Campus Ministry Team Arrives

Campus Crusade for Christ’s Campus Ministry team arrived in Chambrun around 1:00pm Tuesday, June 1 on a big school bus that no doubt drew a few stares. They met in a large open tent for orientation with Pastor Pierre, Pastor Sony (leader of the Haitian Campus Ministry), and Gary LaBlanc of Mercy Chefs (the ministry that will be cooking for the team and hopefully the students and beyond).
After orientation, they moved all of their suitcases into the church/school building to create a dorm. They packed 8 to 10 students in each of the classrooms on cots with mattresses. They hung mosquito nets up and hooked up a few electric fans (run by a generator) to circulate some air in the cement building.
The team split up and started to help the GAiN construction teams with building bathrooms, showers, and even hooking up a solar/battery-powered water filter one of the students had created. The system will eventually be a gift to a local orphanage, but for now, it is purifying the water the students are drinking. (It also runs a solar-powered coffee pot—the only one in camp ready to go so far.) (See photo left)
Another team of students helped unload a truck from Nehemiah Vision ministries that held boxes of rice-soy meals from Kids Against Hunger. Some of the students had packed Kids Against Hunger meals in Florida on their spring break. A few were very happy to think that they could now hand out the meals personally.
The kids are staying after school to hang out with the Americans. They even try to help with the work. Lots of new friends.
Because the kitchen was not hooked up yet, the team ordered pizzas from Domino’s Pizza (yes, you read that right). After their meal, they had Bible study and then lights out. And it was truly lights out as the security guard is trained to shut off the generator. He shut it off as usual—and the area was completely dark. (Each of the students had flashlights.) Hopefully the word got to the security guard today to leave the lights on.
Eventually, the campus ministry team will be distributing aid like hygiene kits, rice-soy meals, family seed packs, and more. But day two for the campus ministry was a push to finish the showers, install toilets, hook up the kitchen cooking appliances, sort the food supplies, and hook up a huge Culligan water filtration system. (Three super intelligent students took the manuals to the Culligan filter, studied them, made plans, ran them by the GAiN construction guys who were very impressed, and will install it soon.) One team even helped tie rebar for the concrete base that will eventually be the warehouse for humanitarian aid.
In Haiti, it is easy to make plans, but it is hard to get the parts for those plans. (This is a serious understatement.) A fast trip to the grocery store for food for the kitchen took all day, four stores, and a trip into the mountains. A simple trip to pick up the toilets to install required the store to stay open after hours waiting for the truck to arrive with the shipment of toilets—and a saw to cut the lock on the shipping truck! Day by day we find parts, just not as fast as all of us would like. But this is Haiti. As they say to Americans, “You have the watches, we have the time.”
The Campus Ministry will be posting stories and video at http://hopeforhaiti.posterous.com –well, if they can get internet out in Chambrun. I am not holding my breath on that one. After all, we thought buying seven toilets would be easy!