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September 2003
Dear Friends and Supporters,
Greetings again from Haiti. Since our last letter much water has passed
under our bridge. Most of it has been good with a few not-so-perfect instances
which tend to bring us back to reality.
Our primary reason for going to the States this summer, besides visiting
some of our supporters, was to take the time to prepare Jacquie, our eldest, to
be able to live in the States without too much trauma and also bring a little
closure to nearly 18 years of Jacquie being such an important part of our daily
lives. During the summer Jacquie was able to go to driver’s school and is now
the proud bearer of a fresh Indiana driver’s license. She also spent lots of
time in preparation at Anderson University getting registered for classes,
purchasing books, and doing all the necessary things in order to move from
another country into a small dorm room on campus. In August she also attended an
Interaction seminar in New York, which is a time for “third culture kids.” (This
is a name given to children of parents from one culture who have raised them in
another culture. Instead of relating completely to either culture, they relate
more to the “third culture” of those who have experienced the same thing.).
Jacquie was excited to find that there were other young people who were going
through the same changes that she was. The closure came during the in-between
times when we could sit around and reminisce about the past, look into the
future, talk while driving the long distances to some of our supporting
churches, say the frequent “this is the last time we’ll do this together for a
long time”, and just tell each other over and over how important each family
member has been and still is in our lives and how proud we are of each other. I
guess you can never do too much of that.
So Jacquie is now a university student doing 17 very difficult hours of
class work in addition to breaking out on her own and making lots of her own
decisions in her personal life. What a loss we are experiencing! How we pray
that we have done a good job of parenting.
I tell you all this mainly because we have never asked for your support so
we can raise a child in Haiti. We asked for support so we could do God’s work
through medical healing and teaching in the country of Haiti. We trust that you
don’t feel cheated. We have always felt that our ministry to our own children
was just as important to the work of God as what we do in the medical and
teaching parts of our ministry to the Haitian people. We hope you feel that way
also.
Now about the work. Jodie and Jessica have already spent two weeks in
school since our return and the clinic at Prospere was reopened last week. It
is always fascinating to me that any time I reopen my clinic after being away
for a time, the people almost dance when they see the car driving into the
clinic community.
A praise report is that while we were gone for the two and a half months
Edin, my nurse, has been very regular in doing the clinic for the pregnant
women, blood pressure patients, and the birth control patients. She never
missed a day even though she had to find public transportation in order to get
to the clinic. It’s nice to know that if I need to leave for a time there is
someone who will keep things going as much as possible.
Finally, I spoke in our last supporter letter about the deteriorating
security problems near our home. Please continue to pray for us and those
around us as things seem to continue becoming less secure. Our contract with
armed guards ended just last night and for a couple weeks we have someone who
will stay the night using a machete as a weapon. That’s not much of a match for
shotguns. After that we should again be able to have someone with a weapon
during the night. During our time out this summer some of our closest friends
had their whole family held at gunpoint for five hours in a hostage situation
and other friends in a home up the mountain from us had the home broken into and
almost all their belongings taken. It’s hard to know what to do. Please pray
with us on these matters.
Again, please know just how much each of you is appreciated and is an
important part of our ministry. We hope you feel like your support, be it
prayer, financial, or simply good thoughts, is going toward a quality work for
the kingdom of God.
Because of Christ,
John, Jodie, and Jessica Ackerman (The first time I ever signed that way)
  
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