Serving God in Several Ways

Jon and his team arrived in Haiti this past weekend to serve for the week. As they quickly discovered, there are a variety of ministry and service opportunities. Read the following (re-posted from his blog) which he wrote after the first full day of work.

Well...we did it. We all survived our first real day of work here in Haiti. A quick rundown of the day (as it was best recounted to me by various team members).


1. All were up around 6am and ready to depart to our various work locations by 6:45am.

2. Joe and John M stayed here at the house and worked on the roof of the house where we are staying (we're currently using the first floor of the house and the second floor is being finished). We most likely won't have the metal that will finish the roof off before we go, so they're going to focus on the framing and let a following group complete the project. Maybe another day on this project.

3. Tyler and Ken joined with Wesley (a TG team member) and headed a short distance "up the hill" where they worked on some final assembly of a composting latrine that a previous group had started. This latrine is one of five that will eventually be built as a service to the local community. (If you aren't able to read between the lines, the majority of the community members live in the poorest of conditions and have no functional bathrooms of any kind.) It sounds like there are a few things to be completed here in the next day or so.

4. Amy, Dustin and Suzanne joined up with medical care facility that TG has just formed a new relationship. Turns out it's a clinic/ER/pharmacy/etc. that was established by University of Notre Dame and is staffed almost exclusively by ND grads and staff. Sounds like our team had some fun conversations about our home area. I know that each of our med team had the chance to use their specific training and will continue to be an asset through the week. This team could have possibly been the busiest of all of us today. Dustin shared that he treated over 50 patients in the ER today. And he and one other EMT will be the sole staff on duty there tomorrow!

5. Matt, Greg and Jon had the chance to join with another new partner ministry site. This site is a church/school affiliated with the American Baptist's and Cooperative Baptist's. The school sustained enough damage from the quake that it needed to be leveled and will be entirely rebuilt. The three of us jumped in with eight Haitian nationals and worked to dig out for the foundation of the soon to be rebuilt school. This group was easily the dirtiest at the end of the day.

Now we're waiting for dinner (which smells delicious!). The weather today was beautiful... low to mid 90s, a nice breeze and low humidity. We're all feeling very good about the day! I'm sure we'll all be in bed pretty early tonight, as the day's work catches up with us.