but I am very blessed in the things that matter most. It's an old saying but it is often wise for us to count our blessings. Whatever you're going through right now, it could be much worse. You could be fighting you're battles while living in a shack in Cite Soleil. Add fighting neighbors on the other side of the cardboard in your shack. So, let's call it a night. From us here in Haiti, we always want to express our gratitude for the generous hearts of so many of you that pray for and support our work here and help turn sad lives into happy lives. Take care and Bon Dieu beni nou! Until we get Home, fre Ed