Labadee, Cormiers Plage...and the Haircut

Greetings from hot and sweaty Haiti!  We got some exciting news last Thursday night at meeting.  Imperial, our lovely "host" congregation here in Haiti (and the congregation Bethel recommended we check out) has been growing so successfully that starting January 6th, the congregation will split! It goes to show you that Jehovah is blessing the efforts here in Cap.  Last year they sent four missionary couples up here and in one year, our friend's congregation had to split to accommodate all of the visitors and new publishers!  The fields are truly white for harvesting here!

Tuesday I had the opportunity to conduct my first Bible study here in Haiti. With all of the bouncing around we've been doing and our learning curve, I'm so excited to have now cultivated my own calls here in Cap.  So far Adam and I have been really happy to see the results of the preaching work - just last meeting we had two people we invited to come to the meeting attend and ask for us to come back and study with them.  What a wonderful privilege Jehovah has given each and every one of us to proclaim the good news of his Kingdom...even if it means stumbling through another new language!

We had the chance to go visit Cormiers Plage with an IV couple visiting for the weekend and we visited Labadee for the day with our friends and the Service Overseer of Bethel and his visiting family.  Here are some pictures!

Adam catching some waves at Ginsu.

Enjoying lunch with our fabulous host Jacqueline.
She and her husband take in all visiting brothers and sisters.
They were so generous and hospitable!

While we were staying with our Haitian family,
they added a new second-story deck.  It was so interesting
to watch how they do construction here - it looked like hard work!

Our neighborhood, complete with a garbage pile...

Jules and Adam conducting a Bible study.

Enjoying dinner with three of the four missionary couples here in Cap.

The breathtaking view on the road to Cormiers and Labadee.

Cormiers Plage...

...complete with Caribbean waves and sun loungers...and beers!

Enjoying the beach!

Cormiers Plage Hotel

  

Dinner with Jules and Sabrina and the visiting IV couple, Shane & Kim.
Safe travels back to the US guys, and we hope to see you soon!!!

LABADEE

Labadee is a "town"in Haiti.  It's a beautiful piece of land that was purchased by Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and turned into a luxury port-of-call for select cruises in the Caribbean.  It's not exactly possible to visit Labadee if you arrive via Cap, for all of you wondering at home. Only if you arrive by Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines.  So how did we get in?  We know a guy who knows a guy - capisce?

Entering Labadee.

The beach at Labadee.

Setting up for lounging on the beach!

Jules and Sabrina having fun, per usual.

Elain & Isabel.

We're having the BEST cruise ever!!!! *wink wink*

THE HAIRCUT

The time came when I looked at my adorable husband and told him we should start figuring out what to do about his shaggy hair.  Now, back home, I'll beg Adam to get his hair cut and he will reluctantly go to the hair shop in by our place in Seattle and get it cut.  However, here in Haiti, almost every person has a different hair texture than we do, and they tend to buzz hair instead of cutting it.  So what were we to do? Well have no fear, Jules was here!!! As if being a superstar in service was not enough, he found the time to make Adam his Sistine Chapel!

BEFORE

An hour in, Jules was meticulously cutting EVERY hair.
Adam was nervous.  I was amused. :)

AFTER!

Oh the adventures the month of December brought us!  We had the privilege of working out in service with missionaries, having lots of fun dinners, enjoying the beauty of the Caribbean, and making new lifelong friends.  Tonight some more friends from the States who moved down here last year will be staying in Cap, and together we will go explore the famous Citadelle!

After this weekend, we sadly say goodbye to Cap-Haitien and begin making our way down south to Port Salut.  Our time here in Cap has been life-changing.  We're really sad to be leaving our dear friends here but also look forward to spending our last three weeks here in Haiti with a brother from our old circuit in California.  

We can't believe our visit to Haiti is almost up!  But we have lots of fun things to explore until then!

As always, we send our love to everyone out there reading this - we miss you all!

Cap-Haitien

Well hello everyone!  As promised we went dark, but fortunately the internet is working just well enough to try to share our adventures here in Cap!  We hope everyone is doing well wherever they are.  Jehovah has definitely taken amazing care of us our entire trip, but especially once we arrived in Cap.  We've had a few bumps this month, but it looks like everything is looking quite peachy now.

Anyways, back to the good stuff! :) Cap-Haitien is the second largest city in Haiti, and quite different from Port-au-Prince area.  As a lovely sister visiting from France so perfectly described it, there is a certain ambience here (and for our English speakers tuning in, that essentially means there is a certain vibe here.)  The pace is slightly (and only ever so slightly) slower, the language and accents a little different, the style of the city different, and oh, the ocean breeze a wonderful difference.

There are four missionary couples that are now assigned to Cap, and as we mentioned, we had the privilege of staying with them in their beautiful missionary home.  The missionary home and where we are staying now is in a territory just outside of Cap-Haitien proper.  Service has of course been excellent, as the company of our brothers and sisters here in Haiti.  The congregation we are visiting is Imperial, with 120ish publishers and an average meeting attendance of 240.  I'm sure you can all see the potential just in those numbers!

Alright, alright, enough talking, on to the good stuff: the pictures.

Adam posing on one of the picturesque streets in Cap.

On the Boulevard, across the street from an oceanfront Kingdom Hall!

Enjoying a nice lunch with Jules and Sabrina, 15-year missionaries
and our new family. We love them so much. I think we were all separated at birth.

A tap tap loaded down with banane yo (plantains).

Adorable kids making breakfast and clearly one
of the little girls was excited to pose for the camera.

How come nobody told us that we would all become
mountain goats while out in service?!

Our brother and sister discussing a Bible verse with a householder.

The territory with a lovely view of the Caribbean.

FINALLY!!! Adam got t go surfing and make good use
of his troublesome surfboard - worth the hassle of course!

Sabrina is a rock star at the market. Watching her negotiate
has been the highlight of our trip - well other than the amazing
experiences we've enjoyed in service... :)

Jules with his butcher.
Jules loves his butcher - look at that smile!

Welcome to the meat section of your local Safeway.

Dinner!!!!

Adam barbequing the beef filets we bought from
the cow leg in the picture above. So delish!!! 

We've been having the best time here in Cap, and are excited to show our pictures from visiting Labadee! We send you all huge hugs and can't wait to share more!

On the road...

Hi everyone!  We can't believe it's already December, and that our week here at the missionary home in Cap-Haitien is coming to an end!

We ventured through the country with the Casavants to cross the border into the Dominican Republic.  This was not a trip we were necessarily banking on happening, but we're glad it did.  For one, it was nice to spend a couple of days relaxing on the beach, and it was equally nice being in a country that feels like home...

But we missed Haiti the whole time we were there!

I'm afraid we can only upload a couple of pictures - coming to Cap reminded us we are in a third-world country as the internet connection and cell connection are not as fabulous.  Our next stop is staying with a Haitian family so we're probably going dark...and we'll really be reminded we're in a third-world country.

On to the pictures:

FINALLY! About 30 minutes outside of Port-au-Prince we saw
proof that we were on an island! And the color of the water
proved we were in the Caribbean! Yay!

At the summit of our first mountain pass,
making our way north to Cap.

This is Luc.  He and his adorable wife are special pioneers in a little
mountain town called Plaisance.(the name totally fits - such a sweet little place).
There are two of 12 publishers in a tough territory full of vodou.
We had lunch with them in their cute little house surrounded by banane trees.

Our delicious lunch of fried banane (plaintain) and poul payi (local chicken),
picklies (spicy cabbage slaw) and my favorite, fresh jus grenadien (passion fruit juice)

This is how cassava is made.  Cassava is root vegetable that is widely used
in Haiti.  You take the root and grate it.  Then you squeeze out the sour juice, which
I believe to be toxic from what I've been told.  Once grated, the cassava is spread out in
a circle on a griddle over charcoal (pictured above).  As is cooks, the excess is brushed off, and then
the cassava is removed from the griddle to be gobbled up by all of us.  SO GOOD! We love
cassave douce, which has sugar, cinnamon, and coconut added to it.

Approaching Cap.  See the mountain in the middle? Look really close,
See that rectangular box, that looks like the Arc?
That, my friends, is the world-famous Citadelle!

Items are still transported by donkey and cart here in Haiti.
But the funny part? This picture was taken as we were driving on the main
highway here in Haiti.  The equivalent of I-5.

THE BORDER:

Oh the stories we have about crossing the border from Haiti into the DR... I was afraid to take pictures because, well, it's illegal back home, but the "security" of this border was frankly laughable.  Appalling in that it was equal parts corrupt and equal parts ridiculous.

To leave Haiti and enter the DR in a vehicle is not for the faint of heart, nor for the weak.  I personally recommend doing it only if you insist and only if you plan on having a martini afterwards (or during, we don't judge).  I am neither confirming nor denying that bribes occur frequently at the border but at the end of the day are useless.  The next time we cross, I plan on videotaping the whole thing.  It was that ridiculous.  

We waited for TWO HOURS to get papers for the car signed.
Apparently is takes two people to do the job of one person.
And apparently they need to take lunch at two different times.
Just revisiting this make me want that martini I was talking about....

Once we crossed the border, we stopped at ate at a sketchy chicken stand (I'm still shocked we all didn't get sick!) and then happened to miss where the highway was.  So we took a dirt road through beautiful DR countryside (which is far cleaner and far better organized) and ended up crossing a river in our car.  I wanted a picture, but everyone used up all of their patience at the border...understandable.

So after a total of about 10 hours of driving, through mountains and rivers and dirt roads, we made it to Puerto Plata...and FINALLY made it to a beach!

We spent our five year wedding anniversary in a place we never imagined we would visit, on a trip we had always dreamed of taking...couldn't ask for more.

As always, we send our love and thank you for joining us on our journey and for your wonderful comments - every little taste of home makes everything that much better.