Waterfalls and Work

Dear Family and Friends,

Merry Christmas! I say that with a little shake of my head because it certainly doesn’t feel like Christmas down here. I’m wearing shorts and a T-shirt and sweating as I type this new blog entry. I can look out my window and see the palm trees sway. There are no Christmas advertisements, no last minute sales, no snow, no ice, and no large inflatable Christmas scenes on anybody’s lawn. However, the spirit of Christmas is here, and I just came back from a beautiful Christmas concert and plugged in my new Christmas tree. I can see the gifts just waiting there for Christmas Day. But more than that, the spirit of Christmas was fully alive at Renault today. The Wray’s home church blessed them with goodie bags for each child, 700+ today. They made some very poor children very happy. Even more, today was the first day that the rice and beans were served with meat sauce, courtesy of our own World Relief organization. Each little plate had a nice scoop of turkey meat placed on top. The children really enjoyed it, as protein is hard to come by in Haiti.

This week has been work, work, work. Last week, I mentioned that Rob Lehman was here as my terrific techie for Childcare. He is now the techie tyrant. Seriously, he barely let me eat during the day. (I hope Rob is reading this as all my slanderous words are directly for his benefit.) I barely have any pictures from the first part of the week because I was glued to my desk for days. I’m only kidding, of course! It was wonderful to have Rob here. He left on Thursday morning, and I celebrated by taking the day off and going to an amazing waterfall.

This waterfall, Saut Matherine, is a couple of hours away, and some of the team and I rode on the roof of the truck all the way there and back. The views were majestic. The waterfall itself was beautiful, but the water was COLD. We swam for a while, but the big thing to do at this particular waterfall was jump. I’ll admit I was peer pressured into jumping once. I was seriously scared. Leaping off large rock formations into an icy cold stream is not the most appealing thing to me, but I wanted to be able to say I had done it once. Of course, Justin Grube went all the way to the top, a 60-foot drop. Check out the pictures.

After the waterfall, we took a short tour (courtesy of Johannes, our resident historian) of an old French plantation. It was fascinating to look at the 200-year-old ruins, see the space where the huge waterwheels turned, and visualize the plantation at its full glory. After the ruins, we rushed home to get ready for the Christmas program at the missionary school. The children did a wonderful job! They recited poems, sang songs, and performed an amazing play, directed by our own Tess Gutwein. Not only did she directed the play, but she wrote the adaptation from a book called Jotham’s Journey AND pulled together the stage, set, and costumes. Tess is a very talented lady!

Friday, I tried to organize all the work that Rob had left me :) and went to Bible Club. Saturday was kind of a low-key day for me. I took a long walk, did devotions, and read in the afternoon. Then, I baby-sat for Joel and Brett so the Gutweins could compete in a volleyball tournament, which they won. Today, I went to Renault and then the Christmas concert. After that, I took in a little volleyball in Simon. I just finished Prince Caspian (thanks Aunt Kris!) over at the Gutwein’s place.

I want to thank all of you who have sent Christmas greetings and prayers. I decided on Saturday to stop being homesick...period. That’s a bold decision for me to make considering that Christmas is this week, but I know that God will give me His peace and comfort this holiday season away from my family. I will miss you all, of course, and be thinking about you, but I’m going to choose to be content with these circumstances. God is still God. He is good and faithful, and I trust Him to provide for my every need as He did by giving us the greatest Christmas gift of all...chocolate. Kidding! I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. Jesus, of course! May God bless each of you during this Christmas season. Much, much love to you all!

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In His service,
Abby