Surrounded by Beauty

We were so excited to welcome a small team of returning friends from Bless Back Worldwide this afternoon! We look forward to a great week with them!

Thanks to generous donors, we have not only been distributing food, but also giving out gifts to many children living in orphanages these past couple of weeks. Items like shampoo, toothpaste, and underwear really mean a lot when you don't always have them! No worries - there were toys included, too.

Can you imagine? This March is the mission's 20 year anniversary being here in Haiti!!! And I still feel like we're such newbies? Yikes! Lex and I have been busy planning the mission's 20th year celebration. Pastor Edon asked us to celebrate at 5, 10, and 15 years, but we didn't. This year we are rarin' to go!

Today we met with the Thozin church to toss around some idea and they are all really excited! We plan to combine the celebration with our women's conference (Thursday and Friday). We are planning fun activities to draw out those in our community to join us - long distance bicycle and running races, loud music, backyard carnival activities (like ring toss, tug o war, balloons, sack race, 3 legged race, egg race...), face painting, and snacks. We hope to hear from many whose lives have been greatly impacted by the mission, too.

We had a wonderful service in Thozin this morning, as well. Remember you can see our Facebook Live video even after the fact.

Our dentists had their hands full as a bus of students from Leogane (Mission E4) came to have their teeth checked.

Nurse Sara does some lab work for a patient.

Nurse Baby records and gathers medicines the doctor prescribed for this patient.

Dr. Evens gets some medical history from a MOHI student.

Speaking of students - they worked hard all week. Soooo glad to be back in school!

In addition to education, the students eat a hot, nutritious meal each day. Here's Madame Tenord tending to a pot of rice and beans.

Fresh veggies are purchased at the open market each week for the school.

The staff help the preschoolers to wash their hands before they eat.

I love seeing so many smiles around the campus!

After service on Sundays, you're sure to find what Jephte calls our "photo studios" occupied by young people and families making memories.

I was reading this week about beauty and how amazingly complex, and beautiful God's creation is. It really struck me how what we choose to focus on has an incredible impact on our day to day lives. When we look at the beauty we see light all around us. When we choose to focus on unfulfilled desires, disappointments, the ugliness that can be seen around us (such as poverty, sickness, crime...politics?) it's as if darkness overwhelms our thinking - hope drains away. This week I chose to pay extra close attention to the beauty around me. It was a very good week!

(The above scenes are from on of my morning walks this past week. Quite lovely!)

Saturday has been appointed our family day - as in me and Lex. We like to find things to do together, when possible. This week we did go for a walk and gave some gifts out. At home, though, Lex ended up starting a project with the guys (like building a stone wall and running a hose) while I worked on some other things. I do love seeing him get his hands dirty sometimes, though.

I hope you all have a great week. I'm going to head out onto the porch here at the missionary compound to hang out with Lisa, Kaylah, Merideth, and Kim. We'll be enjoying dinner that Beatrice and Yveline prepared. Can you guess what it will be???