Latest from GMTH

Tuesday 2/23/10

Greetings Friends –

Well it’s been a busy time with us and Grace Mission to Haiti…..here’s the latest –

George was scheduled to leave Saturday, 2/20 for Haiti along with Jesse Nelms, the Missions Pastor at our church here in FL, Jim Laidlaw with Global Partnership and about 14 other men.  They all had tickets to fly SpiritAir from Ft Laud to Port au Prince.  We kept checking with Spirit because they were scheduled to begin flying to Haiti the 19^th.  George spoke with someone at Spirit on Thursday and they still said the flight was a go.  Well, when we got up Friday AM, we went to the Spirit website and discovered that the flight was cancelled.  The first thing I had to do was contact our son-in-laws brother Matt, who was to fly from Syracuse to West Palm around noon as he was to be part of the team.  Thankfully, we caught him before they left for the 2 hour drive to Syracuse. 

George met with Jim and had a few phone conversations with Jesse and it was decided to try to fly in to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and then get to PAP.  They were able to book a flight with JetBlue from that left Ft Laud around 2:30 PM on Saturday.  There are a total of 7 men on the trip.  One of them, Ben Loyer, spent 21 years in Haiti as a missionary and is fluent in Creole which is a huge help.  Another man is fluent in French which is very good.  Jim know French and Spanish and another knows Spanish so that was a help in the DR……God always provides.

They arrived in the DR and were picked up in a vehicle that had 2….yes 2, tire blow-outs on the way to the hotel!!!!!  They checked into the hotel, a lovely Clarion; walked down the streets to a Wendy’s and had supper.  (It is so amazing how different the 2 countries on this one small island are)  After a good nights sleep they had breakfast and the hotel shuttled them to the bus station where they boarded a lovely air-conditioned, movie showing bus that even provided food and beverages.  After about 6 hours they arrived in PAP and Pastor Beril picked them up at the bus station to take them to the hotel they are staying at.

George said that it was very strange because there were places along the Carrefour Road that is normally steaming with people and vendors that was basically deserted.  When he asked Pastor Beril about it he said that thousands and thousands of people are moving out of the city and into the country to get away from the devastation.

Here is a HUGE praise – 2 weekends ago there were 40 people saved at Pastor Beril’s church and this past week-end there were 20.  He also said that he and many pastors in the area have been having evangelistic services in the evenings and MANY people are coming to the Lord.

When asked about the schools he said that the ‘government’ says schools will resume on March 15 but he doesn’t see how that will be possible due to the damage to the buildings.  His school in Carrefour is damaged too much to be used and that is true for some of our other schools.

George said that he woke up from a dead sleep at 4:30 AM yesterday morning by a strong tremor and there was another strong one (said to be about a 6) later Monday morning while they met with a group of pastors about the upcoming medical/counseling team that is going in on March 6^th.  This team is primarily made up of students and staff from Palm Beach Atlantic Univerisity here in West Palm.  The counseling part of the team is very important as our Haitian brothers and sisters try to cope with all they’ve been through.  After lunch, they had an opportunity to meet with a team of our regional directors.

Plans are for them to continue to survey needs to be met by teams we will be forming in the coming months and, yes, years.  They hope to get out to Grace Center and also go to Kelly Fleury’s orphanage near Leogane to survey the damage there.

Thank you so much for your prayers and concerns -

This entry was posted on 23. February 2010 at 19:34 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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