Derniers jours en Delmas

Warning: the following contains a boatload of pictures.  We find them very funny, so we hope you enjoy.

Adam and his favorite service partner, Sister Peyant. 

This is a house on the same street where we meet for Sunday service.
The front door is seven inches away from an eight foot deep by 30 foot long hole.
Our brave faithful brothers are doing a return visit on seven inches of dirt.

This is the new, almost-road leading to Sunday service.  It's been like this for a year.
As you drive up to park and then walk into the neighborhood, you have to look down
to make sure that you don't park in a bottomless hole that is not marked nor covered.

Adam in front of a typically colorful tap tap.

This huge leaf was triple the size of me and covered in dew drops.

Getting to Sunday service is a challenge.

Dinner!

A still-functioning electric pole.  Look closely. It's levitating.

Hoping this bread fruit won't fall on me.

Preaching in a lottery store.

Here comes a tap tap.....

......loaded with live chickens.
Doesn't get any fresher than that.

We lost power for a couple of days to find out that someone had disconnected
our power to mooch off of us.  Guy and his neighbors used a wooden ladder
and bare hands to reconnect the wires.  Totally safe and definitely to code.

Pooped after a long few weeks of service.

Our lovely stay at the Casavant's (a.k.a. the Four Seasons Haiti) ends this evening.  Our first month here in Haiti has been busy, loud, quite dirty and definitely awesome.  Cap-Haitien, here we come!

Kenscoff

Our first week with the Casavants included a nice little trip to Kenscoff, a little mountain town about 40 minutes north of Petionville.  Petionville sits at the foot of the mountains where Kenscoff is hiding from the hustle and bustle of the greater Port-au-Prince area.

Adam getting his shoes shined outside the door, after a long day in service.

See that little ramp with a truck on it? That's a car wash.

There are three basic forms of transportation in Haiti: the tap tap, the moto taxi and car taxis.
I'm relatively sure death follows a ride on a moto taxi.

Behind me is a colorfully painted portion of Petionville.

After we drove through the center of Petionville, we began our long climb up the mountain.  It was so beautiful - so lush, so green.

Haiti is beautiful.  Ayiti or Haiti in English, is actually an indigenous word meaning
"land of high mountains" - a very fitting name.

On the climb up, through various little villages, we passed by hundreds
of children leaving school.

Views like this almost made me forget how stupidly hot it is here.
The nice thing about Kenscoff was the temperature: 80 instead of 95.

Here's the Kingdom Hall in Kenscoff.

The climate in Kenscoff was very different - we climbed several thousand vertical feet to find a place similar to home - lots of pine trees and grass, and a nice cool breeze.  I would have taken more pictures, but the higher up we got, the more stares we got - let's just say that in Petionville we stick out, but in Kenscoff we look like aliens.

After a nice, peaceful trip to Kenscoff, we came back down to the real world:

Yes, friends, behold a truck piled 11 feet high with unsecured bags of stuff.  Barreling down the road and swerving to avoid killing people. Tilted at an angle defying gravity.  Welcome back to the big city I suppose.

This week is our last in Petionville.  Next Monday we're headed to the Dominican Republic for a wedding.  Apparently it will be quite the road trip, so we're excited.  But fear not: more crazy pictures to come, including the promise of how nutty getting to the Sunday service arrangement is and how meetings are a source of sheer entertainment and proof that people are flocking to Jehovah's organization.

  

Pigs

Hi everybody!  Our schedule in Haiti consists of service Wednesday through Sunday, with Monday and Tuesday left for cleaning, grocery shopping, and lately building furniture:

If it looks to you like Adam is up to no good, your assumptions are most certainly correct.

Service has been pretty interesting.  The heat is so incredible staying out until 1:00 seems like you've climbed Mount Everest.  Even our friends say it's really hot for this time of year.  We're talking 34 degrees Celsius  which I believe to be around 93 degrees Fahrenheit, with about 95% humidity.  A weather website has casually likened it to feeling like 135 degrees.  I'm sweating just typing that number.  So it's good to keep busy walking so you don't notice. :)

One of Guy's new studies, Roody, lives on the top of a winding, bumpy hill.  His small cinder block hut has a gorgeous view of the moutains and the city below.  Guy drew pictures for his kids and a neighbor's kid and...well...you can see where they ended up. 

Guy and I walking over a mound of rubble to get to a sister's house for Sunday service.  More pictures to come of the craziest "road" we walk down to get to that house .

Posing with Daphne for a picture out in service.

One of the many things I love about Haitians here is when you walk with them.  For instance, take Daphne, pictured above.  We spent the morning working in service together, me stumbling through Kreyol and Daphne patiently listening and correcting, and then launching into a story of her own so easily.  As we walked and as she talked to me, she grabbed my hand and held it the whole time we discussed something.  I've seen tons of people do it here, and felt really honored to be walking down a rocky street, stepping over massive potholes and chickens, holding hands and laughing despite our language barrier.

Adam standing in front of an alive mapu tree.  I'd post a picture of a dead one, which is breath-taking, but apparently its favored by those who practice Vodou.  Let's avoid that whole mess. And before you say anything Dad, its Vodou and not "Voodoo".

And now for my favorite corner of the neighborhood: the garbage dump.  Complete with pigs. Big pigs.  

We pass by it almost every day, and I still laugh hysterically at the absurdity of it.  Sometimes there are goats and chickens, but the pigs rule the sty.

Off to help with dinner and finishing drinking my tall glass of fresh lime juice. Thanks for checking in!