Feast of Saint Barthélémy, 2006
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As you know the needs are innumerous in our area. We are helping as many people as we can. We count on your prayers and contribution to carry on the work. We are grateful to all of you who are making this happen. It is a joint effort. It is a team work: you in the US, we in the DR (Marise and I) and Dominique and Rachel in the field along with the school staff. In a last note I want to ask those who have sponsored children in our schools to continue to do that and ask those who have not done so to give a chance to a child to attend school for only $180.00 a year. Right now we have to find sponsors for the 60 new children we will receive for the new school year. Many thanks to all of you. This comes with the assurance of my prayers. 
Clinic UpdateClinique Esperance et Vie is picking up steam now. With a grant from Bridgeway Charitable Foundation, an Isuzu Trooper has been purchased and shipped to Haiti. This will be an enormous help for taking very sick people to a hospital or retrieving the very sick to come into the clinic for observation. It will also be useful for teams of visiting health care people to go out into the community. This is the beginning of our thinking futuristically about a mobile unit complementing our free-standing unit that is being designed now. 
Calling All Miles And Points!One of Bethlehem Ministry's main expenses is travel to and from Terrier Rouge. If you have airplane miles or card points you would like to donate, please e-mail us. 
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The Stovalls in HaitiMerry Stovall and her son John visited during the graduation and helped out. Here are John's comments: 
"The many unfamiliar experiences of the trip to Haiti were easily outweighed in my mind by the more subtle, yet more noticeable feeling I got from the people. The ones you became acquainted with genuinely wanted to know how your slept the previous night; even the Haitians you have never met before, once you make eye contact, will naturally transform the stares on their faces into a genuinely friendly smile and a 'bonjour'. The grace of the people is what impacted me most on my return home, knowing how little they have but how bright and appreciative they are." Biomass Project Takes OffA Phase 1 Demonstration project is underway. Engineers at the University of Georgia have designed a charcoal maker to be easily adapted and used in Haiti. They are in the process of building a prototype model of it on the campus for testing and measurement. After final tweaking our charcoal team will be in Haiti in September to work with local charcoal-makers. The design that we have come up with can be easily built with local materials--nothing imported. Our discussions in Haiti will also turn to getting some agro-forestry underway to supply wood instead of cutting trees off the mountains. We're building on the strengths of the region around Terrier Rouge - available level land, good labor, and an agricultural tradition. |