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The Nightmare

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News articles called it a massacre.  We called it the new nightmare of reality. In the middle of Tuesday night the gang killed around 16 people and set fire to over 10 homes and word is out that over a dozen more people are still missing. Over a dozen families broken forever. Over a dozen families traumatized forever. A whole community displaced as refugees because home is now a war zone. I woke up to the news yesterday and texted my friend who lives just up the road from me in Haiti. Both heartbroken and in utter shock for this to happen just 20 minutes south of us. Why are they doing this? I don’t know. Why won’t anyone help Haiti? I don’t know. How or when will I ever see my children again? I don’t know. But I still trust You, my Lord. With every ounce of my being. My town has been calm and I’m so proud of that. But the gangs new territory just South of us is blocking all traffic from the capital still. As in necessary supplies can’t be brought in and only a select few brave people

The harvest is plentiful

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 5 weeks.  Five weeks ago I left Haiti having not the slightest indication as to what was about to unfold.  In 9 years I’ve never been stateside for more than 3 weeks at a time. Now I’m stuck with all the emotions and side affects that defeated mental health gives.  I felt completely blindsided. Had I have known, I never would have left my girls. I never would have packed that little bag and pulled out my passport. I never would have boarded that plane  and never would have said goodbye and told the girls I’d be back in a week. And I guess that’s why God sent me out before things got bad because He knew good and well it would have been an ugly fight trying to evacuate me after the fact.  Five weeks of wondering if my girls are safe as I jump out of bed to check my phone in the wee early morning hours to make sure the gangs didn’t pay a visit in the night like they have before.  Five weeks of trying to coordinate with the employees to scrounge to find and ration the supplies to feed so

Life turned upside down update #3

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 Haiti update #3  October 5th   They lost almost all cell signal on Monday in our area. I called 12 employees in different parts of the city trying to find anyone with a little signal to check on the girls. One of my employees got on my roof and we were able to talk for 2 minutes before it cut off. I fell apart from not being able to talk to them and check in. This has just been a roller coaster of emotions. Early yesterday morning I received a message from the nanny who’s incharge while I’m gone and she said “ou pa bezwen pè Ellie. Estrès ap fè w malad. Si ou malad li pa bon pou nou. Pa bay tèt ou pwoblèm. Nou byen tifi yo anfom.”  “You don’t need to be scared Ellie. Stress will make you sick. If you’re sick then it’s not good for us. Don’t put problems in your head. We are ok. The girls are good.”  Her strength and faith in the middle of the fire is stronger than mine as I’m sitting safely on the sidelines watching it play out from afar. She has always put me in my place when fear an

Life turned upside down update #2

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 September 28th. Update on Haiti.  I got a call around 11pm last night, there’s no water.  Running water is a luxury many don’t have. Which means for my community they must walk to my house to get semi clean not filtered well water in buckets or walk to the closet river to get dirty water that’s used for washing clothes, washing dishes, washing motorcycles, bathing babies, cows to drink, and trash to gather.  The wealthy use to pay 42cents for 5 gallons of filtered water. But now because of lockdown and all that that entails they bumped it up to $1.25 which is a lot when the nations legal minimum wage is $4.16 A DAY for an “actual” job and statistically 80% live on less than $2 a day. There’s no gas.  No fuel means these water companies don’t have electricity to run their generators because the government doesn’t give electricity in our town, we each own our own system. Without electricity they can’t filter water so they’ve shut down or they’re only letting each person buy 2 jugs in or

Life turned upside down.

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I’ve written a few updates over the last month on social media but haven’t posted them on here. So this first one was written on September 23rd. The next two blog will be updates to this one.  Pray for Haiti    As always, my friends, family, and anyone who supports or follows La Limyè deserves to know what’s all going on so I’ll try my best to explain it.  On Sunday September 11th I left Haiti for a 7 day trip to Memphis to visit my family. Things in Haiti have been tough for many seasons now but there was no indication in my mind that things would drastically get worse. Had I have had even the smallest thought that the situation would head south, I never would have left the girls.  Looking back, how everything played out was so God ordained for reasons I haven’t figured out just yet but  super last minute (since the opening of school was delayed) I spontaneously booked a ticket, threw 4 outfits in a suitcase and left only to barely make it on my flight due to gang violence on the way.

Rainstorms on cloud 9

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I wake up to a video of large groups of men, women, and children fleeing their homes in the middle of the night because the gangs arrived and war is happening and they were forced to evacuate with nowhere to go. There is no motel down the road. There is no spare bedroom at your closest friends house. There is nowhere to go but they have to go, somewhere, in the middle of the night, with no street lights.  They run.  My phone beeped and I opened the message. A dead man lying in the road covered in blood and taxis and motorcycles are just passing by. It’s just another day, a new normal sight to see. Perhaps gunned down by the gang. Perhaps apart of the gang and gunned down by police. No one knows. Did he lose his way as a teen and had no one to turn to? Did he get so desperate for food for his daughter that stealing was the only option he thought he had? Was that day just the day he would be taken from earth and his little boy is waiting for him to get home not knowing he’s drowning in h

Peace in His plan

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 I want to eat cheeseburgers and drink milkshakes. I want to blow dry my hair and get a manicure. I want to drive in a car alone and go actual grocery shopping. I want to go to a church that speaks my language and be around the family that I’ve known since birth.  I do, I crave those things.  But I also love the freedom of no expectations here. No stress if my hair is a mop and my clothes don’t match. Eating cereal with water because I can’t buy milk is ok because at least I have cereal and there is nothing else to tempt me like expensive fast food. I love waking up to roosters crowing and children playing even if it is 100 degrees inside. I love being stuck and stranded if that means there is always time to study the Word and know Him more and never the hustle and bustle that neglects that time. I love that when everyone is secluded to their homes more than not these days that means I cling to Jesus, my best friend, that much more. Because although it hurts, it makes me stronger. It m

Childlike Faith

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 I want to be like Ketchina.  While chaos fills the house and her sisters are pitching fits and annoying each other and crying for no real reason and some are taking a bath and some are brushing teeth and Mommy Ellie is raising her voice for just a little bit of order and peace in the house and the nanny is running around looking for toothbrushes and towels and it’s loud and chaotic and hectic and messy and I’m frustrated and tired and bossy… And then there’s Ketchina.  Sitting peacefully on the bench singing her hymnal songs.  Not paying attention to the wreck around her.  Not paying attention to the mess around her.  Not paying attention to the chaos around her.  Just peacefully singing songs to Jesus while awaiting her turn to take a bath.  I wanna be like Ketchina.  Turn off the worldly news and the social media and the bad mom judgments and the security warnings and the chaos and stress in life. I want to block it all out, ignore it all, and just sing. Sing to Jesus.  Having speci

Mental Health

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 I googled “what triggers a tension headache”  The response I read from Medline Plus was: “Tension headaches occur when neck and scalp muscles become tense or retract. The muscle contractions can be a response to stress, depression, head injury, or anxiety.” 3/4 I have. Guess it’s not sinuses.  I haven’t felt good the last few days. I thought maybe a virus. But then I also thought maybe just stress that indeed does weaken the immune system. I honestly think I’m out of touch with my emotions in a way. Trauma is one of the blames for that. I hear a gunshot or I read about the war going on in Port Au Prince and I have to quickly just put it to the back of my brain so I can get through the day. Mentally. But physically I think it does more damage than I want to admit. And with feeling like you always have to be strong, be alert, be organized, be ready, be prepared because the kids and the ministry and the emails and everything else is pulling you in every direction- eventually, the pain ca

THANK YOU!

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 On April 29th 2016 Dachena joined our family.  She was 13 months old wearing newborn diapers. Purely a sack of bones. She didn’t even have the strength to sit up from the lying down position and didn’t know how to drink from a bottle.  Starvation almost took her life.  On May 1st 2016 Ciarha joined our family. She was 5 months old weighing 8lbs. She was so severely malnourished with Kwashiorkor that she had to be hospitalized for several weeks and even got a blood transfusion.  Malnutrition almost took her life.  (Unfortunately staying with the biological family isn’t always possible or safe for all children. Although that’s always the aim to support.) I say all this to say:  I am beyond grateful for everyone that donated towards our care package project.  But I can’t go on without recognizing everyone that also keeps La Limyè running year round. I wouldn’t have been able to feed the village if I didn’t have the funds first to feed my own children and keep a roof over their head. So w

Care Packages

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 The mother of one of my students in our Special Education/Handicap learning center asked me for a job the other day.  I know she desperately needs it.  La Limyè already pays half of her yearly rent for her house because if not she and her daughter would truly be homeless.  I’m encouraged that she’s asking for work, not just handouts…but I literally have no work to give her. Every position is full and I can’t think of any job to just “make up” for her to do.  The rise in prices, the fall of the economy, the insecurity…it’s crippling for these people.  All that to say, my employees need to be paid, the girls have to be fed, school fees need to be met, but right now the most dire need is to help our neighbors.  It would be a blessing and truly an answer to prayer.  I have 26 employees  23 families in our Special Education learning center.  Around 35 in our local church.  Any extra we raise can go to the people in our village which would be around 75 people!  For $15.70 each we can provid

Reality in this season.

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I can no longer travel freely.  I no longer feel like I have a choice on what I want to do.  I can’t be seen on certain roads at certain times.  No one stateside can come visit me.  The gangs have spread out and their power seems to have grown too great for anyone to stand up against.  The people are hungry.  The hungry are starving.  The churches are mourning.  Willing to risk my life to serve here is now a higher cost if that means it’ll affect my children and their future.  I hired an armored car service to take me home last time I flew in.  Life as we knew it seems too distant to remember and the new season seems too much like a taste of hell on earth for the Haitians just trying to live.  And yet I’m surrounded by the most selfless, God fearing, humble Haitians who even with a paycheck I know it’s still hard to make ends meet.  The Haitian currency was about 40 gourdes to every American dollar when I moved here and now it’s 120 to every 1. Costs have risen. Help has fled.  And if

Held at gunpoint by the gang

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7 automatic weapons were pointed at us as the gang surrounded our vehicle. I thought, this is it. It’s over.  I was going to be taken.  Here’s what happened on the 30th of December:  For the past several months with all the issues in Haiti, I’ve been sitting in the back seat instead of the front whenever I leave the house to go into the city or come from the airport to leave the city. Less people can see me in the back so it just feels safer.  After lots of deep breaths I felt confident I could quickly go to the grocery store to get the basic necessities and then make the trip back to La Limyè.  Before I even got in the truck and after I was in, I prayed for safety, thanked Him in advance for protection and prayed no traumatic issues would happen on the road because one can only handle so much in a lifetime and I thought I should be about done.  Once we left the grocery store we passed the round about and headed down that road. When we got to the outskirts of Port au Prince there was a