A Lifetime Haiti Memory: Part Three

Celebration Community Beach Church On our first day in Marmalade, Jared, Marcot , Pastor Villens and I walked the property to discuss adding another building to house a secondary school for 7th through 12th grade. We are committed to see these kids through secondary school, so another six classrooms would be needed. The land the current building is on is very hilly and the hill was cut into to make room for the current building. To accommodate a future new building we even discussed buying some adjacent land to increase the lot size, but what is available is too small to really make a difference.We currently have a project underway to add two more rooms to the end of the existing building. One of the rooms is a storage room for the monthly allotment of Manna Pack meals we send to feed each child a nutritious meal each day. This is a secure room with a strong metal door. The other room was to be used to bring the kindergarten children into a classroom instead of holding class under a tarp attached to the side of the building as we did last year. The new decision is to use the new room for the 7th grade in September and move the kindergarten into this room in 2014. For one year, the 7th grade will be held at our school as we make arrangements for future 7th graders to attend secondary school at other, already established, secondary schools in Haiti. We need to build a relationship with a secondary school to send our students on a continuing yearly basis. This is an important goal for this next year.Celebration Community Beach Church in Naples, Florida had a Block Party this summer to raise money to complete the addition to the school. People in the church could buy cement blocks for $6.00 each. The $6.00 is the cost of the block, the cement, the sand, the rebar, the metal-paneled roof and the wood rafters. The goal was to exceed $6000 and $7000 has been committed. WOW! The construction is underway already and the new rooms will be ready for the first day of school this September.What a blessing this church has been to Help for Haiti! The original trip I made to Haiti in 2005 was because Gene Scott, the senior pastor there, wanted someone to look into what was happening to some money they were sending to help small churches in Haiti. Gene has always had a heart for Haiti and we want to thank him and Bill Bull as well as all those that attend this church in the park for their steadfast support. With their help, we started the building program earlier this past month and will have the two new rooms done in time for the start of the new school year.This project gave employment to 8 very capable Haitian tradesmen, masons, and carpenters, laborers who with this pay, will be able to help their families for a year. Several of them have children who attend this school, and it is now their school.Well, a Dad gets a very special gift from his two wonderful sons, a memory that will last a lifetime. As special and awesome as this is, what is even more awesome is that God gave us the privilege of being useful in Haiti to build His kingdom. Life cannot get better than that!Thank you, Jared. Thank you, Matthew.Dad