Dear Family, Friends and Supporters,
I greet you from Haiti. I hope all is well. I just return back to Haiti about a week ago. I spent two weeks in the states visiting families, friends and supporters. During this time I was able to raise awareness for the Etoile Ministry as well as the school being built for 130 children. It is awesome to see the amount of people who want to be involved by either sponsoring a child, wanting to visit Haiti or donating funds toward the building project. I want to give huge thanks for the Lynnville-Sully, Iowa area for being a big supporter of the work here in Haiti. Since I have return to Haiti in September, I have met many people who want to give a helping hand here in Haiti. I feel blessed for meeting these people. I pray and hope that through our efforts the Etoile Ministry will move forward to better the Trou-sable community.
College team of Moriah Erickson, Courtney Kelderman, Conner Kelderman, and Robin Reinke
Last week, I return to Haiti with a small college group. The project for the week was to help set up the sponsorship children and creating name tags for all of them. It was awesome hosting them. They all work so hard in order for them to finish their work projects before they returned to the States. This group had the joy of riding a TAPTAP, distributing rice, visiting the home of Haitian families, going to visit a Haitian resort, and shopping for souvenirs and Haitian clothing. Each one of the members also sponsored a child to send to school. They purchase things for them like chicken and they even brought some of the kids back to the mission guest house to feed them ice cream, chicken, and rice. These kids were smiling really big. This brought me much joy to see kids eating a meal that can fill up their tummy!
This is how they put cement roofs on in Haiti. Everybody line up!
Also, last week we put up the roof on the three rooms of the school. Putting a cement roof is a huge job here in Haiti, but the workers (almost 25 of them!) finished it in just one day. Having these three rooms almost completely done allow us to have space to run our different kids’ activities. We were running our entire program out of the church and now I feel blessed for these three rooms. Our goal was to build 6 classrooms by September but due to the lack of funding we might have to run some of the classrooms for the upcoming school year in the church. My prayers and hope is to get another 3 rooms done by September. It might not happen today or tomorrow by I have faith that it will happen. I believe!
On top of the new school building
The Trou-Sable community is so excited about all this that is happening in their community. Each day I have people coming up to me to give me thanks for returning to Haiti in order to help the Haitian people. I feel blessed to be involve in this community and I hope and pray that one day we all will learn how to handle life victoriously in Haiti.
The kids colored pictures with the college team.
Thank you for being a part of this movement and for being a difference-maker for the people of Haiti.
Silentor Esthil-Henderson