Christmas 2002

2002 has been a busy and rewarding year for our family, with its share of joys and frustrations. We have experienced lots of hard work. Some fun and relaxation, travel, new and renewed friendships, and special moments of worship and fellowship.

One of the highlights of the spring was the visit of Kathy, Jamie, and Marie from Indiana and Ohio. These ladies came down to do speech and hearing screenings, science enrichment, and elementary chapel at QCS. We greatly enjoyed having them stay with us and showing them a little bit of Haiti. Another highlight was our third annual Church of God retreat at Zanglais on the south coast of Haiti. We felt privileged to have Cheryl Barton, friend and fellow missionary from Japan, to come and be our leader for this retreat. Cheryl shared with us from her heart and experience, and she in turn learned about potholes and insects.

The end of may say John traveling to the US, and the rest of us joining him in June. This summer we tried to visit many of our supporting churches, and we were able to visit with many old and new friends. Although all the traveling was tiring, it was great to see growth and renewal in many churches, some of whom had been through difficult times. We hope to visit the rest of our churches this coming summer. We also enjoyed attending two family reunions and a special family celebration of Jodie’s mother’s 70^th birthday.

John has had a busy year of it. He travels to the Prospere and Ft. Jacques clinics three days a week, and has seen over 4000 patients this year. The other days he tries to keep the vehicles running, house repaired, government paperwork in order, and e-mails up to date. He is still playing tennis, but has had some ups and downs with his knee this year. At one point the thought he needed surgery again, but it didn’t turn out to be necessary. John acquired two new “toys” this year. The first was a digital camera, which we have all enjoyed. The second was a slide scanner. Since our return home in August, John has been working hard to scan and save on disc about ten boxes of slides. It has been fun seeing some of these pictures that we haven’t looked at for years!

Jodie finished her fourth year of teaching Kindergarten at QCS this year. Probably a few people thought the Kindergarten teacher had finally lost her sanity when she started working on a musical with her class. There were days when she also wondered. But the kids came through for the performance, and did “The Little Red Hen” for their closing program. It was a memorable occasion. Jodie has a really fun group of kids to work with this year, so who knows? Another musical may be in the offing.

This has been an exciting year for Jessica. In January she got to begin horseback riding lessons. This quickly became the high point of her week (she’s now up to galloping!). She turned ten, finished fourth grade, and traveled to the States, where she was able to realize another dream,: to attend camp. What made it really special was the Jamie (our visitor from March) was her counselor and several friends from Indiana were in her cabin. Jessica is now an enthusiastic fifth grader, enjoying being at the top of elementary school. We are looking forward to seeing her play a part in the Christmas musical next week. She still takes violin and piano, and this year graduated to a full size violin. Which reminds me . . . She is almost as tall as her mom now! Her newest interest is scrap booking, which she likes to do with her mom.

Jacquie is taking her senior year by storm! She has a schedule that intimidates her parents, with several honors and AP classes. In addition, she is yearbook editor, and tutors after school. At her own initiative she is taking piano this year with our new music teacher ( a nice change after only having your mom all these years!), and even practicing! Part of her time the past year has been taken up with college and scholarship applications, and of course doing her own research on where she might like to go. (Yes, she has committed to AU for next year, but can’t resist looking!)

You may ask, does this girl have leisure time? Well, occasionally. She still goes to tennis on Saturday with her dad, and to youth meetings, and she loves to get together with friends to visit and watch videos. This past summer while in the US she had the opportunity to attend the International Youth convention in Colorado with the Park Place youth from Anderson. She traveled with them two years ago and part of the group came to Haiti, so Jacquie was able to renew those friendships. She also procured that most wonderful object, the driving permit, and did some practice driving.

As we look ahead to the coming year, we know that it holds change for our family. We have already started noting all those “last times,” such as Jacquie’s last birthday at home in October, and then the last Thanksgiving together. We will appreciate your prayers as we move into this transition. Graduation is only six months away! And as Jacquie finishes high school, Jessica will step up from elementary to middle school. WOW!

As 2002 comes to a close, we look back and see that the worship and fellowship time that takes place in our living room each Sunday has become a special and meaningful time for us. We meeting with the Murphy’s and several QCS teachers each week for worship, sharing, and communion. We are thankful for this small part of the body that has grown close.

Celebrating

This is going to be a special Christmas for us. It is possibly our lost time to have Jacquie with us for the entire Christmas season due to her graduation from high school. We will certainly miss her.

The international choir that does “The messiah” will not be doing the usual concerts this year. Part of the group may get together for a small concert in January. We also hope to get our recorders out and polished up to play some carols. The family has already begun having our nightly Advent devotions with the Advent wreath and the Jesse tree. I think this will be our 14^th year in a row. The highlight of our Christmas will be the Christmas Eve candlelight service and open houses that we have in our home. Usually 20-30 people show up and we have a great time. We hope the schedule works out so we can again see the taped version of Anderson University’s Candles and Carols on TV. What a great way to start Christmas Day! It really takes us back to when Jodie and I experienced it “live” while we were in college. Maybe we can see Jacquie in it next year.

We pray that this season will be a time when you are able to “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” (Eph. 3:18)

Financial

It always seems strange to me to include financial issues as part of a Christmas letter. Sometime I would just like to buy a bunch of cards with little angels on them and send them to each of you. No, not this time! Please realize that this newsletter/Christmas card is the only communication that many of our friends receive from us during the year. But please, if finances aren’t your thing, just skip to the next section.

Income for the year is not up but certainly not as down as the stock market. If our daily use wallet had been hit as hard as our IRA was this past year we may have had to take up checking the dumpsters (and all the ones in Haiti have already been checked). We do realize that our supporters are going through the same problems that we are so I guess we all are making cutbacks.

Again this year we have been hit especially hard by vehicle problems. The cars are getting older. In June the Toyota, the clinic car, died due to a fuel injector pump problem. That was rebuilt for more than $800 to find that the entire engine needed to be rebuilt. It is now at a local mechanic awaiting an estimate.

Jodie’s car, now 13 years old, has acted as an “everything’ car since our return from the States in August and is now in need of being put out to pasture. I have just bought (on a credit card) a “Galloper” from the Hertz Rent-a-Car Company. It isn’t a great car but it will fill in the cracks while the other is being repaired and it cost less than $7000, which is a great find for a car in Haiti. The diesel engine in it also makes it more workable due to the increased mileage and the fact that diesel fuel costs half the price of gasoline.

One other major influence on our finances is the gourde/dollar increase. No I’m not going to explain that one in total, but just understand that prices of daily living stuff have increased., so the store owners don’t loose their shirts, etc. There are days when we see up to a 20% increase in costs of what is on the grocery shelves.

In order to cut costs we have felt the need to do something somewhat drastic. We have dropped our health insurance due to its high cost. We are in process of getting insurance for Jodie, Jacquie, and Jessica, and will be putting aside $400 a month in order to cover uninsured health problems. Please realize that this is not something we desire to do but we felt like the costs were leaving us little choice. If you have questions, other ideas, or comments, let us know.

Politics

Well, you still know where you live when you drive down the street and smell tires burning. Good ol’ Haiti!

It seems that the more you think you have a handle on the subject of politics the less you really know. For this reason I begin with a disclaimer. I just don’t understand the politics of Haiti, but here goes.

At present there are two basic factions in Haiti: those who support President Aristide, and those who are against him.

The pro-Aristide group comes from the middle to lower socioeconomic class. Most have never had political power, have had almost no weapons available to them, worked for others at common labor, purchased their food in open markets, and did little travel except to visit family members. They, like the there groups, have little understanding of what democracy is.

Next there is the anti-Aristide group. This very large group should be subdivided into two groups, the bourgeois and the pros-aristide group gone sour.

Some traits of the bourgeois group are that they are of the higher economic status, they’ve had long-term political power in Haiti, have always had personal weapons available, and they offer owned businesses and stores. They purchase food from supermarkets but food is usually prepared by servants. They commonly travel widely in country and out. To this group democracy is just a word that is used when they can impress those that can keep them in power. When things don’t turn out the way they like they would rather give up democracy than live without the power.

The last group and by far the largest are made up primarily of those who voted for President Aristide to begin with but believed what he said in his campaign speeches concerning filling their stomachs and giving them an education. The priorities of this group are things like having enough to eat, having enough money to send their children to school, and having the ability to send their family members to a doctor if they are sick. This group tends to be less concerned with democracy than with having their needs supplied.. Most of them who I know have voted for president Aristide in the past elections, but state that they will never vote in an election again. The don’t see value in elections or democracy. They are experiencing no value or sense of power in voting.

So now what we have our two very polarized groups. The pro-Aristide group are mostly government workers. They depend on the president for their livelihood. They are powerful due to government tax dollars and they have many weapons available to them. The anti-Aristide group has large wealth available due to historic family ties. This group also has weapons available to most of its members.

Haiti, at present, seems to be poised for a civil war. In the past there was no chance of this due to the fact that only one side, the rich, had weapons. But in recent years this has changed. Both sides are striking out against each other in some truly terrible ways. Just this week two families of student in Jodie’s class experienced this violence, one through a murder and one through a robbery at gunpoint.

What is the answer to these problems? I certainly don’t know, but I do know it is not through other countries coming in and taking control of Haiti for their own purposes, all the while resenting their role here. The answer also is not through giving massive amounts of money and aid to serve as a carrot held in front of a donkey. This only makes the people more dependent and helpless.

The only way I can see to make a difference in this climate is the way we and many other missionaries, business people, and development organizations have done for many years: one life at a time. Mega programs don’t really go far in changing countries like Haiti. Haiti will only be changed one person at a time teaching Christian values such as love of fellow man and respect for all people. I believe that’s the way Jesus chose to do it. I think we refer to it as disciplining.

A Simple Story

I see so many simply awful situations in people’s homes and families that I have learned to tolerate most with just a grain of compassion, then move on to the next case. This crashed in on me during early November as I was interviewing a young man, 28 years old or so. There was nothing that especially stood out about this man but that he had no sparkle in his eyes. His two-month-old baby in arms and an eight-year-old daughter accompanied him. Upon questioning I discovered that the baby was having colic and wouldn’t eat well. This brought me immediately to my soapbox of pat questions and lectures concerning giving the baby “only breast milk for the first six months” and how did he have the sheer ignorance to bring the baby to the clinic without its mother? Then quietly he told e that the mother had died just after the baby’s birth and he was so confused, not knowing what to do.

Well, the powerful, rich, and very white nurse was instantly in tears. I was now speechless.

Really though, I spend little time in open compassion for these acquaintances of mine but I am trying. I now attempt to take some time before I start seeing the patients to reflect not only on the need of those that I will see but just to take the time to realize that even though the next three to four hours may not be all that exciting to me, these may be the most important three to four hours in some of these people’s lives. Pray with me in this endeavor.