Written by Heidi Schulte,  Development Coordinator in Pignon/Sylvain, Haiti.

This week past we have had incredible attendance. Nearly every Thrive child has attended the program each day! Thanks to the preparation and movement of the Spirit, there is a beautiful, welcoming atmosphere of joy, peace and love that is all over the property, and especially around the Agricultural Training Center.

We are celebrating our amazing staff! It was such a blessing to have our Education Program Leader, Sara Anderson, join us for a few days and be there for our first Thrive program day! After a lot of prayer and waiting and seeking, God brought four women to us and they make up our support staff. They each have a story, their own personality, sense of humor, and incredible set of skills, that are bringing such blessing and life to this ministry. It is a pleasure and joy to work with them and to know we can trust them to do their part!

Our first session! We were blessed to have Sara there.

The meals have been such a blessing to the children and their mothers/care-givers! We are very passionate about providing healthy, nutritious meals for these children and mothers/caregivers, but it turns out feeding programs are expensive. One prayer request would be inspiration, wisdom and favor in how we seek to feed these children and caregivers every day, Monday-Friday!

Delicious Food!

One of my favorite parts about this week was getting to share Scripture with these families. We are starting at Genesis and talking through God’s Word one story at a time. Today we had one mother who asked some really good questions wanting to learn more. For the most part the moms have been engaged in the stories. We even had a few fellow staff members act out the story of God creating man and woman and I think everyone will forever remember that story now!

Our time of sharing Scripture. We are starting in the beginning, so this week was basically entirely focused on the story of Creation. To help illustrate, I did so literally, by drawing!

 

Sweet little ones showing off their “creation” bracelets!

 

We also pulled out our colorful Creole children’s Bibles. I think the families enjoyed looking through these.

Our Thrive assistant, a beautiful woman who is not only a mom herself, but also has teaching and song-leading background, initiated a fun game that invited the moms/caregivers to come share something – like a song or Bible verse. The moms have loved this so far and have done great job sharing with the rest of us.

During the breaks, Paula initiated a fun “game” that requires moms/adults to participate by sharing something with the group.

Please continue to pray for our wisdom, focus and patience. That we have a complete reliance on and love for God!

Some of my new little friends…I love them so much already! 45 precious tiny souls that are SO LOVED by the Father!