Waka Waka and Group Activities

Yesterday was the grand finale for our annual Christian Leadership Academy.  It was a great time of worship, healing, teaching, encouragement and hearing from God.


Chris Youell took some video footage while he was here last week.  He posted the girls from the orphanage doing a fun dance at the New Year's Eve Celebration.  We call it the Waka Waka Dance.  Follow this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZBtqr0FDgg to watch it on YouTube.  The big girl is our daughter Alexis - their coach. :-)  Chris, Joy, Kyle, Danielle and Dave worked on painting the dorm rooms each morning and then often conducted fun activities for the orphans in the afternoons.  Here's a picture they took of the project.

The Hands and Feet Project has dug trenches for the new building for "our" kids here in Grand-Goâve.  We are anticipating the arrival of our friends, Drex and Jo Stuart, who will be overseeing the construction site later this month.  We look forward to working together with them.  Until the foundation construction begins, the kids are enjoying playing in the trenches, as you see here.

 I'm so pleased to see the progress that the Be Like Brit organization   is making.  They have leveled their lot and cut a long driveway to get to the orphanage.  The view is beautiful up there!  Here's a picture they took of Duke at the end of his long work day.

After breakfast this morning we will meet with our German connection, Maike Kraft, our Board member Dan Lee, the president of Be Like Brit, Len Gengel, and Architect Paul Fallon, who has been designing some incredible buildings for Forward in Health, Forward in Hope, Be Like Brit and Mission of Hope International.  We will be focusing on plans to reconstruct the Mission's schools, but I suspect we'll come away from the meeting with many insights and ideas for moving forward.


Today is a day off for our teams.  Normally we would go to a beach in Jacmel or Port Salut, but as Lex and I talked about it we decided we need to "stay home."  Cholera is rampant in both those areas and without having any control over the sanitary conditions in the kitchens we don't want to chance the health of the team members. So, it looks like a beach day at Mission of Hope with some boat rides to the island.  It will still be a fun filled day for everyone.