So, why did I start this blog with that? Because I have a really funny story to share with you that comes from that.

Nathan, Nadege and myself went to an English speaking church this Sunday. We got there at 8:15am, because we didn’t know when it started, and sat there until 10am. It was amazing though because the singers were warming up and there was an amazing singer there.

We sat and people watched for a while. There were a lot of white people who slowly started to show up. This is the most white people , besides our compound, that I have seen in a long time. It is going to be culture shock in the U.S. We all sat around talking ( and sleeping) until the service started. Right before it started I turned to Nathan and said,

ME: “I’m just wondering, why do missionaries always stick out like a sore thumb?”
Nathan: “I think it’s because of there out of date clothes.”
ME: “Look at that guy… jeans and a polo…. that’s not out of date.”
Nathan: “True, I don’t know… but something definitely makes them stick out.”
Me: “Yah, look at that guy. He’s DEFINITELY a missionary.”
Nathan: “I think it is the out of date/bad hair cuts. That has to be it.”
***Short pause***
I look at Nathan’s hair…. and bust out laughing. I am crying. Nathan is laughing. We are disturbing everyone. I can’t control it.
It was the funniest thing that has happened in a long time.

ME: “So we definitely look like missionaries”
Nathan: trying to rationalize… “No this is a lack of haircut… not a bad haircut”

So.. the new goal. Always do my best to not look like a missionary.

The service was a lot of fun. Getting to worship in English was great.

Can’t wait to see everyone at home. 5 DAYS!!

Always with Love,
Stephen

P.S. Autumn Lynn Whitby – I love you so much.

I ended up in Cite Soleil, where we were unloading 1000 bags of cement and moving 18 tons of iron in preparation for the new clinic. Things are really ramping up. We are about to start a lot of construction.

After talking with the workers in C/S and making sure they knew the tasks at hand for today I headed to Repatriote. Rep has been a tough case. Bill Fudge has done an amazing job with starting the wall. It is miserable working conditions and hard work. Today the guys were finishing the bond beam and starting to lay stone. We are making some good progress.

I made it back to the compound in time to do some book keeping and then head to lunch with the guys. We went to a “new” fast food place, which is amazing. It is only minutes from the compound and I love it…. but not as much as I love Autumn Whitby. Which, by the way… I miss that beautiful girl like crazy. I can wait until Sept 21st when we get to meet up in South Carolina! It’s going to be a great reunion!

After lunch I came back and finished up some meetings with Bob and then Nathan, Nadege and myself joined Bob and Flo’Anne for dinner at a really nice little Haitian restaurant on Delmas.

It was a nice – fast paced – day. Keep it comin’!

Always with love,
Stephen

So… just a thanks in advance to all of the people who are hosting my homeless self while in the States. I greatly appreciate it. We are going to have a GREAT time together.

I stopped writing here because I was on the phone. After I finished talking on the phone (to Autumn by the way) I forgot I was writing a blog. So now that it is 10:45pm I am going to make this quick.

This morning I went to the cement place with the big truck and got them through the gate then I headed back to the compound. When I returned I spent the rest of the day with Bob and Joseph our team of engineers. We looked over plans for all the construction projects we have going on.

Really exciting day huh? Well guess what. In exactly one week I am heading home…. I don’t really know what to do.

Tomorrow is another day of meetings.

Talk to you later,
Always with Love
Stephen

It all came down to Monday morning. I had to talk with her dad – after that was finished – the mission began. Nathan, Byambison, Nadege, Jordan & Hannah all went on an adventure up the mountain to scout everything out.

They stopped by the flower market and priced everything and told the guys what we were doing. They were more than happy to help.

They went on up the mountain and scouted out another spot for a “flower attack.”

They came back with a great report. They had such a fun time doing it.

They spent Tuesday morning preparing. They were making the sign out of old pallets and painting it and organizing times of arrival. They left not too much later than we did, but we were going downtown first.

When we got to the top of the mountain, Nathan, Nadege and Hannah were already there. Nathan had set up a hidden camera that looks out over the view. It got everything on film. It was awesome. He coordinated all the people that arrived before us getting out of the way and all the Haitians running in with flowers. Good job guys! They were hiding down on the level below us the whole time, so they could hear everything.

Next, we start driving down the mountain. Byambison is hiding on the side of the road. He has organized two guys to stop the truck and give us flowers and for the guy with the sign to come running up. Good work once again.

We continued down the road to the last check point. Jordan was hiding at the flower market. He planned it out for the guys to rush the car and give us a “Congratulations” banner on the front of the truck.

It took a lot of people to pull this off and I thank all of you.

——————————-
Now for today.
This morning was kinda ehh…. kinda sinking in that Autumn isn’t here – but it had nothing to do with her not bringing breakfast – so cross that off the list. I miss her. Three weeks with out her will be hard.

I spent most of the morning organizing the budget and planning my trip to the bank. When I was finally ready it was almost lunch. Marc Onelle and I decided to try a new bank. We went and it seemed a little weird. We made our way inside and saw that everyone was sitting down on the floor taping a nap or just relaxing. We learned there was a problem with the system. We decided to leave. Back to see our regular bank now. Same problem, but we went in a sat down. Bad idea. This took us all day. We sat and sat and sat. We walked across the street for food. It was really nice. I had a very good sandwich. The good news is that they can make really good salad all the time.

When we got back to the bank the system was up. However, it took us a long time because I was transferring all kinds of things and withdrawing as will. We didnt get out of the bank until 3:30pm.

On the way home we stopped by Acierie D’Haiti. This isthe wholesale for all of my supplies. I wanted to run in, get the delivery set up and leave. But guess what… They had no power. Luckily the main guy came in a fixed everything.

Today was a “testing” day.. I would take my actions as a passing grade.
It was also a tough day because everything was going wrong.

I can barley talk not because I am so tired,
Off to bed. Talk to you tomorrow. Thanks

Always with love,
Stephen

So, for everyone who wasn’t in the loop, which was pretty much everyone, Autumn is her name. She has been serving in Haiti with HOM since May… long story short.. well actually it wasn’t a long story – I fell in love. God brought us together and worked everything out – that’s all I can say about that.

So.. on to the details of the most exciting day of my life!! But first… a little back story. Autumn and I have been talking a lot and our relationship has been growing. I have talked with her mom before (when Autumn had malaria and I was coordinating a Medivac), so not really the best time and I had talked with her parents over skype before but not much more. I was going out on a limb here getting things prepared. I worked hard with my mom & sister (who are in the USA) on finding “The Ring.” SOMEHOW we managed to pull it off. They shipped it down with one of the visiting teams. CRAZINESS HUH? Yeah that’s what I thought. The ring arrived and I quickly hid it. I didn’t know when exactly I was going to ask the question. I had not even talked to her dad yet. Luckily, her dad just planned a trip for the last few days of August. This was my only chance.

The next big thing. The proposal. If you have known me, even for a short period of time, you know that I am crazy and like to do crazy over the top things. So this had to be AMAZING. Nathan, Jordan, Byambison and I laid around in the room one night throwing around ideas of what to do. This was a pretty good brainstorming session. A lot of ideas that were absolutely impossible but amazing. We continued to plan and plan and eventually worked up the PERFECT plan.

I am going to tell you what happened by going through the events of the day and then explaining how it happened.

Here Goes!
Monday morning: The only chance I had to talk with Autumn’s dad. This was kind of scary. I didn’t think I was going to be able to get him alone to talk to him. Autumn stayed pretty close to him the whole time, but I managed squeeze a few minutes alone in Cite Soleil. I gave him a a tour of the compound. Towards the end of the tour I manned up enough courage to tell him I needed to talk to him. I’m pretty sure he knew what was coming next. We had a great *slightly emotional time. I love Autumn’s dad. He is a great man. I can’t wait to meet the rest of her family!!

Tuesday morning: I had to be at work early so I was up and gone. Autumn and her dad stayed at the compound and organized some medical supplied. I just acted like it was a normal day. Running around working and sweating. I stopped back by the compound to find that Autumn had cooked me some french toast. It was really good. After I ate, I helped them transport all the medical supplies to the clinic in Cite Soleil. We finished around 11 am and then took a break to change clothes and rest.

12:15 – Heading out on the adventure. We first started by going to the palace to show her dad (Mr. Mike) the earthquake damage. We had a good time driving around. When we were at the palace we saw two HUGE U.N. helicopters land in the front yard of the palace. We stopped and watched for awhile. It was great because I was trying to kill time. After a little while we started on our way up the mountain. We got stuck in some bad traffic but we were having a good time. Halfway up the mountain we stopped on the side of the road at one of the shops where they have all of the decorative iron work. It was a lot of fun. I have never stopped there before. I ended up buying a few small gifts to take home. We went to get in the car to leave and Autumn decided to go back to buy something. It was perfect. I was able to talk with Mr. Mike for a few minutes to go over the plan. Back in the car we go and up the mountain we are heading.

2:15pm – We make it to Petionville. I am starving now because I did not eat lunch. We stopped at E’pidor for a quick bite to eat. Since we were going to La Reserve later we didn’t want to eat much. It was the fastest service we have ever had in Haiti. Not so good for my kill time plan. We went in E’pidor, ordered, got the food and finished eating in maybe 10 – 15 mins.

2:30pm – Last stretch of mountain to go up. Here we go. We get to where we are supposed to turn, we make the turn and keep going but it doesn’t feel right. We keep going but finally turn around to ask if we are going in the right direction. Everyone says we are going in the right direction so we turn around again. Almost there. I was getting nervous on the way up… thinking “What am I going to say? What if it doesn’t go right? What if the ring doesn’t fit?” So my mind was working pretty hard.

3:00pm – We arrived at Boutilier (pronounced – boo-til-ee-yay) and when we pulled up there were 5 or 10 cars already there. I was getting really nervous. There is going to be an audience. I was getting worried that it wasn’t going to work. I had talked with Mr. Mike at the iron shop to help me get Autumn to go ahead and walk off so I could get the ring out, however, it didn’t work. She waited for me. So I started to walk off and then “remembered” that I didn’t lock the car. I went back and got the ring. As I was walking down everyone was smiling at me and looking really happy. I was wondering what is going on. People were turning and giving me a thumbs up. I walked over to where Autumn was standing with her dad. He had the camera out already. He asked us where this was. We explained this was where we had our first date. This was also where we had our first kiss.

I turned to her, and told her that I loved her. I started to choke up a little and she got this really worried look on her face. I told her nothing was wrong but that I was very happy. I said “I don’t have much to offer you but I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don’t know where we will be, but wherever that is I want it to be with you.” By this time the look on her face is priceless. I dropped to one knee, pulled out the ring and her eyes got huge. She said “what are you doing, what are you doing?” I asked her to marry me and she went crazy. As soon as she said yes we were rushed by Haitian men carrying red roses. Everyone around was applauding. It was amazing. We were standing at the edge of the mountain the overlooks all of Port-au-Prince, the bay and the northern range of mountains. It was so beautiful. It was perfect. We spent some time taking pictures and talking. We called Autumn’s mom and my mom and told them what had happened. It was such an amazing time. We walked back to the car and headed down the mountain.

3:30pm – Riding down the mountain. Autumn is on the phone with her best friend. We get down the steep part of the mountain onto the main road. All of a sudden a man runs up to the car and tries to stop the car. He has an armful of flowers. I turn to the left and see a man running towards the car with this huge sign that says “Congratulations Stephen and Autumn!” I was in shock. I just started laughing, smiling and almost crying. Autumn couldn’t believe it. She was so surprised. SOOOOO SURPRISED!! I was loving it. She had no clue I was going to propose, she had no clue how the guys had the roses ready, no clue how the guys knew to stop us or how they had the sign. She was so cute. She could not stop smiling. She kept looking through the pictures and the ring and smiling. It was wonderful.

3:45pm. We made it back down to Petionville. There is a big flower market in the middle of Petionville. We drove by and the guys forced us to stop. They started throwing more flowers in the car. They taped a big banner on the car that said “Congratulations!” Autumn was speechless. She could not figure out how all of this was happening. It was priceless. I wish I could have videoed her face the whole time.

4:15pm – we arrived at La Reserve. My FAVORITE restaurant. It took us awhile to get there because I was so excited I got a little turned around. We made it finally and everyone joined us. Pastor Leon, Mrs Jacky, Nathan, Nadege, Byambison, Jordan, Hannah, Bob and Flo’anne, Mr. Mike, Jean Wadson, Reggie and Dale. It was so good!!

We left the restaurant around 8pm. It was such a fun time.

Tomorrow I will explain how we pulled it all off. Thanks to everyone who helped. And thanks for all of the Congrats!

I love you all and I LOVE AUTUMN WHITBY!!!!

Always with Love,
Stephen

Today. Autumn’s dad arrived yesterday afternoon so today started early and was packed with stuff since he is only here for 2 days. It feels like a repeat of when my mom was here… running all day every day to see as much as we possibly can.

We started at 6 am in Cite Soleil at the site for the new clinic and doing a tour of the compound. After the tour we went back for breakfast and then visited Repatriote. After Repatriote back to Cite Soleil. We bounced around everywhere. We ate lunch at one of our usual – really good – Haitian restaurants. Somewhere in all this madness I took them to the bank with me. After lunch we stopped for a short nap and then rode out to Ibo Beach to look at all of the job sites. It was a lot of work crammed into a short day. Tomorrow looks like it will be more of the same. I think everyone is planning on going out to dinner tomorrow night, so that should be a lot of fun.

Only 11 days until I am back in the USA. I would say until I am home… but that isn’t home anymore. It will be sad to leave here but good to see everyone!

Always with Love,
Stephen

Like magic my stomach felt better, my whole body felt better, everything was better. Pickles – I LOVE YOU. <— and that’s where it got a little bad. Where I should have stopped eating them was after 3 or maybe 4… I continued to eat both jars. I almost made myself sick again by eating so many pickles – however, I think that is impossible.

Here’s the part where I started to feel bad.. but in a different way. I started thinking about how much I paid for these pickles. It didn’t phase me in the store because I wanted them so bad. I paid the equivalent to 1.5 days wages for one of our workers on a snack that I was craving and finished before I got home.

This made me wonder what else am I – are we – doing that we aren’t even paying attention to. Or more so… what are we wasting.

Hmmm…

Always with Love,
Stephen

So. Here is my disclaimer ***It is possible that this blog may be graphic – Please stop reading if you don’t want to hear about DIARRHEA****

That’s right… lot’s and lot’s of diarrhea. I was up for the majority of last night sitting on the can. This time it really confused me. I ate nothing strange.. didn’t venture out on a limb with a family in Cite Soleil. I minded my own business and ate good food – actually, the same food everyone else ate, but I was the only one to get sick. This is the time where I will say PUTTING YOUR HANDS IN YOUR MOUTH CAN MAKE YOU REALLY SICK.. *not the water

So.. diarrhea after diarrhea. Fun stuff… but I knew I had to be up and at Cite Soleil at 6 – 6:30am because we were starting to dig the foundation of the new clinic. I was actually up at 5am but went back to sleep and re-awoke at 6am. I was trying to get dressed in between my trips to the bathroom. It wasn’t working well. Finally I just decided to hold it. I jumped on the back of the motorcycle and rolled out. I was thinking I would probably have to do laundry after that trip but I successfully made it. I immediately went to scope out the bathroom just in case. No toilet paper. I started making phone calls to line some up. Rio – love him to death – works at the C/S compound. He came around the corner (running as best he could, for those who know Rio) and tossed me a roll of TP. It was like Christmas.

I was struggling to walk and stay standing because I was so dehydrated, plus I was sweating like crazy. But I got everyone started with the jackhammer and picks breaking everything up. I tried to hang around for a few minutes, but decided if I was going to pass out.. I would rather be in my bed. I somehow managed to stay on the bike the whole way home – and didn’t mess myself either. However, I visited the bathroom as soon as I arrived.

The next portion of the day consisted of sleeping. My cipro started to kick in around 11 – Praise the Lord. Also, for me to take medicine it has to be something really bad. I took the cipro at 5:30am. I was able to eat some lunch and drink a little, so I started to feel better. Very weak but able to move. So, knowing me. I jumped back on the motorcycle and headed back to Cite Soleil to check out the construction. I was struggling, but not as bad as this morning – and I was “getting better every minute.”

Not too long after I got there the other jack hammers showed up. These are some high powered jack hammers. It was awesome. Three jack hammers going all at the same time. We made some good progress. I think we will finish breaking everything tomorrow.

I’m glad I love my job.. because if I didn’t I wouldn’t be nearly this dedicated or adventurous

Tomorrow is going to be a long – deafening day with the jack hammers, but it is so much fun!

Love you guys,

Stephen

For Glenda (Always with Love)

After I got them started, I headed back to Terre Noire. I checked on the shoe distribution. It seemed to be going well, so I headed upstairs to work on the guys dorm. We have been busting out the old windows and putting in new – more open – windows for air flow. I picked up the gigantic drill and started drilling holes in the wall. After I had my border drilled out I picked up the sledge hammer and started bashing. It took a little while to break through the wall and when I did I wasn’t ready. My hand went through the wall with it crushing my index finger… it’s just a finger so no worries. I kept bashing and bashing and finally finished so the guys could put in the window.

It was lunch time now so I stopped to eat. I enjoyed lunched with everyone. It was a good time. We had some AWESOME sandwiches. After lunch I was in the mood to keep demolishing things so I headed to Cite Soleil. I decided it was my turn for some jack hammering. It was fun. I did a huge section. Tomorrow I will probably be on it again for awhile.We should have all the concrete busted up tomorrow – so we will be ready to dig.

After a few hours of jack hammering I went back to Terre Noire. The crowd was beginning to fade for the shoes and they had run out of adult shoes so I made a phone call to try to get some more kids there. I don’t even think 20 minutes passed and there seemed to be 400 kids there. People were everywhere. I had to start playing crowd control. People were trying to squeeze in the door and fighting to get in. We only had shoes for tiny children – size 2 – 13. So we were having to sort through the crowd. Craziness.

Everything finally calmed down. We were able to give almost every *tiny* kid there a pair of shoes. They were all so happy.

Afterwards, all the workers went to E’pidor for some ice cream as a treat for a VERY long day. It was delicious… as usual.

Time for some sleep because tomorrow is going to be another LONG day!

Goodnight!

Always with Love,
Stephen

This morning I was preparing the truck for a delivery but had to stop what I was doing and go to Cite Soleil. I asked the guys that manage the depot to load 40 bags of cement on the truck. I headed to Cite Soleil, spent at least half an hour there, and then came back. Three bags of cement had made it on the truck… not stacked either. They were in 3 different random places. I knew that today was going to be a great day. We had a little discussion and then they started bringing the rest.

Today was a continuation of the major clean up / fix everything inside the compound. The windows that I was working on yesterday were ready to be finished (stuccoed) and they said that everything would be finished today. We will come back to this story later.

Finally the truck is loaded and we head out to buy some block. 1800 to be exact. We put 1000 on the truck and head to Bon Repos. We can’t back all the way down the road so the truck has to stop and the guys have to carry each block in by hand. It is about 75 – 100m to where we have to go and 1000 blocks is a lot of blocks. When the workers see this (all 10 of them) they try to revolt. I quickly counter attack saying that they are always begging for work – I gave them work – and now they are complaining. I made them a deal. They could help, I would pay them and take them home…. or they could not help, they could sit down, I wouldn’t pay them and they could find their own ride home. They all starred at me like I was crazy. I told them I would do it all by myself and started carrying all the block – they quickly joined in. It was a sneaky move on their part to try to get a raise. I asked them who all wanted to help again on Friday after we finished unloading everything and they all volunteered again. Sneaky sneaky.

I make it back to the compound and go to check out the windows. It is almost 3pm. The workers say they are taking off for the day. They have only finished half of one window. I told them sorry, but we had a deal. We finish it all today. They said no – I said don’t come back. They debated in creole for a while whether I was serious or not. They didn’t think I was listening/could hear them. So I turned to them and told them I was very serious. They were not very happy – however they finished everything in 2 hours. Makes me wonder what was going on all day.

We had a group join us tonight – Soles4Souls. They were hear in July and came back to pass out some more shoes. It is going to be a fun couple of days.

We start breaking ground tomorrow at Cite Soleil for the new clinic. Pray that it all goes well!

Hope everyone had a great day! I am still collecting addresses for my mailing list so if you haven’t sent yours yet – please send it to me.

Always with Love,
Stephen