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May 2003
Dear Friends and Supporters,It seems like a long time since I’ve written to you about our comings and goings here in Haiti. But it also seems like I have more time now to communicate with you than I have the past couple months.Lots of my personal time and mental energy has been put into dealing with the insecurity of our living situation. To briefly try to explain, it goes something like this. After our house was broken into during the night and our TV, DVD, and Jacquie's calculator was stolen from the “guest room” next to our bedroom, we found that the house was easy access for these guys. The man who works for us was staying the following week at our home while we were gone for a couple days and spotted another crook on our roof. Luckily, he made enough noise that the crook was scared off that time. The next weekend on our return from church the guy who stays in our yard when we are gone reported to us that two guys who had keys to the house came in our front gate, opened the front door, and went inside, this time robbing $500 of our personal money and about $300 of the clinic’s money. In addition they took all of Jodie’s jewelry and a box of mints (weird?). We later figured it out that our problem was our “guard” and quickly got rid of him, but to take off the pressure we had to hire a "professional" security service that are armed with shotguns. So, for the past two months we have been sleeping in our house with an armed guard in our yard every night. A couple of weeks ago about two in the morning I got to bed and almost immediately heard this "bang" from the back yard. I rolled over and attempted to go to sleep since these guys often will shoot the gun just to let people know that there is a guard in the yard. About a minute later there was another "bang." Hearing nothing more I just went to sleep thinking that I pay the guy to take care of any problem and figured that whoever or whatever was the problem was taken care of. When I got up to start the generator in the morning I found a large pool of blood on our back depot roof. It seems a young man with a pistol was just scouting the place out and the guard shot him. The guy dropped, lay there for about a minute, then jumped up and ran over the wall getting away. With all the blood loss I'm not sure how far he ran though. Needless to say, we haven't had a lot of robber problems since then.In another part of our lives, the clinic, I have begun an old work. Back in 1991 I closed the clinic at Thomazeau due to the deteriorating road there, but recently have found the road situation much improved. Just to investigate how they would feel about us restarting the clinic there, I drove out about three weeks ago. As I drove up near the pastor’s house he stopped me and said, “I’ve been praying ever since you left that you would come back and do clinics for us.” Well, since then we have started our clinics there weekly and the numbers are up. We are seeing about 60 each day we go there, and it looks like it will be a good place for the future of the work.The clinic at Prospere is still going strong. Now with the addition of Edin, the pastor’s daughter who is my nurse, I will be able to go away this summer and know that the maternity, birth control, and blood pressure part of the clinic will continue until I will be able to return. Edin will go out there by public transportation and see those patients, thus making it possible to keep the clinic open all summer.Much of our lives for the following month will revolve around the end of school and the graduation of our daughter Jacquie. She will graduate on June 7th from Quisqueya Christian School as valedictorian of her class. That sounds like a pretty easy job, but it gets more complicated! Jacquie will go with her classmates on a “final” class trip to the Dominican Republic and get back from that the afternoon of June 4th. On that same day her grandmother, Jacquie Gross, flies in to share this time with us. Also on the 4th a group of six persons from Park Place in Anderson will be here to get a feel for the country of Haiti and observe some of the work of the Church of God missionaries here. We’re planning on making them an important addition to the graduation celebration also. On June 10th the group will be leaving for their return to Anderson, while on June 11th our family and Jacquie Gross will be leaving also for Atlanta in order to be able to drive to Anderson for the International Convention two days later. This will be quite an emotional time for our family. The first time we came to live in Haiti was when Jacquie was three months old. This will probably be our last time to travel out of our home with Jacquie being a part of our unit. Please pray for us during these very challenging days.Finally, I want to explain the reason why I now have time to write to you. I’m presently with a group of 18 people at a Baptist retreat center in south Haiti. It would formally be called the 4th annual Church of God Retreat. Actually three of the young ladies aren’t Church of God but are teachers at Quisqueya Christian School who have worked closely with some of the Church of God work here in Haiti. This is such a neat time. We have brought a couple in from Southern California who is leading us in our devotions as we attempt to find our place in the Kingdom of God. When we aren’t searching for our place in the Kingdom we spend some time on the terrific beach that is across the road.This summer we will be visiting a few of our supporting churches that we didn’t have time to get to last summer. In addition to this we will be working on trying to get a driver’s license for Jacquie, getting Jessica to church camp again, taking a little time off just to celebrate family, and set Jacquie up in her dorm room at Anderson Univ. before we have to leave to return to Haiti in August. Please continue to pray for us. If you need or would like to contact us during the summer just e-mail us at Ackerman@totheleastofthese.org and I will give you a call if you will give me a number.As always, we sincerely thank each of you for all the prayers and financial support you send our way. Without it we would be unable to carry on the ministry that we believe God has given us as a special gift, the service of His people in Haiti.Because of Christ,The AckermansJohn, Jodie, Jacquie, and Jessica |
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