If you cannot view the photos or if the formatting is weird, click on www.haitiantrainin.com to view this message on the web.  Afterward, click on the message title.
Post-Earthquake Update and Missionary Kids Interview
June 2010
Dear...

Hi all,
Depending on your mail server, our newsletter "God's Faithfulness is Our Insurance" may have had atrocious formatting (like in Yahoo, it was awful).  It looked great in the preview.
Anyhow, if the formatting is really bad or if your mail server blocks third-party images so that you can't see the photos, you can always click on the "view archive" link and select the most recent title and everything should look fantastic.
For your convenience, here is the direct link to today's...

God's Faithfulness is Our Insurance
April 2010
Dear Friends and Ministry Partners,
This Monday, April 12, will mark three months since the severe earthquake hit Haiti.  The entire country is still feeling the aftershocks of this major catastrophe--literally, there have been over 65 aftershocks, and figuratively, every person, every family and every institution continues to be affected.  I heard one of my students speaking the other day about the uncertainties in Haiti, one being that very few people have insurance.
Health insurance is...

 
One month after the earthquake
Friday, February 12, 2010
 
Today is the one-month anniversary of Haiti's devasting 7.0 earthquake centered outside of Port au Prince.  The lives of everyone in Haiti have been forever changed by this catastrophe.  Everyone knows someone who died or was severely injured in the quake.  Those injured are gradually recovering, but many are still in the hospital.  The uncertainty in the Cayes area following the quake has largely subsided, now with the fuel supply restored, although food...

Haiti Earthquake Update
Dear Praying Friends,
We want to thank you for all of the prayers, phone calls, and emails you have sent our way.  We love you guys more than we can express, and we definitely  feel cared for. The last week has been extremely unpredictable.  Early on, we've had times of boredom just waiting and waiting for opportunities to help, and then at other times there has been such a flurry of activity that we felt overwhelmed.  Several times the...

We're Safe
To our dear, praying friends,
As you are likely aware, just 24 hours ago Haiti suffered a 7.0 earthquake that hit near Port au Prince.  We wanted to let you know that our family and house are fine, as well as our immediate area and missionary associates.  We are about 100 miles from the epicenter.  We felt the initial quake quite clearly, just before 5:00 pm Tuesday, and since then we have felt several aftershocks.  Here in...

Joyeux Noël
December 2009
Dear Friends and Ministry Partners,
Christmas season is upon us here in Haiti; however, the only "white Christmas" we get here is from all the limestone dust!  Heather has often said that Jesus could have been born in Haiti because there are so many cultural similarities between 1st century Israel and 21st century Haiti--donkeys and sheep are everywhere and every small town has a carpenter.  In the countryside we see stables and mangers.  And the only commercialization we've seen...

Sep/Oct 2009
Three Schools, One Family
Dear Friends and Ministry Partners,
The fall rainy season has begun here in Haiti and with it, much welcomed cooler weather.  Unfortunately, the "cold" season is also here as evidenced by the four kids I can hear coughing as I write this letter.  After an easy-paced summer, our family is in high gear with everybody either in school or teaching school.
Haitian Kindergarten
Joey got a jump start and finished his homeschooled kindergarten (in English) with Heather in June. ...

August 2009
Mountains of Blessings
Dear Friends and Ministry Partners,
One of our favorite Haitian proverbs (and there are many) goes like this: "Piti piti zwazo fe nich li," which means,"Little by little a bird builds its nest."  This little reminder has been an encouragement to us many times during our process of slowly building our nest of Haitian Creole, or our nest of getting certain government documents, retrieving our SUV from customs, and learning how to live in this new culture.  I think...

July 2009
Settling In and Moving Forward
Dear Friends and Ministry Partners,
To say that life has been busy would be an understatement, but it does give a good explanation for why we haven't sent out an email newsletter for three months.  Here's what we've been up to...
We received the remainder of our personal items in early June, most of which we had packed in August 2007.  It was like being in a time warp to suddenly have all this stuff that reminds...

Haiti is Our New Home (Annual Newsletter)
updated from original publication in March 2009
Fostering healthy, reproducing churches by training Haitian leaders fueled by the Gospel.
Dear Friends and Ministry Partners,
We arrived in Haiti on January 14 with a temperature difference of 90 degrees within 8 hours, as we flew from Chicago to Port au Prince. Throughout 2008 we were studying French in Quebec. Heather and I completed the advanced course in December and left Quebec the same way we entered it, in a massive...

Five Weeks of Smooth Transition
Dear Friends and Ministry Partners,
We are into our sixth week of living in Haiti and our transition up to this point has been fairly smooth.  We are currently sub-leasing a house in Cayes.  Our neighborhood is quite nice and convenient.  We're across the street from a small grocery store and only minutes from downtown Cayes, which is Haiti's third-largest city (approx. 50,000 people).  We anticipate moving onto the mission campus by mid-March.  This will put us...

90 Degrees Later We Safely Arrived in Haiti
It was a dark and snowy morning as we awoke at 3:00 AM and warmed up the church van for our 2 hour trip to Chicago's O'Hare airport.  The temperature read 0 F with a strong wind.  A father-son team from our church sacrificially joined us, one to drive and the other to help us get our stuff from the van to the ticket counter, and to take this great photo of us...

We Leave for Haiti Tomorrow
and
Four Missionary Kids' Journey into Missions
Dear Friends and Ministry Partners,
After 3 years of preparations and many days of packing, we are flying to Haiti tomorrow morning from Chicago to Miami to Port au Prince.  We are going as a family, but our family is not going alone.  We truly take with us the love and support of our family, friends, donors and supporting churches, and, most importantly, the faithfulness of God who has seen us step...

We've Graduated!
Nous avons fini l'apprentissage du français à Parole de Vie - Béthel !  Well, we're not exactly experts in French, but we can at least say we've graduated from the advanced French language course at Parole de Vie - Bethel in Quebec where we've been living for the past year.  We now have a strong foundation in the language and are making our final preparations for moving our family to Haiti on January 14, 2009.  We are excited to...