News for October 24, 2008

Faith will see us through

Dearest friends and supporters,

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

Most schools in Gonaives will open their doors this coming Monday, October 27. There are various motivations for these institutions to open their doors — some are good, others are bad. However Living Water will not be able to open their doors to receive students for classes on Monday. The main reason is that it is still difficult to get to our campus. Our students are not adults. We have six year old students coming from fairly long distances. It would be almost impossible for them to climb piles of dirt to get to school. So we decided to begin classes on November 10th. I hope by then the authorities will clear the road outside the school along with the roads leading to our school. We will do our best to provide dust masks for every student. The masks will protect them from the dust left by the flood. We will also advise the parents to provide sun glasses for the kids to protect their precious little eyes from the dust. It is challenging to get everything ready for school but faith will see us through.

Currently several people are working to make new tables and other school furniture for the students and teachers. Robin will lead the effort to get the furniture ready for use in November. He will be assisted by a number of Living Water men such as Celidieu, Abel, Barthelemy and others. However there are two major problems. First, we do not have all the material to make the furniture so we have to wait. Second, we still can’t access the campus via a vehicle. The wheelbarrow got stuck in mud several times and we had to struggle to free it. We will have to wait a few more days before we try the BUV. Hopefully that will be enough time for the land to dry enough to use the BUV. Although we have big challenges our faith will see us through.

Wednesday and Thursday, we distributed a number of bags of rice and beans. About 50 families were targeted. Each bag had roughly 30 pounds of rice or about 51 pounds of beans. The people receiving the packages are not just members of Living Water. Some of them live in the neigborhood and have helped us. We know they are also in dire need of food.

There is an outbreak of an epidemic all over the place. The town is disease infested. Some have malaria amd others have typhoid. Still a huge number of people have a terrible cough that creates a terrible chest pain. Many people have a cold and runny nose. Kleenex, tissue paper and handkerchiefs are used in abundance these days. Joining the club of those heartless diseases are headache and diarrhea. I can forsee more people with eye problems as the dust is damaging their eyes. We pray that more doctors will come into Gonaives to help. We also pray specifically for eye doctors to come. This is a major battle. We know that we will have victory over it through faith. Join us in praying for doctors, medicine, vitamins, anything that will help the people.

At Living Water we advise everyone to keep their area as clean as possible, but these days it is not an easy task. For three days in a row Gine (Salonique’s wife) and her team have been working on the finishing stage of cleaning our house. Today we concentrated on the outside, the yard, the roof of the outside kitchen which was covered with water and the roof next to us, the outside wall, etc. There is still a lot to do but we are making enviable progress.

Thanks to all of you who continue to pray for us. We need your prayers very much. Thanks to all of you who send e-mails. We are receiving fewer e-mails these days but we cherish every single one of them. Thanks to all of you who give. We appreciate every dollar and every cent that you donate to us. Our dearest friends, we still need your financial supports to continue to assist these people. I pray that some day you will be able to come to meet everyone face to face. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much for all you do for us. We love you dearly and deeply.

May God shower His blessings on you for our sake,

Salonique and all

“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