Living Water Christian Mission

The week in brief

Dear brothers and sisters,

Greetings to you all in the name of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

You have not had any news from us for days. We have not stopped working. In fact we are working as hard as before and maybe even harder than before. I left Gonaives Tuesday to go to Port-au-Prince to welcome Micah back to the country. That same day his wife (Micah’s) needed to see a doctor. I went with her to the doctor’s office and we just had enough time to grab something for a late lunch before it was time to go to the airport to receive Micah.

During Tuesday the people who stayed in Gonaives were working like crazy. They cleaned the hall of the second school building, the fifth grade class room and they started to clean the 6th grade room. They were not happy with their work because what they did on Tuesday looked like what they did on Monday. But they failed to take into consideration that they first had to remove all the benches and tables that were in the classrooms before they could even started to clean. They have really done a lot. On Wednesday they removed the rest of the mud in the 6th grade and in all the offices. Yesterday they took the mud out in two classrooms and they started a third one. They could have done more but we took a break so that we could go to Bigot (entrance section of the city) to welcome Valery. He is a representative of the Will Austin company that manufactures BUVs (Basic Utility Vehicle). Valery brought with him five bags of rice and a box of oil to donate to Living Water.

With the efforts of a lot of people we were able to unload the BUV and drove it to brother Melio’s house. We will keep it there for now until the road is drivable to our campus. Thanks to Brad Pointer and to the Iron men who have purchased the BUV for Living Water. It will be a tremendous asset in our reconstruction efforts.

Today we hope to finish taking all the mud out of the classrooms and the remaining offices. This is a challenging task but they have done it before. I have doubt they can do it today.

As far as the rest of the city is concerned, everyone is still busy removing mud. Most Churches have not resumed worship yet. Downtown is very filthy. Mud is still in all the streets.

Food distribution continues all over the city. The Minustah (United Nations Stabilization Mission In Haiti) is doing a commendable job at the present. They are handling the distribution of food in a respectable manner. The people have to wait in line but there is nothing wrong with that. They do the distribution in a way that shows respect for the individual. I like that. However, our police who are overseeing/securing the people for the distribution under the city leaders makes many wonder. They whip, beat and mistreat their own fellow country men. This bugs me. One of my fellow preachers who saw this has been down for several days now after getting very upset. His blood pressure is high and he is quite ill. This could have happened to me too. I hate seeing people treating their fellow men like trash.

Pray for the reconstruction of the city.

I am doing well. We will be meeting today about long term relief for the people. We are targeting several areas like education, house rebuilding and possibly small business for people. What we will be able to do will depend on how much money we have available.

My heartfelt thanks and my deepest gratitude to all of you who have donate money to Living Water. The money you donated provided food for the people that we deliver to their home. Each day during the cleaning effort we feed more than 50 people with 2 or 3 meals a day. The money that you provide helps us to help those in need of a doctor. The money you provide will help many kids go to school — kids who would not go otherwise. After the meeting I will share some of the details about long range relief for the victims of Hurricanes Hanna and Ike.

We love you in the love of Lord,

Salonique

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.” … “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the fundation of this temple, his hands will also complete it.” (Zech 4:6, 9)

website : www.livingwaterchristianmission.org

Phone : 001 – 509 – 3767 – 5951