Kanaval

It’s Kanaval Nasyonal time right now in Haiti (Carnival or Mardis Gras for you English speakers.)  For the first time ever, the national celebration of this festival is officially being held in a city other than Port au Prince—our town of les Cayes.  That means the Haitian President, Prime Minister and all government officials are here, along with a massive amount of police and dignitaries.  Our town is hopping (literally--  I can feel the bass and Kompa music blaring a few miles away.)

Carnival is celebrated all over the world leading up to Ash Wednesday, primarily in Catholic or orthodox countries.  Each country blends in much of their cultural history in this festival, held over many days.  Karnval includes loud music, floats, all-night partying and general revelry.  Since Haiti’s cultural history is thick in African roots and voodoo and this is reflected in their Kanaval celebrations. 

You can guess we are not attending these all night parties!  But, WOW, can we hear it going strong all night long!  It was really neat to see the preparations in Cayes the last few weeks leading up to Kanaval.  Streets being cleaned, lots and lots of painting going on to make everything look fresh, new asphalt on some streets, and huge grandstands being erected.  There are these huge ‘floats’ pulled by massive Mack trucks—some are floats as you know them, some are trailers with huge speakers on the bottom and the band rides on top.  I haven’t gotten to see them first hand in action, but here are some pics of the action taken by some people Rob follows on twitter.

 

Here are some pics we took of the preparations leading up to Kanaval.  You can click on any of them to see them larger.

New grandstands lining the main road into Cayes:

There is an area closer to us that they cleared out for vendors and big partying.  Here you can see some of the Mack trucks lined up with the trailers ready for huge speakers and bands.

Rob went up in another missionary’s plane yesterday to check it out.  Here are a few pics:

Here is an aerial view of the same cleared area.  I imagine it’s packed at night.

Here is some pics downtown.  Again, much tamer during the day.

And finally, a really cool picture of downtown Cayes:

 

~Becky

Recent Favorite Pics

We have bee SO busy lately!  We are on week 5 of 5 weeks in a row with teams.  Much ministry has been happening, but we’ve had little time to blog.  Our whole family just returned from a few days out in Astruc with a team from The Orchard so I thought I’d take a few minutes and post some favorite pics of the trip. 

 

 

Rob’s getting pretty good at photo editing too!  Here are 2 really good pics of the pastor’s daughters:

~Becky

Wahoo! This feels good!

I am dancing a jig.  If you could see me now!  (Actually, I am glad you can’t see me because I can’t dance! It’s quite a sight!)

We are FULLY SUPPORTED!  Due to the generous donations of so many, we can say we are fully supported going into this new year. Thank you to our monthly donors. Thank you to those who have given special gifts.

We can’t express our gratitude.  We can’t begin to explain our appreciation.  We can’t describe to you how supported/loved we feel.

Thank you.

Astruc Church and School… Dewormed!

Recently, The Orchard EFC paid for and initiated their second annual Deworming Clinic in their partnership community, Astruc, Haiti.  RMI Pharmacist Becky Thompson, Nurse Denise Joseph (Benson’s wife), RMI Translator Marie France, and RMI Administrator Benjamin Altema completed this clinic.  Every child and adult in the Astruc church and school received deworming meds. The Orchard EFC team will be arriving in Haiti in less than one week to do deworming clinics (among other things), including prevention training, to deworm 2 more communities in their Sister Church Partnership District.

According to Deworm the World, “Over 600 million school-age children are infected with parasitic worms. These infections are chronic and widespread, harming children’s health and development and limiting their participation in school.  School-based deworming is universally recognized as a safe, simple and cost-effective solution. The benefits of school-based deworming are both immediate and enduring. Regular treatment can reduce school absenteeism by 25% and increase adult earnings by over 20%, and at a cost of less than 50 US cents per child per year.”

You can see more pictures here.

Mom Brower’s First Visit to Haiti

Right after Thanksgiving, I flew to NJ to surprise my sister, Amy!  I didn’t get to see her much this past summer because her newest son was born prematurely and she was at the hospital with him almost the whole time I was there.  My Mom and I showed up her her church that Sunday and pulled off a pretty good surprise!  I think she really was shocked!  I spent 4 of the 6 days in NJ with her.  We had a great time hanging out, shopping, playing games and I enjoyed playing with my nephews (she has 4 boys now!)  I was sad to go at the end of the week, but I really enjoyed my time with her.

Part of the plan for flying in to see my sister, was to bring my Mom back to Haiti with me.  I was thrilled to finally be able to show her where we live and serve—for her to get a taste of what our life is like!  She came for 2 weeks and we had a really good time.  We stayed low-key as the kids were still in school, but we did some really fun things as well. 

Here is us on the plane ready to fly home to Haiti and the drive from Port au Prince to Cayes where we live:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We took her to Rainbow Beach:

 

 

We shared many meals, she tried new foods and she even learned how to make bannan peze:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She and the kids spent lots of time exploring together:

 

We visited Drew and Tessa at school:

 

 

My highlight was the weekend we spent all together at the RMI Retreat Center in Zanglais.  What a fun time we had together, playing on the beach and playing games when the kids went to bed.  The local fisherman were pulling in their net right on the beach one day and Mom-Mom even boogie-boarded! 

 

 

That Sunday we went to the church in Zanglais where they had a Brigade from another church sing and perform.

 

 

 

Mom learned to ride a 4-wheeler (which included many laughs!)

 

Mom was here for Drew’s school Christmas Program, but I’ll save that for another blog post.

We have so many great memories, it was so hard to pick just a few pics!  We miss you Mom-Mom and can’t wait for you to come back again!

~Becky

Thanksgiving

I am so behind on blogging!  Sometimes, life just gets away from me and before you know it, I haven’t written anything in weeks or months!  The next few posts will be my attempt to catch up on exciting events in the last month and half.  Most of them are personal or family events… hope you don’t mind!

Again this year, we held the annual Missionary Thanksgiving Dinner at our home. The final count was around 110 people.  We had lots of really good, traditional Thanksgiving food, a great time of giving thanks all together, and the kids had fun with some crafts and a turkey piñata. (Drew’s smack was the final smack that sent the candy flying!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a photo of the whole group.  We are a pretty good looking bunch, don’t you think?

 

~Becky