Organizing

I apologize to all you friends/blog readers.  Right now, I've been focusing on sorting things in the house, organizing, moving school supplies onto the shelves in my new room, and giving away things that we do not need.  It is the much less exciting side of living here, ha.  Taking the time to do this is GREAT for our house, but unfortunately, it does not make for very exciting blog posts for all of you.

Our house is pretty much a constant clutter.  You can imagine how difficult it is to keep it tidy with 26 young children around.  Then, factor in our roughly 18 Haitian staff that are working throughout the house in rotating 6 hour shifts everyday/night.  It does not help that culturally, it seems that Haitians do not understand the concept of organization.  So, often times despite our (Dorothy and myself) best efforts, we simply cannot keep this place organized!  We have talked with fellow missionaries who can relate to our frustration.  It could be a full time job to keep things tidy and in order!

I spent the majority of my day sorting baby clothes by size.  The nannies have a bad habit of not bothering to look at sizes before putting clothing on the children. So, I may see a two year old wearing a shirt one day and a five year old wearing the same shirt the next day.  Dorothy and I do our best to try and keep the kids from looking like ragamuffins, but the nannies make it very difficult sometimes!  We decided to store extra clothes under lock and key and ONLY give the nannies the sizes that they currently need.  Another thing that the nannies do is put boys clothing on girls and vice verse.  While I have no problem with boys wearing pink and girls wearing blue, it does seem to confuse our visitors when they see a baby girl wearing a blue onesie with truck on it, ha!

I know that in the grand scheme of things, these problems really do not matter one bit.  But, they are a small part of keeping things running smoothly here at the house.

Leila

Dorothy just posted a great tribute to Leila, our precious little girl that died last month.  You can read it on Dorothy's blog.

http://dorothypearcehaiti.blogspot.com/

Smiling Faces and Dancing Feet

Nurses from the states mailed our kids LOTS of great new toys!

Guerdline's face is priceless.  She doesn't know what to think of all the gifts!

One of our nannies, Rose, helping to open boxes.

Rosa was SO proud of her new baby doll!

Claudine was too, but she always acts cheesy for the camera :)

The kids love Jake, and he loves to chase them everywhere.  They always head for "higher ground" to escape his baby teeth, haha.

Mich loves playing with Jake.

My bed is always such a gathering place...I just don't understand it.

Claudine and Jake playing in my new room.  Everyone seems to love my lack of furniture.  It makes for lots of room for rough housing!

Somehow, my room turned into the place for dancing.  You gotta love Claudine's face in this picture.  They were wound up!

Frances the happy baby!

Rosa and her award winning smile

Claudine and her award winning goofy face, haha!

The kids wore Jake out.  So, he decided to take a nap in the babies' Bumbo chair!

Supplies Needed

Many people have recently been inquiring about our needs. We GREATLY appreciate your support and donations. So, I thought that I would just do a quick post about some of our needs.

We truly appreciate and understand your desire to help our ministry, but when things are donated that we do not currently need, our house becomes cluttered and it ends up being quite stressful for us. With that being said, we still have many needs!  So to help us out, we ask that you stick to this list of needs or check with us before donating.  With such a large family of growing young children, we are in constant need of the following items (I've only listed the easiest to pack into a suitcase or ship).

****Due to the many friends that have been visiting and donating items, we are currently stocked up on our main needs.  However, we still appreciate financial donations for things that must be purchased from within Haiti.

We do have many other needs and expenses.  So, if you are interested in making a financial donation, that is ALWAYS appreciated as well! Thank you friends!  You make this ministry possible!  God bless!

Jezi renmen tout ti moun yo....

As I sit in the darkness writing this (we currently have no electricity), I am listening to my children downstairs singing praise songs in Creole with the nannies. I can truly say, it is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Not necessarily because of the quality of their voices, but because their little hearts and voices are praising our Father.

It is so easy to get caught up in being busy here. It's so easy to focus on the task in front of me rather than the reason that I am here. Hearing their little voices singing praises to God is such a pure reminder of why I am really here. It is not to save children. It is not to play games with them or do arts and crafts. I am here to share God's love with them. I am here to bring glory to our Father. I pray that I can disciple them and teach them about the real and powerful love of our Lord.