Haitian Style Anniversary

Today has been a great day! I woke up next to my wonderful husband of 6 years today and then was greeted by the beautiful smile of my sweet little girl! 

Josh went out to send off another one of the heart patients and Yanick to the Dominican Republic. 

Then we went over to the children's home to pick up the kiddos to take them to church. Enjoyed the church service this morning, even though we still only understand bits and pieces of it. It was still great though! 

Then we had a day of celebration of 6 years of marriage. We started with a great pesto chicken sandwich. Then we did some shopping at the market. Josh got a pair of D & G jeans and I got 2 shirts too. They ended up being skinny jeans, so i doubt he will be wearing them, though! and there is a strict no return policy in Haiti. We always have fun interacting and bartering with the people selling clothes at the market. We ended our day with dinner at a steakhouse here in Haiti. We had a great day just enjoying ourselves and the city. 

Our adventure will continue for as long as God continues to write our love story.....

Life As We Know It

We have been here for a little over 2 months now. While we are loving our time here and the ministries God has provided for us, we are still adjusting to the culture and trying to figure it out (if that is even possible). With that, we face many battles, and we are trying to figure out which battles are worth fighting. We have decided that the spiritual battles are worth fighting and the others are not. Please pray with us for discernment of which battles are spiritual and which battles we should let go of. Pray for us to handle the spiritual battles with a Christ-like attitude. Pray for us to deepen relationships through these battles we fight. 

We also want to remember to not judge others, but to speak biblical truth to them. It is important that we examine ourselves and not point our finger at others. Pray for God to reveal the spiritual battles we must fight within ourselves as well. We simply want to glorify God in all we do. 

Let us remember to not see the speck in another's eye, but disregard the log in our own (Matthew 7). 

Please continue to pray that we grasp the culture and continue to learn the language. We love the Haitian people and want to be able to interact with them on a deeper level. 

On another note, something that has helped us transition more was a recent renovation to our house. We split our big room upstairs into two smaller rooms and the upstairs bathroom into two bathrooms. It is much more functional for teams and allows us to have more space for them. They also closed off the other upstairs bathroom, so we could have our own bathroom. This has helped me tremendously with caring for Sharles. She also has her own room now; it's a tiny hallway, but we are all sleeping much better now! 

Speaking of Sharles, I can't believe how fast she is growing. She is 9 months old now, she has 6 teeth, she is crawling all over the place and is walking along the furniture. She waves hi and bye, and says thank you. She blows kisses all the time and Kessy recently taught her to clap and Francia taught her to wave her hands in the air when they say hallelujah! She is always full of smiles and loves everyone in the house! She also loves to play with the kids at the children's home and they love playing with her. And she seems huge to me! She is so much fun! 

We would also like to ask you to pray for John, Zech, Daniel, Steeve, Josue and Jean, who are leaving next week to go to the Dominican Republic for a mission trip. Also, please pray for the heart patients, who traveled yesterday to the DR and are awaiting life changing heart surgeries. Please check the Chadasha blog for updates on the heart surgeries (www.chadasha.blogspot.com). 

Thank you again for your prayers, friendship and love! 

In Christ's Love,

Brittany

Haiti News

First of all, thank you all for continuing to pray for us and Chadasha. We have been very busy over the last two weeks. Our ministry is continuing to grow thanks to God. All of our English/Bible classes have been going very well. In our advanced class that John and I teach, we are about to change it up some. Now, on Thursdays we want to study how Jesus, the disciples and the early church shared the Gospel for the first 30 minutes of class and then we are going to go share the Gospel. We want our students to start to apply their Biblical knowledge to their lives. Also, we have started two businesses to help fund our guys ministry, God Supports Adult. We are selling jewelry from the apparent project and also t-shirts. We will have them available in the US also. We really love the God Supports Adults ministry because it cares for people who really can't care for themselves. Some are in wheelchairs or are single moms who have no means to provide for their family. Our guys take them food and any other needs they have and also pray with them. 

On Friday we housed two different teams for that one night. We had 22 guest in our house. We still have a team of five here from Community Bible Church in Brentwood, TN. The day this team leaves we have another team of 7 coming in from Louisiana. Then, the last week in July five of our guys and John Fitts are going to the Dominican Republic for a mission trip. It's has been and will continue to be a busy July. We are so blessed to have teams come down to support our ministry. We really enjoy getting to know new people from different places. Such a blessing for our ministry.

We are continuing to settle in and try to understand the culture better. Our creole is improving each day and is getting closer to being able to truly communicate. 

Our prayer request are for God to go before our guys to the DR to prepare the hearts to receive the Gospel. Also the week of the 22nd our heart patients head over to the DR for open heart surgeries. Please pray for their life saving surgeries. Please continue to pray for God to lead our ministry.

Bondye Beni,

God Bless,

Josh

Team Work

We had an awesome week last week. Our home church, Lifepoint, sent a team to help us with our ministry. Several of our friends were in that trip and we got to make several more new friends! We had a very busy week, but it was awesome to see God moving throughout the week. 

The team arrived last Saturday, and we didn't waste any time before heading over to the children's home. A couple from our church is adopting one of the boys there, so we picked him up to spend a few nights with us. There journey has been hard in adopting him, so please be in prayer that he will be able to go home soon. He is such a sweet boy, and Sharles loves him. She loves to give him kisses, and he even fed her dinner one night! 

Sunday, we went up to the lookout for the team to experience the beauty of Haiti. The lookout and the view from our house is beautiful and constantly keeps me in awe of God as creator! A lady from our English class in the tent city made dinner for us as well. It was great! 

On Monday, some of the team went out with our Haitian staff to visit some of the people in the ministry they started, God Supports Adults. Some of the ladies went to the children's home with me to play with the kiddies and help me teach the ladies there english and the Bible. Later in the day, we went to Caradeux, where some of the team helped the intermediate English speaking class practice their English by talking one on one with them. The class loved this because they don't often get to have conversations with others in English! Some of the others helped Josue with his class and were able to give their testimony to his class. 

We went back to Caradeux on Tuesday to go out with the classes to share the gospel. The Haitians are so bold in sharing their faith. They walk right up to someone and ask them, "do you know Jesus?" This was both a fulfilling and frustrating experience. It's amazing to see their boldness and love for those within their community, but it is frustrating to hear their excuses of why they won't follow Jesus right now. It's much like the American culture in making excuses, but they have other cultural barriers that keep them from following Christ. However, we did have several who decided to follow Christ that day! Praise The Lord! Then, we headed back to the children's home and several of the ladies helped me teach English and the bible to the kids. Later, we went to Pernier Baptist Church, where the team helped the English and Bible class with their English by having one on one conversations with them. 

We took the children and staff from the children's home to our beach property on Wednesday. It was awesome because it was the first time any of our kids had ever been to the beach! They were all so excited and loved playing in the water! 

We visited an orphanage on Thursday, which was really cool too! Zech taught the kids a new Bible song and Josue played a game with them. Our team brought them lots of goodies, including suckers and temporary tattoos, which they loved! The team went back to Caradeux to do the same thing they did on Monday, one on one talks with the intermediate class and helping Josue teach his beginner class. 

The team left out early Friday morning. We hated to see them go, especially as we were saying goodbye to friends. It was so great to get to know some amazing new people as well. Please pray that God will continue to use the work of the team in all the areas they touched this week. 

I would also encourage you to run hard after God. With the ladies this week, we read Genesis 12, and the 1st verse reads, "the Lord had said to Abram, 'leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.'" Abram went without hesitation. I am not saying you have to pick up and move, but follow God without hesitation like Abram did. I realize Abram was not perfect and neither are we, but we must try our best to follow God's call in our lives. 

Brittany