Sunday, September 16, 2007

Today we woke up to still no power or water, but after getting some water from the well we managed to get showers. I talked with Roger for a little bit about what was going on and apparently he is having a problem with one of his two generators and has everyone on a 12 hour on and 12 hour off power schedule. He said that he is waiting on a part from Miami. After talking with Wisley about this we went over and asked him if we could have our 12 hours from 6pm-6am, since that is when the children are home and showering and working on their homework. After all that was taken care of Roland and I had junior church. Today, I tried a new system to see if the kids stayed focused a little better. We sang 2 songs, read some scripture, and then sang 2 more songs. This was the system until all 9 scriptures were read. After that I told them the story of Noah and the Ark. They were very interactive during the story and seemed to enjoy it. After the lesson I opened the floor to special music and all the children wanted to sing but I capped it off at 8. I think maybe every other week I am going to do an hour of just special music, because the children love getting the chance to sing in front of everyone. After church we had lunch and had a little incident with four of the boys that Wisley said have been a problem for some time and he wanted to know what I thought about how to handle it. I told them what I thought was a good idea of how to teach them some respect lessons and they did not seem to like that idea because it was an inconvenience for the children. I did not have time to ask him why he thought that punishment should be convenient, because Larry needed me to bring a sewing machine to St. Louis, but sometime I may ask him that just to see his perspective. Roland and I spent about 2 hours in St. Louis before it started to look like it was going to rain, at which point we caught a tap tap back to the Orphanage. On the ride back, we were in a tap tap that had a speaker in the back and the music was so loud that I thought it was going to crack my glasses. It was funny, when it was time pay for the ride instead of shouting over the music I simply motioned to the driver who I was paying for and the other Haitians thought I did not know how to say who I was paying for. I guess they just assumed that I was going to shout over the music to be heard, but I didn’t. J Once we got back and after dinner we hung out in the courtyard until dark and then Roland and I walked into Port-de-Paix to find an internet café and something to eat. The café was a little difficult to find because of how early things close on Sundays but we managed to find one that was open. It was really nice and only 5 Haitian dollars for a half hour, which I did not think was bad at all. The cloudy, rainy weather was giving them a little trouble with getting a signal but we managed and got everything done that we needed too. The restaurant was really nice and very packed; we were there for about an hour. The music was just as loud as it was on the tap tap, but unfortunately you had to speak to communicate so it was shouting time. After that we walked back to the Orphanage and I got a shower and cleaned up my room a bit. I spent about another hour with the children and now am going to go to bed. Peace.