A Lot of Bagay

Looking through our pictures of the last few months...wow!  Lots of "things" (bagay in Creole...I love that word...it's so useful and fun to say :) ) have been going on.  Some big, some small....here's a sampling.....

Eric is a Paramedic in Med School who has been our friend for a long time.  He flew a week with Haiti Air Ambulance and wanted to come see us and the Hospital.  It was really fun to spend time with him, although we would have liked to have the rest of his family come with him!  It was really refreshing to have a friend come to visit...and Orrin still talks about him, probably because he played blocks with him!  

Roselene is a young lady who we met at Lifeline on our first ever Haiti trip.  We've seen her again when we go to Dumay in the winters and we asked her if she would like to come up for two weeks and stay with us.  She was a great help with the kids, and it was like a reverse-immersion :) trying to speak Creole as much as we could.  She can speak English some too, so we got along pretty well in our communication :)  We had some fun times of going to a restaurant, going to the beach, making and playing a life-size Dutch Blitz game.  While I was giving her a tour of the hospital, she saw our pharmacist, Sadrack, and they knew each other!  They are from the same church near Port!  That was really neat, especially since Sadrack and his wife and baby girl are our neighbors!  So she went over to visit them sometimes, and we had them for supper one evening and had a really nice time.  She also sang in church on Sunday with Sadrack's wife.

Cassia is a big 6 month old now!  She is crawling like a pro, and loves to pull herself up and stand.  I can't leave her alone...not that she'd want me to anyway lol :-P  This is how we found her one morning in her pack n play.  It was time for the mattress to be put down!!

Here are some of her 6 month pictures.

Pudgie Pie Night!  This is a pretty normal evening when work teams come.  We bring some goodies to Lee and Desma's house and eat and cook campfire (pudgie) pies, all sort of creatively....cream cheese, chocolate chips, nutella, cheese, pepperoni, pie filling, hot sauce...and yes, some people do put that all together :)

Beth and Bekah moved home this summer.  Beth is going to be working at a school and Bekah's getting married this weekend!  Before they left, us ladies went into Cayes together and ate at the Nami, a Chinese restaurant.  We're going to miss these girls!!

We got a cat!  Chase is Creole for Hunter, and so we hope he will live up to his name :)  David had asked a guy at work if he had any cats, but wasn't really asking for one right away.  We hadn't exactly thoroughly discussed it, so when a cat in a sack showed up at my door that afternoon, I was slightly surprised and, umm, not super thrilled....  But once it finally came out of its hiding place the next day and used the "litter box" David set up, things got a little better.  Now it's pretty sure it owns the place, and the kids like it a lot (unless it finishes Orrin's plate when he leaves the table.....)

We have been advertising for a few positions here at the Hospital for a while now, and are still needing them filled.  The current Patient Care Manager is finishing up his term and their family plans to be moving home in a little over a month.  This means his duties will be shifted to others, in addition to their own current duties.  Please pray for us here so we can have wisdom on how to fill these responsibilities in the interim.  Please pass this on to others you know who fit the description, and/or prayerfully consider if you would be a fit for the position.  Please pray that the Lord will call those to His work, and that those called will have grace to answer, Yes, Lord!

Occasionally we go up to the hospital to sing in the evening.  This night some of us brought instruments and we played and sang.  In our book was a song that we had just learned with our singing group in English and Creole.  Some of the ladies in our singing group were up at the hospital visiting a patient that night.  When they heard us start the song, their eyes lit up and they hurried over to sing with us.  It was one of my high points of living here.  It was such a special moment to sing together that night in a language that could be understood by the patients!

Father, I adore You,

And I lay my life before You,

How I love You!

Jezi m adore Ou,

Mwen ba Ou tout lavi mwen,

Mwen renmen Ou!

We went to Dan's Creek to relax and swim one day.  Orrin tried the sneak attack with the water gun :)

Orrin loves ambulances...wonder where he got that :)  He was pretty sure he needed a picture with the "ambulance" (Red Cross vehicle).  He also wanted to come to work with me one day.  I told him he couldn't now, but maybe someday when he's older, we can work on an ambulance together.  So now he keeps talking about going to work on an ambulance, and wearing his ambulance shirt :)

Orrin and Cassia playing at home

While I was giving Roselene a tour of the hospital, Orrin was busy taking 13,000 pictures with my phone.  Here's a sample of Orrin's tour of the hospital :)

Cassia got her shots at Community Health one day.  She was roaring mad for a day and a half, and had a fever and big knot on her leg.  Dumb ol' tetanus shot, anyway.

Cassia started big kid food at 6 months.  This is what she thinks of carrots :)  Avocados are way higher on her list :)

Speaking of avocados....Orrin likes them too!  The other day at lunch, he ate lettuce salad, mango and plain chunks of avocado before his french fries.  What other 2 year old kid does this??? 

The other morning in surgery, I was walking towards the door when it opened and in came this handsome guy.  I did a double-take for a minute.  What white doc did we have coming back into surgery?  We didn't have a team here.  Oh, it's David!  He had to check on some water pipes to figure out a hookup for a solar hot water heater (pictured below) for the surgery scrub sinks.  He had made the solar heater on furlough this spring, and it just came on the container a few weeks ago.  When he and the guys were working on hooking it up, they were pretty impressed with how hot it got the water on the trial run.  They're pretty excited to learn how to make them!

While Roselene was here, Orrin slept on the floor in our room.  It seemed to help his night wakings, and when she left, he seemed fine to go back to his bed.  He's going to sleep by himself and sleeps (most) of the night :)  He's even taken to reading himself to sleep for a nap.  After all that work and fighting...all we had to do was give up and he improved.  We'll see how it lasts....

Orrin and Cassia usually go to Hartzlers when I go to surgery.  Orrin has wild times with the kids, and needs to learn how to share better :-P  Here they are playing sled dogs.  We're gonna miss these guys when they move home in a month! :(

Orrin being a stud one morning before church.  So funny!

David's latest and greatest project around the hospital is the next phase of the clinic/ER project.  One weekend there was a lot of demolition going on, and now the nurses station is moved and construction has started on the new walls!  We'll keep you updated on progress as it continues!