Hey everybody! We are back in Haiti! My brother asked for an update so I thought I’d post it on here as well.

We’ve been back in Haiti for about 2 and a half weeks and it’s been quite the start after our summer in Alaska. On Saturday the 7th we were having our Young Adult get together and all of a sudden we heard a rumble and then a second later it started shaking. We all ran out of the cement building because we’ve all seen pictures and heard stories of the 2010 earthquake. These buildings just don’t withstand a lot of violent shaking. The earthquake was about 40 miles northeast of us close to a town called Port de Paix. Everything here stayed together but some of our buildings have concerning cracks in the walls but no real damage. No one was injured except for a few bumps and bruises from people running out so fast and bumping into things.

We had about 3 aftershocks for a few days after the initial earthquake that left us all real jumpy at any noise. Some of the kids find it funny to make the rumbling noise and watch everybody run! It was kind of entertaining to see how fast they could move but then we tried to keep them from doing it again as it could end up like the boy who cried wolf.

Sine the 9th we haven’t had any aftershocks and the kids are less and less scared as each day goes by without any more shaking. For a few days afterwards, some of them were super scared and kept asking “do you think the shaking is done now?”

It was very good in a sense because it made them all and us think about how quick life can change and how fragile life is. Tonite we had an hour of worship and the kids really loved that. They were singing at the top of their lungs it was so neat to see!

Prayer Requests:

-thankfulness for God’s hand of protection on all of us here

-continued safety

-for Port de Paix and the surround communities as the people recover.

-that God would continue to work in these kids’ lives and that they would wholeheartedly commit their lives to Christ.

-safety as I’ve been teaching two of the older boys how to drive the manual transmission dodge diesel pickup. Not the easiest first vehicle to learn but once they get the hang of it they can drive anything!

-for continued wisdom in knowing how to use our time.

Thank you so much!

-Stephen