Gauvreau en Haiti

“Prayer is not a preparation for work, it is work. Prayer is not a preparation for the battle, it is the battle.” - Oswald Chambers (quoted in Abandoned to God by David McCasland)

Saturday, February 23, 2013

For all the pictures for February, see “February 2013, Flora Jacmel.”

I am writing from Hotel Cyvadier in Jacmel, in the South of Haiti, we have been here since last Wednesday. We are here with Denis and Joane to visit the area a little bit. The temperature is very hot; we are not used to it anymore. But sitting on the hotel patio, with a nice breeze, looking at and listening to the waves of the Caribbean Sea, it is very relaxing.

The Internet does not function very well, so we cannot take our e-mails and go on Facebook. But this helps us to relax more. This is all right, tomorrow we will be home and then we will be able to go on Internet again.

Here at Hotel Cyvadier, the people who rent rooms are mostly part of NGO (Non-governmental organization). They are volunteers who have come to help around Jacmel or workers who have meetings and who are coming from the four corners of Haiti.

Our first night at the hotel, fire broke out in the neighbours back yard, he was burning dried weeds. The flames went up very high over the wall when fire jumped on the other dried bunch of weeks. Fortunately, we did not have smoke in our bedroom and the fire was taken care of rapidly. We ate well and slept well despite this incident.

The month of February went too fast. We had two teams of volunteers to help at Fort-Jacques for the construction. We also had a few more cases of chicken pox. Joane painted a mural on the 6^th house with GLA’s logo.

For St. Valentine’s Day, with Denis and Joane, we had supper at a new restaurant, Utopia, which is not very far from where we live. The food was very good but there was not many people in the restaurant as the Haitians usually have supper around 8:00pm. We arrived at 6:00pm. The place is nice and we will go back with GLA personnel.

Friday, March 1st

Denis and Joan are now back in Quebec and us, we continue our normal life. When we have driven them at Toussaint-Louverture international airport, there was traffic jam everywhere (in Haiti, we say Blokus). We left Fort-Jacques at 11:00am and we came back at 6:30pm. We went to the bank, then had some lunch and drove them to the airport around 2:00pm (it took us 1h30,
normally 45 minutes). Then we went to our staff meeting at 4:00pm and had supper afterward. The day was long, but in the whole it was a nice one with sunshine and heat. And to top off the day, I had a haircut done by a real hairdresser (volunteer from Canada).

This is the end word:

« Finding The Heart's True Home

Dear Jesus,

How desperately I need to learn to pray.

And yet when I am honest,

I know that I often do not even want to pray.

I am distracted!

I am stubborn!

I am self-centered!

In your mercy, Jesus, bring my "want-er" more in line with my
"need-eres" so that I can come to want what I need.

In your name and for your sake, I pray.
Amen.

Excerpt from the book Prayer by Richard
Foster, the current Bloom Book Club selection.

Cordially,

Jocelyne and Georges