Self Care- Hot Showers and Seinfeld

Ok...I have to admit that I miss my family, but I also love being here up in Seattle at the Refresh conference. The conference itself is amazing, but also just staying at a hotel takes on a whole new meaning now that we live in what may be considered by many as a third world country. For those of you that live in Haiti, you'll understand what I'm talking about!

I actually stood in the shower under HOT water for a good 15 minutes. I felt a little guilty, but I couldn't resist. I am blessed to be a part of Chosen International http://choseninternational.org, which is a teen adoption/foster care support ministry. Chosen provided the ability for me to be here at the Refresh conference (thank you, thank you, thank you Cindy, Mary, and Stephanie!!). They see the need for support for so many families suffering and feel called to help those in need.

We have this amazing shower in the hotel that not only has running water (we don't yet have running water in Haiti-ugh..ugh..ugh), but they also have HOT water AND a shower for the little people. The shower head slides all the way down for those that are height challenged (for those that do not know- I'm 4'10"). It was nice to take a hot shower, but I do feel bad for my family at home in Haiti. Specifically, I wish I could bring the shower home to my husband because I know how much a shower means to him.

When we lived in the States it would always drive me completely insane to lay in bed and hear the shower running in the morning for 15 or 20 minutes. I could just feel the water running down the drain and dollar signs were flashing in my head. I was raised by a mother that grew up on the mission field, so she certainly understood the value of conserving. My father grew up in the depression and didn't have indoor plumbing much of his upbringing. We learned from a young age that everything cost money and came at a price.

So, although I do like to take a hot shower, it's not up there on my bucket list I guess because I was conditioned from a young age to believe that you showered simply to get clean as quickly as possible.  I do though really miss taking an actual bath, but this hotel doesn't have bathtubs. Many years ago at a training I remember an exercise Deborah Gray (keynote speaker this year at Refresh) did with therapists. Thank you Deborah! You've touched so many lives over the years!

She had us draw a picture of something we longed for and I drew a picture of a bathtub because for quite a few years we had one bathroom with over a dozen children. I would dream about my OWN bathroom and now we do actually have our own bathroom, but it doesn't exactly work without running water and consistent electricity.

Watching Seinfeld in the middle of the night at a hotel where there are no children knocking at the door is more valuable to me then my own bathroom at this point in my life. For years we never had TV in the home and the only time I would be able to watch TV would be at hotel rooms. Hopefully I am not bothering my roommate Mary who is graciously sharing a room (and even a bed) with me!

Overall, there are some little things that we miss, but for the most part I don't long for the conveniences that we have in the states. Life has a simplicity in Haiti that is refreshing in many ways as well. BUT this summer our family is actually coming back to the states to visit. We will be traveling around Canada and the USA. The kids have begun to compile a bucket list and it is amazing to see the top three items on this list: use a flushing toilet, take a shower, and go to McDonald's.

My bucket list on the other hand would probably be: Eat cheese......eat more cheese.....go to the movie to get the popcorn with all the butter that always makes me feel sick, and then eat some more cheese! Yes, there is a reason we live in Haiti. Otherwise I'd like to be the mouse in the picture below completely surrounded by cheese!

The cheese and popcorn was never really a healthy choice, but I was always compelled to those things anyway!

On this trip though I was able to go to the movie with our daughter Phuong. We went and saw Frozen which was a really cute move. Yes, I did get the popcorn and yes, I did feel sick afterwards, but it was sooooo worth it!!

Refresh Conference- Foster and Adoptive Family Support

Today it was a blessing to see hundreds....hmm...maybe thousands....well, I'm not exactly sure how many people, but A LOT of people: adoptive parents, foster parents, social workers, caregivers, respite providers, mental health professionals, adoption professionals, concerned friends, and many others come together to become refreshed on this sometimes very long and lonely journey through adoption and foster care. 

I was able to facilitate two workshops today. There were many workshops going on at the same time and my first workshop was during a lunch break, so I really didn't expect a big turn out. The topic was Raising Challenging Teens. This is a topic I am passionate about not only as a parent of 6 teenagers (and 2 that are now even beyond the teen years), but also because over the years I have been involved in presenting valuable tools and resources to families through various formats such as trust based parenting, but the question always comes back to "What about teens?" "How do we apply these tools and resources to teens"?  There are simply not enough resources for parenting thru the teen years with the added elements of adoption/abandonment/loss/grief, etc...

The workshop was full and unfortunately some people were turned away. I have received emails asking me if the session was recorded, but unfortunately it was not. Contact me though and I can try to send you the powerpoint at least.

The second workshop was on Therapeutic Parenting. This is also a topic you could literally just touch the surface with after three to four hours, but in a one hour session, we basically just covered seven strategies very briefly. Maybe tomorrow I will try to do a blogpost on each of these topics since the room was full and there were also many amazing sessions going on simultaneously.

Bottom line though, people need support! I am very proud to be an adoptive parent of many amazing children through the miracle of international adoption, domestic adoption, and embryo adoption, but it is HARD. We have done all the wrong things according to good social work practice: altered birth order, artificially twinned (triplets, quadruplets), adopted more then one child in a year, and on and on. There are valid reasons why doing these things are not always a very good idea. It has been brutal at times. It is not an easy road, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is BIGGER then all of the messy details.

For those of you on this long and bumpy road, hang in there! You are not alone! There was a scripture that was presented today that spoke to me "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly." Matthew 15:22 NIV

Yikes! Have you ever seen a person that appears demon possessed? I certainly have and I know many clients will describe the same thing to me. Literally your child goes away and someone or something else entirely comes out. It is scary, disturbing, unsettling, and incredibly sad.

The take away from the scripture today was that the woman prayed "Have mercy on ME". The caregiver was struggling. It's not just have mercy on the child. Yes, the trauma our kids have faced is often horrific, but the secondary trauma that we face as parents is also very significant. The pain that we feel for our kids from hard places is real. The pain that is often inflicted upon us is also very real. We cannot "fix" the situation. There will be times where we have exhausted all our resources and we barely have the energy to even pray. But take heart. Do not underestimate the impact we have even when we feel like a complete failure. The Lord knows our shortcoming and has it all covered. 

"Be confident that you can make a difference. Don't get overwhelmed.....Try to take each day and each task as they come, breaking them down into manageable pieces for action while struggling to see the whole. And don't think you have to "win" immediately - or even at all - to make a difference" 

~Marian Wright Edelman

Yet another exciting week for Mountain Top Ministries

It’s March and instead of numerous other activities you could be doing this moment, you chose to check the Sheppards’ Blog. For that I am grateful and hope this post doesn’t disappoint.

 In America, there are often many different places to take the kiddos to burn off some energy, which they seem to have a large reserve of. Up at the school, the ministry has been hard at work renovating their Kindergarten playground. Dad was called in to give advice and to help supervise the construction of a roof for a little picnic area.

The past few teams did a wonderful job with all of the construction work. They finished with the playground on Tuesday. Monday they laid down a soft bed of wood shavings to serve as a cushion when the children fall.

Naomi says she wants to go to the park, but it is a difficult walk for a three year old. The grand opening was not like the cutting of the ribbon before a new compound is opened and also unlike the launching of a sea vessel with the breaking of the glass bottle. It was more like Friday, 12:01am at a movie theater.  The gate is opened and the partying begins.

Needless to say, the reopening of the playground was a blockbuster hit. Stay tuned for…

 The Trade School! Coming soon!

~DWS

—P.S. Thank You to everyone who has been supporting us! We are truly blessed to have such wonderful friends as you. I also want to say thank you to those that have come to visit us and to help in the ministry. We hope to see you come back soon! If you feel called to come, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Idaho, Oregon, and Wisconsin Team Members Serve at Mountain Top Ministries

We had an incredible week with our Idaho, Oregon, and Wisconsin team members. Thank you Cheri, Jake, Sabrina, and Willie!

This group partially overlapped another larger medical/building team and was able to assist both with the medical clinic as well as a building project.

Steevenson helping Willie paint

Jordan painting

 The school at Mountain Top now has a new playground with a covered area where we will have picnic tables thanks to the help of amazing financial sponsors as well as many team members along with many of our kids who helped with manual labor and painting (all over themselves as well as the play equipment)! 

 

Christelle painting the slide

                                                                                               

Roseminique hauling blocks

        

It was beautiful weather for the building team. We are all very impressed with how much they completed in such a short amount of time. 

They first had to clear out the old equipment and level out the ground. They also built concrete and rock walls to separate the different sections of the playground.

Once the ground was ready and the framing was complete, the rest seemed to come together pretty quickly.












After the roof was done, the team took a break and traveled to the beach for the day.

Jake was able to catch a starfish in the ocean!

The rest of the week the team assisted in an orphanage, built shelves in the medical clinic, helped to stock the clinic for the upcoming team, and did crafts with the preschool children at the school. Overall it was an amazing team and an incredible week!

Weather Delays, but Team Members Still Arrive!

We are so blessed at Mountain Top Ministries to have so many amazing team members take a week out of their busy lives to serve the Lord and the people of Haiti. This last team was particularly impressive due to their perserverance through the storms to finally make it here 2 days later. Some of the team members ended up stranded overnight in Texas and then again in Florida after already being sent home at the airport in Indiana. Weather challenges and mechanical challenges with flights caused significant delays, but we are so thankful they finally all made it to Haiti!

The original first day of clinic ended up being cancelled due to the delays. The second day, only part of the team had made it. We had a small group, but Joan (amazing missionary who is helping us with homeschooling) came up to serve in the pharmacy. Thank you Joan! She has tremendous pharmacy experience back in the states. 

David also helped in the pharmacy in between his classes. Julia came up to help with triage, labs, and scabies. Some of the other kids helped me with inventory and being runners in the clinic. 

As promised, I've finally posted a picture of the mural in the waiting area. The colors are amazing and the story that the wall tells helps to educate regarding clean drinking water and what may "look" clean at the bottom has actually many things going on upstream. 

Julia of course loved holding babies once again! She did later help in the pharmacy and the labs as well, but her preferred place is always at the front door checking patients in and especially holding and weighing the babies. 

Billy took a break from assisting in the clinic to eat his favorite (rice and beans). We are blessed to have amazing food at Mountain Top's school cafeteria. Each child receives a meal included in their sponsored education. Please contact me if you want more information about sponsoring a child. For only $25 a month, a child has the opportunity to attend school.

Above is an example of the walk home across the riverbed. Since it's the dry season, you'll see people digging down to water in order to wash their clothes.

Although it was a short week for the clinic (only 4 days), we saw record numbers in the clinic. One day we even saw 285 patients! Praise the Lord for his provisions and allowing so many people to serve in His name in this amazing country!

A Day in the Life of a Little Missionary

Naomi is our youngest child, which makes her the youngest of 14 kids. Just that fact makes her life somewhat unique. She has adapted well to living in Haiti and seems to really love it here. Naomi actually came VERY close to be born here in Haiti (which is a whole story in itself). She then was back in Haiti by the time she was six months old, so Haiti I believe is in her heart as well as mine. She is almost 4 years old and is incredibly smart. This is both good and bad. She is also a master at getting what she wants. She is just so cute and personable that she is likely to find somebody in the family that will cave and give her a cookie or whatever else she wants.

Well, today was no exception. Although she's old enough and certainly big enough (as you can see in the picture above) to walk all on her own, she has multiple siblings that will often take turns packing her much of the time when we go up and down the mountain. This time though, it was just me, Julia, and Naomi going up to the clinic to help get things ready for the medical clinic tomorrow. We got a late start, so David had already left for school. Julia was carrying a pretty heavy backpack, so I ended up with the job of packing Naomi part of the time.

On the way down to the riverbed, walking is not so bad. It's going UP that becomes challenging. She was pretty happy running across the riverbed, talking to people, watching people wash their clothes, etc. Naomi makes quite the impression being pretty much the only blond little kid for miles around. 

When it started to get steep again, Naomi had a few pouty moments where she crossed her arms and decided she wasn't going to walk anymore. She would lift her arms and say "pack me" and when she was told she could keep walking a little farther, you would think her life was coming to an end. BUT...we could usually get her to walk a little farther with the reward of "When you make it to that tree, you can have another drink" or "When you make it to that next tree, mom will carry you a little farther". 

She would stop and rest and waive to people as they walked by. She would talk about all the rocks and how she likes that one or this one and needs to sit down and rest. It's really quite funny! I think we must make quite a sight huffing and puffing up the mountain.

Finally, success at the top of the mountain! She ran the last stretch up hill and was yelling "I made it! I made it!" Julia and I were both laughing, "YOU made it?" That's like riding a bike in a marathon and then tossing your hands up in the air at the finish line in front of all the runners. Yes, Naomi walked and ran part of the way, but she was also packed much of the way as well.

But we made it to the clinic and were able to do some organizing in preparation of the team tomorrow. We made sure all the station boxes were ready. We checked out the pharmacy and tried to get it well stocked. Naomi helped in the clothing closet by trying out the baby clothes. Everything was, "Oh...it's sooooo cute" to her.  She is quite the girly girl.

She made friends on the way back down the mountain. We stopped to take some pictures.

Little preschoolers were leaving school. They looked so sweet in their school uniforms. I can't believe how small and young some of the kids are that walk home from school all alone. Naomi ran down the mountain with a few of the kids, but didn't keep up with them. Partly because they were going too fast and partly because she thankfully kept stopping and looking back to where we were. She's cautious to not get too far ahead.

But....there was a slight accident on the way down the mountain. Again, you would think life was coming to the end because she fell down and her hand was bleeding. We cleaned it off, but didn't have any bandaids with us, so we wrapped it with a wet wipe. Naomi literally showed her injured hand to every person we saw on the walk.

I took pity on her and packed her part of the way down. Or maybe I took pity on myself and Julia because we were hungry and wanted to get back home. Naomi kept stopping to talk about the rocks and everything else that was "Oh...soooo cute" to her. It was an amazing day and we are so thankful to be serving with Mountain Top Ministries! We look forward to a busy day with patients at the clinic tomorrow.

Feeling at Home in Haiti

We love Haiti. I mean we absolutely LOVE Haiti and it feels like home to us and has for many years. Moving here has not changed that fact. Haiti is the homeland for five of our children and we have been involved in missions here for many years. On the other hand, it still feels like home in Oregon and probably always will.  Even after leaving North Carolina close to 10 years ago, it still feels like home there as well. Our definition of home has changed over the years. When I was younger, I had a dream of a "home" that was basically a farm house with a wrap around porch on some land.

It was a dream of a place where I guess I thought we would live forever. A place where all the kids would come home to for Christmas and grandchildren would play on the land with the animals. I have realized though that the dream was not about a certain kind of home, it was about the friends and family that we surround ourselves with. The Lord has brought us so far from that original dream to an even greater vision that spans continents and incorporates family from many countries and cultures.

It has not always been easy, but it has always been an adventure. Tonight we were doing devotions as a family and the verse was:

"He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn't produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more (NLT) ~John 15:2

We certainly have felt a bit of pruning over the years in a range of circumstances and moving to Haiti is no exception. Just going to immigration has been a challenge all by itself. This residency process has been a pruning process. I think I wrote a post about sitting in a doctor's office for hours upon hours watching the ants crawl across the wall. Well, those medical certificates expired and we had to go back once again to get them re-done. We also had to have copies of our birth certificates translated into French, which in itself is not a big deal. The challenge was that we needed a court order to have the translations done and then needed the judge to stamp the translations as being official.

As we were leaving the doctor's office, my phone was buzzing over a text regarding (hopefully) meeting the translator to pick up the official copies. BUT...I pulled out my phone and a street kid that looked to be 7 or 8 years old grabbed my phone and took off with it. At which point, I sprinted after him. Thankfully, Ron was already at the car which was parked ahead and the kid was running his direction, so we both were running towards the kid from different directions. Just before we caught him, he dropped the phone. I'm sure it was a funny sight to see the white people chasing after some kid in the busy streets of Port au Prince. Praise the Lord that the phone was not broken and only was scratched a little. Ron was thankful that I had not caught the kid because I'm mightier then my 4'10" height. I think all my kids will agree that you don't mess with mom.

We had our passport photos done, but for some reason were told there was something wrong with my ear. That's all I could understand. No good: Ears. Hmm....Maybe they were not showing enough or something, so we had to get them re-done. After we left immigration for the second time, we redid my passport photos with my hair up this time and also sought out a color copy of the ministry's license. Apparently they would not accept the black and white copies we had. Just getting to and from the immigration office is a challenge all on its own. It can be a whole day process. The streets are congested with millions of people walking as well as too many cars without sufficient roads or really any sense of traffic laws. You certainly need to be an aggressive driver in Haiti, but I kinda like it. I don't mind parking on the sidewalk and I don't really miss traffic lights.



When we went back again for the 3rd time to immigration, they accepted the original passport photos anyway. Who knows? I'm just thankful they finally accepted all the documents we had. After going up and down the stairs three times in the office getting various documents photo copied, paying someone, bringing them back down, going to get another photo copy, and paying someone else, we really felt like we were making progress and maybe they would not send us away again to come back the next day! We finally were able to get our fingerprints done and submitted our documents plus received a number and little slip of paper showing we have submitted for residency. Yeah!! This should help us (hopefully) if we were ever pulled over driving in Haiti. Now we have to wait two months (or so) to receive the actual approval of temporary residency.

We are so thankful to the Haitian government for all that they do. It is really not a small thing to process really anything under the conditions of sporadic electricity and limited infrastructure. For those in the field of adoptions in Haiti (and around the world), thank you, thank you, thank you!! Your job is beyond challenging. I have assisted in the process of hundreds (or many even thousands) of adoptions around the world, but I never fully understood the challenges those on the ground in country faced. They would say that they could not get this document printed or they were waiting on paper or ink or whatever else they were waiting on. I would need to pass along this information to families and I felt their frustration and sadness because they simply wanted to bring their children home. I really had no idea of the logistics of those challenges. In the states, you simply go to Office Max and pick up what you need. For those in adoption, please think about thanking those on the ground advocating for the children. I wish we could do more ourselves!

We are continually being pruned from the residency process to the electrical issues in our home (we received a bill for over 2K us dollars) even though we rarely ever even have city power. Apparently there is no rhyme or reason to the bill at times. We still do not have running water, but I think we're actually fine with that for the duration. We've figured out a system that works. But with the power issues, our batteries are not always being recharged which causes a bigger issue then lack of running water. We did buy a small generator because the large ones are 10K or more. Unfortunately it does not have the power to re-charge our 16 pack battery system and run the house. Ron is working on separating it out so that we can charge the batteries, run the house, or run the water pump. The pump then could potentially give us running water in the future. We had a slight tragedy with our washing machine. The machine has not really worked exactly like a washing machine in the states, but it was a huge blessing to be able to spin our clothes ever other day or so. If we heard the pump go on (which means city power turned on) we could put on our little head lamps and spin the clothes in the washer. Thank you to our Canada friends/team member who gave us a few more little head lamps! The benefit to at least spinning the clothes is that they actually dry in a reasonable amount of time compared to days upon days of damp clothes hanging on the line.

BUT....it appears that our washing machine received a power surge and has basically blown up. Ron is hopeful that he may be able to fix it, but we'll need a part from the states which we'll have to get someone to bring in maybe in March. It's funny how that little thing of no longer being able to spin clothes can feel like such a tragedy, but again, we need to remember that this is a pruning process and in the grand scheme of things, it is a minor bump in the road.

We appreciate everyone's prayers!! We love you all and miss you!