Thank You The Chance to Dream Portland Team & Welcome Little By Little Chicago Team!

It has been a busy few weeks at Mountain Top Ministries. We are so thankful to have so many amazing team members come to serve in Haiti. The Chance to Dream mostly from Oregon/Washington opened the medical clinic last week. The clinic was not as busy last week, but we were blessed to be able to actually spend additional time with each patient instead of rushing through hundreds of patients a day. 

It's hard to tell why some weeks are slower then others, but it may partially have to do with the fact that it was a limited school week due to testing. Many of the students were out early at the school. Maybe word just didn't spread to the community as quickly that week without the students there to spread the news. Or maybe people simply weren't sick, which was a blessing! Either way, we were thankful for what we were able to do for the people that did come for medical care.          

The team also went to Wahoo Bay beach at the end of the week. It was a relaxing and fun day that ended with pizza at Munchies. We were also able to bring our family to spend the day at the beach. Everyone had a great time! 

Other wonderful news for the Sheppard family is now running water. Yeah!! After 7 months, we finally have fixed the holding tank on the roof to where we have gravity fed water coming out of most of the faucets in the house. Ron built a ladder to try to get on top of the roof. Running water is still not in the kitchen and there are some other technical difficulties with being able to run the pump, but now at least much of the time we do have access to some water inside the house instead of hauling buckets from the cistern. For larger amounts of water, we'll still haul buckets of water since it seems our water pressure isn't good enough to try to fill a whole bucket in the house.

Little by Little Team (mostly from Chicago) arrived on Monday. They have had a very busy week in the medical clinic. We've seen hundreds of patients already and expect to see hundreds more each day. The team has been able to eat under the new covered picnic area by the playground.

While the Oregon team was here in Haiti, we had another Sheppard birthday party. This time it was for Julia's 16th and Naomi's 4th birthday. It was a princess party with cake, ice cream, and princess hats for the birthday girls. Joey (one of the Oregon team members that turned 17 during the week) was also able to join the fun! He didn't seem to mind being a part of the princess party.

The teenagers especially have missed their friends in the states, so it was especially nice to have Oregon team members here for their birthday party. Some of the team members were teenagers that the teens have known from youth group as well.

We have some amazing team members that have spent more time organizing the clothing closet this week. Ron went into Port au Prince and purchased many more clear bins for the clinic. This will be a big help in organizing. It seems we organize to a point and then run out of hangers or bins or other things in order to complete the process. We are finally at the point where we may actually have the bulk of what we need to entirely organize the inventory and clothing closet. We'll need to purchase some materials for more shelves, but we hope to have shelves made in the next couple of weeks. 

Overall, things are going really well. Please consider joining a team! I am still looking for a couple of team members for Haiti May 8th as well as quite a few team members for Guatemala June 4th. Contact me for more details! 

Frogs on the Window, Kindergarten Class, Manifestation, and other Random Pictures in Haiti

I love to look at the hill in Petionville and see all the beautiful colors of the different homes. Apparently the government considered tearing down the homes, but decided instead to distribute paint. It's amazing what a transformation a little paint has accomplished!  

After my trip to Seattle for the Refresh adoption conference, I was able to bring in more supplies to Haiti. One of the main challenges we face in country is getting supplies in country. The expense of living in Haiti still just blows me away.

If you can find items, you often pay a premium for those items (sometimes 3x's the cost as in the states). Therefore, we try to bring as many supplies in as possible with myself or with team members.

This time when I came through, I watched for my bag on the carousel. I located one bag. It had been pulled to the side. I placed it on my cart and went back to the carousel in search of my second bag. I saw a trash bag go by and didn't think much of it. The second time I saw the bag, I noticed various things falling out of that bag. Then I noticed those various items looking very familiar to me. Hmm...slight accident with my bag and what was left of my stuff made it in a trash bag.

On the way home from the airport, we saw an interesting sight. A truck was driving down the road with a huge stack of mattresses. We kept watching that truck wondering how in the world it didn't topple right over. It would hit a bump and lean farther over to the point where it "looked like" it would tip over.

There was even a man hanging on to one side. I kept thinking: If that truck goes over or the mattresses fall off, that little guy is going to be squished!

But....it kept driving all the way down Delma and eventually turned off before tipping over. It's always amazing to me all the interesting things you see driving around in Haiti.

While I was in Seattle, our family was blessed with the opportunity to purchase supplies for our family. Willem showed up and asked if there were things we needed to buy for our family, so Ron apparently said, "Yes! Just a second" and ran upstairs. He pulled every single dime that we had and bought as much material as we could afford. It was like Ron hit the jackpot.

He has very much been like a kid in a candy shop. We were able to purchase a table saw and wood to make a couch, fix the dining room table, make a coffee table, and various other projects like finally getting a frame and hanging the chalkboard.

These past few teams have done an amazing job walking to the clinic and hiking up the goat trail. It has been the dry season and pretty dusty. We only recently have started getting some rain. It won't be long until the goat trail will get pretty slippery.

Another thing I love about Haiti is the weather. Especially out here in the mountains, the weather is pretty mild. It is a good 10 degrees cooler where we are at then in Port au Prince.

The last team was able to continue work on the silos. Shelves were build and most of the tile is done on the floor. I wasn't there during that process, but I understand that it was somewhat challenging to build shelves inside a round building.

The team also did an amazing job organizing a basketball camp. The picture shows the kids lining up to learn strategies on basketball. It was a lot of fun!

A few weeks ago, my very good friend Cheri was able to come and visit. Cheri and I met when we were both single young moms struggling our way through college. Such a blessing to have old friends and the ability to watch miracle upon miracle of how the Lord turns trial and suffering into good.

We went to the Caribbean Market and the guard let us take a picture. It's funny because I don't even really think about armed security in different places, but then realize how that stands out to others that aren't accustomed to seeing people walking around with shotguns.

 We also took Cheri and the other few team members to the "zoo" in Haiti. Always interesting to see bunnies, guinea pigs, and a goat in the zoo.

It's also funny the things that amuse us now in comparison to when we first moved here. Going to the Baptist mission to roam around the "zoo" or play in the playground is a huge treat to the family!

 During that same week, there was a "manifestation" at the top of the road. What the Haitian people refer to as a manifestation is basically a protest.

We had 10-15 little stores at the top of the hill. Apparently the stores have been there 20+ years. They started as street vendors and just over years and years made more permanent structures. The only problem is that they didn't actually own the land.

The stores were recently marked for demolition. People were upset about losing their livelihood (their business). I think most of us were hopeful that somehow they could negotiate a deal to pay rent on the land or something like that. BUT...I guess the road is going to be widened, so the houses/businesses need to come down. The government came in with their bulldozer to tear down the buildings and there was a riot. There is now a backhoe stuck in the road because shots ended up being fired in the air and the equipment was lit on fire. Many people were apparently arrested. Just overall, it was a very sad situation.




We have been fortunate to be able to do crafts each week with the preschool and kindergarteners. David and Julia are helping in the picture above.

To the left, Cheri and I are seen with one of the classmates with her craft in her hand. I absolutely LOVE the kids. It's funny how the older I get, the more I love kids.





We also spend time in the clinic getting it ready for upcoming teams. David is shown popping his head in the clinic after his last class for the day. He often stops by to see if I need any help. David and our Creole teacher and friend Rosias (otherwise known as "Mouse") visited with us as we were prepared for the next clinic.

A frog jumped onto our window when we were driving Joan home one evening. He just hung out there on the windshield. He eventually hopped off, but he first hopped all around the front of the car.

He was a cute little guy. We tend to see many frogs outside as well as inside the house. They are harmless enough, but apparently many of the Haitian people are afraid of frogs.

 Naomi absolutely loves the new playground up at the school. She went up to the clinic today with me and was able to "help" mom and the other team members as well as slide down the slide at lunch time.

Ron enjoys his time helping the building teams. There is always work to be done at Mountain Top Ministries! No matter your skills, please consider joining a team and serving in Haiti.

We were also blessed by Kim, an amazing lady that is adopting from Haiti. I'm shown to the right with a scarf that Kim gave us on her last trip here. It's humbling to see just how compassionate people are.

Various team members have brought little gifts for us and/or for the kids. We Thank You from the bottom of our hearts!

The Oregon team has served 4 days in the clinic. Tomorrow we are off to the beach for the day for some fun and relaxation. The team arrived on St Patrick's Day and were appropriately dressed in green.

Each evening, I have had the pleasure of doing devotions with the group at the guest house. I just love to see what the Lord is doing with each and every team member. There is so much we learn about ourselves through this process of serving.

I pray that we can all strive to be more and more like Jesus each day. It is not a small task!

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, 

and to give his life as a ransom for many. ~Mark 10:45

Thank You Iowa & Indiana Team - Welcome Oregon Team!

We had an amazing week with the Indiana and Iowa team last week! The team was involved in multiple projects. The clinic was open all week and hundreds of patients were seen. Many team members assisted upstairs in organizing supplies. 

Naomi Helping in the Clinic

The Sheppard kids were able to serve alongside the team members in various ways. Even Naomi helped mom in the clinic and helped dad with some of the building projects. The picnic tables were completed and painted by the team. The team that is here this week actually is able to sit at the tables each day for lunch.

The Finished Picnic Tables

Much work was done on the trade school. Amazing to see the progress on such a huge project. It was wonderful to see so many team members working together digging holes, hauling cement, pouring concrete, and just plain working really hard. Most of the team also walked up the mountain each day, which is no small accomplishment!

Ron Helping with the Building Team on the Trade School

Some of the team members coordinated a basketball camp. That was a lot of fun for the students at the school as well as the team members! In Haiti, soccer is a HUGE deal, but basketball isn't as well known. The kids enjoyed learning something new.

Amazing Joan in the Pharmacy with Oregon Team Member

The Oregon team arrived this week and has been a huge blessing in the clinic. We have many new team members on this trip. We are so thankful that each and every team member has stepped out in faith to serve in Haiti.

David Helping with Inventory

David stops in each day at the clinic in between teaching classes at the school. There is always work to do shelving and categorizing items. Managing the inventory (or trying to at least) is a continual process, but the reward is in seeing the ability to serve so many patients throughout the week in the clinic. We are blessed that the Lord has really honored us to serve in a country that we love!

Managing Inventory for the Clinic

Welcome Iowa and Indiana Team!

Another wonderful week at Mountain Top Ministries! Thirty-eight team members have arrived mostly from Iowa and Indiana. We are blessed to have them here.  They are doing an amazing job climbing up the mountain each day and even crawling up the goat trail. 

Part of the group has been working in the playground area. We were able to take a lunch break under the new covered area. Naomi never wants to leave the play area. We used to "try" to make it up to the Baptist Mission to go to the playground, but the logistics of getting there are challenging for our family. Now the kids can actually just play at the school playground each week. 

 The team constructed picnic tables and finished up painting them today. They look amazing!
     
                                            

Some of the team was painting kids' nails and doing various games with the school children. Some of our kids had their nails painted as well.

Julia, Roseminique, and Naomi came up to help in the clinic today. David also helped in between his classes at the school. He's a big help in the pharmacy. Every one loves seeing the babies at the intake section/triage station. About 1/2 of the team is working in the medical clinic this week.

The other team members have been working hard on the trade school. It is wonderful to step out on the balcony when doing inventory and see the progress that is being made each and every hour. What is it they say? Many hands make light work? Well....I'm not sure that it's light work because the construction team is really working hard doing manual labor all day in the sun, but I can only imagine how much more work it would be with fewer people!

Thank you team! You're doing an amazing job! So thankful to see so many people willing to hear the Lord's call to go and serve. 

"And whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:44-45

Chickens, Pigeons, Goats, and a Cow Too!

Ok...this post is for Naomi. She asked that we post about the exciting things in her life (as an almost 4 year old) and apparently the excitement is in the chickens, pigeons, goats, and the cow next door....

We have a couple friends that visit us often. They are neighbor chickens and they somehow slide in under our gate. They often will bring centipedes or other creatures under the gate that they are trying to eat so the other chickens will not steal their food. They also will run around upstairs and end up wandering around in our kitchen on a semi regular basis. Our friend said we should just eat one them, but they are scrawny little chickens and someone is probably relying on them for $$ or food.

The guesthouse next door also has a stray pigeon that likes to come inside the house. Naomi loves to go over 1) in hopes of getting a snack from miss Beth and 2) in hopes of seeing the pigeon, but Beth of course does not want the pigeon in the house messing things up. Max the dog actually was chasing the pigeon around the house and Naomi thought it was the funniest thing!

We are surrounded by all kinds of God's creatures here in Haiti.  It's quite different then the states or even when we had our little mini farm in Oregon. Food is scarce and that is reflected on the appearance and health of the animals. We see cows and goats, but it seems to be rare that people would actually milk the goats or cows for personal use. Without refrigeration, dairy products are difficult to store and very hard to come by. When we had our goats and cows in the states, if you didn't feed them the right stuff, their milk was severely limited.

The same is true for people. If mom is malnourished and dehydrated, she will have a very difficult time feeding baby. One thing I would LOVE to do someday is spend more time helping nursing mothers. I was able to nurse five of our children, which was a bit of a challenge being that I only gave birth to three of them plus two were born prematurely and had difficulty nursing. So, maybe someday I could help others that struggle with nursing. I'll have to add that to my "to do" list for the future!

I do believe though that when we see starving babies, giving them formula is typically about the worst thing we can do within this population. It is a temporary (at best) solution to a much bigger problem. We need to focus on sustainable changes by helping the mother so that they in turn can feed their children. Yes, easier said then done, but something as missionaries and humanitarians we should really contemplate when "helping".

We're often not looking at the overall picture when we come in to "help" others. Many years ago when I worked in larger orphanages, we would have team members visit. Sometimes they would meet parents or nannies that also had other children at home. Mission teams would bring formula from the states and out of love distribute that formula to people that were having trouble feeding their baby outside of the orphanage. After all, they received the donations of formula and the babies were in fact starving.

Problem is: Time and time again, babies would die. On the next trip I would ask about the babies, but the vast majority of those babies did not survive. Yes, maybe they had other things going on as well. Possibly they were already so severely malnourished that they would have died anyway, but giving formula (for the most part) was not a wise decision. It was founded in love, but lacked understanding and wisdom. In your spare time, please consider reading, "When Helping Hurts" by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. It helps us to understand how our good intentions can be harmful to others.

In the situation of formula, even if the donors would give many cans of formula and then also money to buy more, what would typically happen with the families was tragic. Often they would give either all of the formula to the baby or give some and sell the rest. Funds that were given to the families were usually used for the crisis of the day instead of for buying formula for the future (the next day, week, or month). There would be no money or formula left to feed the baby PLUS they could no longer nurse the baby at all because their milk had completely dried up at that point.

I think those of us from the USA often have a very hard time understanding a society that lives in survival mode each and everyday. This is true in many countries, but in most countries that I have worked in, although there may be little thought for next week, they may think 2 or 3 days in advance at least. In Haiti, the thought of tomorrow when we are starving today is often times simply not there. Haiti was classified as the poorest country in the western hemisphere prior to the earthquake. The county has lived in survival mode for so many generations that strategies that may be effective in other countries may have little impact for sustainable change in Haiti.

In the USA, we may understand the concept of survival mode, but we have very little personal experience of the degree and types of struggles that others face around the world. We may be overdrawn in our bank account or our home could be in foreclosure, but we typically have options that are simply not available in many parts of the world (food pantries, clothing closets, homeless shelters, family, neighbors, churches, and others organizations that try to help). This is not to say that there is no suffering or poverty in the USA. There certainly is, but there is an entirely different kind of poverty and suffering. In many ways it is a poverty of the mind.

I remember a goat project we had where we would buy goats for orphanages. We had trainings about what to feed the goats. We felt like we were really getting positive feedback and understanding about the importance of milking the goats so that the babies would have milk to drink. But then we would go back to the states (feeling quite good that we had not only implemented something sustainable, but that people were also very happy about the whole process). Unfortunately, most of the time we were wrong. The intent was always good, but for those of us that came back again and again, the end result was disappointing at best and devastating at worst.

Time and time again, we would return and there would be a big party on our arrival at which point we would discover that the goats had been eaten. One time I remember being served the goat prior to even leaving the country. It was such a foreign concept that you would actually keep feeding an animal in order to get milk that you didn't really like anyway when you can eat or sell the goat TODAY. If we can eat it today, why plan for tomorrow because tomorrow may never come.

We are so thankful to be with Mountain Top Ministries for this reason (and countless others). We are seeing change. We are seeing thousands upon thousands of people that see beyond today and actually do have hope for tomorrow. When I worked in Port au Prince, it really felt like we were gerbils running in a wheel going nowhere. We kept trying to help, but it was this bottomless pit. It felt like we were tossing money into a hole with no end in sight.

That doesn't mean that change wasn't happening and certainly there are many, many organizations that are doing amazing work throughout Haiti. BUT it is a challenging platform to work from. Especially in certain parts of the country. On the other hand, sometimes when we are walking with the Lord we may not see the change that comes from what we implement today. It may take generations to see the change. We may be on a long winding road that the Lord has called us on.  Although the outcome is known to God, the end result may be hidden from our view. I truly believe we don't have to know or see the outcome to be a soldier for the Lord. God has it covered. If we are walking with Him, we're going in the right direction even if it means roaming around in the desert for 40 years.

On the other hand, there are times where we are walking with the Lord, but are simply not fully evaluating the way in which we implement what God has called us to do. This is often due to not understanding country dynamics and culture prior to formulating a plan. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for jumping in with two feet to serve. Otherwise, we wouldn't have hopped a plane with 14 one way tickets in hand. We pray daily though that the Lord would guide and direct us in how we serve and we know this is a continual learning process.

Today, 38 team members arrived at Mountain Top Ministries. We are so thankful to have them serving alongside us here in Haiti! About half will be serving in the medical clinic and the other half will be working on building the trade school. I think a few are also planning a basketball camp with the kids. Please pray for safety and guidance with the team and that the Lord would open our eyes to continue to improve ways in which we serve.

“Often the answer to our prayer does not come while we’re on our knees but while we’re on our feet serving the Lord and serving those around us. Selfless acts of service and consecration refine our spirits, remove the scales from our spiritual eyes, and open the windows of heaven. By becoming the answer to someone’s prayer we often find the answer to our own.” ― Dieter F. Uchtdorf