StephenByxbe.com

I was pretty sure I typed a blog last night… but it definitely isn’t online now. I even think a few people told me they read my blog… not sure what happened.

Anyways, let’s recap on the last two days. Yesterday I was continuing my fast. I had a few things that I have been praying about and I wanted to take it to the next level. Also, I have been slacking on doing my quiet time and personal devotion so I wanted to take a few days and focus completely on God and get back on track. Wow… let me tell you. I am back on track and focused. I wrote a few blogs and a devotion about God’s strength and how we can’t do things on our own. Lately I have been saying how exhausted I was and going into this fast I figured I would barely be able to function. However, during the two days that I was fasting I had the most energy of the past few weeks. The times when I was starving I was staying awake. I was constantly praying for God to give me His strength and energy. He did. It reminded me that God provides. He makes promises and He keeps them. That He loves us unconditionally and when we ask we will receive. I guess I felt a little like God wasn’t as present in my life as He was before, but times like this remind me that He never moved or changed… I did.

After my fast was over at 5am this morning, I enjoyed the BIGGEST breakfast ever. Almost to the point of making me sick. I had pancakes, fruit, eggs and ground beef, yogurt, bread, juice and coffee. It was awesome… I was stuffed.

Today was pretty laid back. We got the teams working. They were building one new roof, finishing doors on another house, teaching English, painting murals, feeding the children, playing at recess with the children and all kinds of things.

Today I spent a lot of time creating a detailed schedule for the next month and getting details from team leaders. Pastor Leon got back yesterday so he came by the compound today. It was good to see him. I missed him. It’s just not the same when he leaves.

Tonight was the last night for White Memorial. They have been amazing this week. They have really wanted to serve in any way possible. Tonight we went to La Reserve and had a great dinner with everyone. It will be sad to see them leave, but good news is I will see them all in September when I go home!

Anyways.. I am off to bed. Thanks for all of your prayers over the past few days while I was fasting.

Always with Love,

Stephen

That’s a word I haven’t heard in awhile. Today was great, even though I didn’t really do anything. Maybe that’s why it was great. I was up bright and early this morning with the 5am “Mmm Bop” wake up call. It was followed by some Hillsong which prepared us for church. This morning we had 3 different church groups. We had 1 group working with the children’s church at Blanchard, 1 group at Blanchard and the last group visited all 3 churches. Crazy Sunday huh? We had people all over the place. The children loved having the Americans teach them some songs and play with them. I really enjoyed it myself.

Around 8 am I snuck away from children’s church and over to my room. I really wanted to skype my Sunday school class from back home. I miss them so much. I can’t wait to be back home so I can see all of them. We were able to talk for a little while and then church was over. I took my usual Sunday mid morning nap. I woke up around 11:30 am and arranged some work for the group of guys that are here. The third floor is almost finished at Blanchard but there was a BUNCH of ruble and broken block and trash in all of the rooms, so I had the guys go through and clean it all up. Best part was they got to throw it all off of a 3 story building into a dump truck. That was a lot of fun.

I returned to sleep after that. I slept for a few more hours and then woke up again to go to the store. One of the groups here is preparing food for the school kids. I needed to go to the store and buy bread for 300 kids on Monday and 600 kids on Tuesday. That’s a lot of bread.

Yesterday I gave my bed away to Byambison and Jordan so they would have a place to sleep. Therefore, I no longer have a bed. I have been sleeping on my window bench. It is actually really comfortable. This afternoon I should have built a bed, but instead I built a desk. I am so happy to have a desk again.

I tried to keep myself pretty busy today while I wasn’t sleeping, but still make it my day off. I think I accomplished that. We had staff meeting tonight right after dinner and I think it was the fastest staff meeting every. Normally staff meeting lasts about 3 hrs because we are all hanging out, but tonight it might have been 30 mins. That was exciting.

I am fasting today and tomorrow to spend some time with God. To make myself stop and realize why I am here doing what I am doing. Fasting allows me to take times of the day where I would normally be eating and talk with God and spend some time with Him. Please keep me in your prayers over the next day while I am fasting and praying.

Thanks to everyone who is out there reading this! I hope I am continuing to give you the everyday feel of life in Haiti. We are almost finished with 6 more houses. That will bring our total up to almost 30 houses and 5 roofs. We are making some progress. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to HOM’s relief project.

Well, I am going to try to make it an early night. So I am off to bed at 8:30pm. This hasn’t happened in months!

Always with Love – talk to you soon.

Stephen

I don’t know how many days it’s been since I’ve written a blog. This is really gonna mess up the book you guys wanted me to put together Maybe I’ll just make something up for those days. This week has been intense and has required a lot out of the staff. The 4 – 5 hrs of sleep every night has left me too exhausted to write a blog each night.

Let’s see if I can recap on some exciting this this week. The first part of the week we had a small med group. Which was made up of a dentist, 2 pediatricians and a few helpers. The dentist fell out from exhaustion on day one. His comment was, “These Haitians jaws are so incredibly dense! It’s wearing me out.”

We have had another med group here at the same time. They have seen over 1000 patients this week. That is amazing.  They also were able to run a clinic in Repatriote 2 days. This team also had an eye doctor that has done eye exams ALL DAY LONG. He was giving eye exams last night at 9pm to people in the compound. He was so happy to be able to help so much.

We had a team of 25 join mid week. They brought a dental team, art team and 2 construction teams. The dentist has been working non stop. These people have so many needs. The construction teams have built a roof and new benches for the cafeteria at Blanchard. They have been full steam ahead. They are taking a personal trip to Jacmel today so we won’t see them until Sunday.

Everyone at Blanchard is leaving today. We will have no one here until 4:30pm. Hopefully it will be a nice relaxing day – however, I’m not getting my hopes up. It’s work work work here right now. I love it – that means progress.

The weather this week was amazing. Storms were brewing so we had cloudy nice days. The sun is out this morning hot and bright. I wish we could have another week like the last but I’m thinking we are out of luck on that.

We now have what seems to be a MONSTROUS staff. It’s actually kinda nice. It is a great group of young people that help make this place feel like home. I’ll introduce you to all of them. Everyone knows Nathan, he came down with me (harvestforhaiti.com). Next we have Autumn. She came down in March with a team from her church and then felt led to come back and serve long term. She has been here for a little over one month. She runs the clinic (autumnwhitby.wordpress.com). Next we have Jordan. He is an engineering student in Ohio that has joined us for 3 months. He is working on the compound construction projects. We just had another worker join us, William White. He came down with his church, who is here now, but will be staying for one month. He will be helping me with teams and home construction. Our Haitian staff is growing as well. Nadege, Pastor Leon’s daughter, now lives with us. She works in the Blanchard school but also helps with the teams. Byambison, mine and Nathan’s translator, still lives here. He works on home construction with me an helps Nathan out with projects at the compound. Jean Wadson just joined us a week ago. He is Jordan’s translator and helps with the construction at Repatriote.  We should be getting 3 more short term staff in July, so the crew will grow even more.

On an even better note!!! My mom and Aunt come on July 2nd!!! I can’t wait to see them. We are going to have a fun time. I am going to show them all of the sites and take them to some great places to eat – maybe they will get to work too

I am excited for Nathan getting to go home in a few days. I know he is really looking forward to it. September is approaching fast… it’s going to be a packed 2 weeks. Hopefully it will be semi relaxing.

This next week looks like construction… construction… construction! Let’s get it done.

Always with Love,

Stephen

Today was beautiful. It felt so good outside. Overcast and a high of 82 degree. That’s like working in paradise everyday. Right now on the radar there is a gigantic purple spot above Haiti. I’m pretty sure that means a lot of rain. I’m up for  it.

I felt very good when I woke up today… I thought for a second “Maybe I will make it today without falling asleep or being exhausted!” So I got up, took a shower, got dressed up for the airport and ate breakfast. Breakfast was amazing french toast by the way. After breakfast I headed to the job sites to answer some questions. I got everything taken care of at the job sites and headed home to get a notepad with an address. As I was leaving my room, I clearly wasn’t thinking, I locked my keys in my room. This isn’t the first time this has happened. I went down stairs and got a 1/4″ piece of rebar so I could fish my keys out. After a few minutes of skilled work I had them. Thank goodness I left them in sight and was able to fish them out.

It is now 9:30am, I need to be at the airport at 11am. I also need to pick up a load of glasses from a place that is potentially 45 mins away. That is with no traffic jams, no problems, no flat tires, no nothing. I said lets go. I was with Marconelle so I knew I could get there fast. We made it there in 48 mins. It took up 25 mins to pick up the glasses…. I told Marco “We’ve gotta get to the airport quick.” He responded with his typical answer “No problem my boss. I know a short cut.” So off we go. It took maybe 15 mins to get there. How in the world did that happen? And why didn’t we go that way in the first place? Who knows. O and here is where the exhaustion picks back up. I made it until 9:35am. I was passed out asleep in the front of the tap tap. I slept the whole way there and the whole way back. Crazy huh?

I made it to get the glasses, took them to Cite Soleil and then made it to the airport all in time. The group I went to pick up at the airport has 25 people, so I was going to use my new trick. I made friends with the security guys that watch the big gate that you can drive into and pick people up. We just randomly struck up a conversation one day and now we are best friends… they let me do whatever I want! I can back trucks in there all day long and the people at the airport don’t have to walk outside the gate. The police officer tried to stop us one time and my friend came over and pretty much said “It’s no problem, he can do whatever he wants.” The police officer was pretty frustrated and just walked off.

I got the team loaded up and to the Coconut Villa. We had another semi long term worker come with there team so I picked him up and brought him to Terre Noir. Exhaustion once again. I crashed for a few minutes. After I crashed we got everything set up in the dining room for dinner and did a few other things around the compound and that was pretty much the whole day.

We had a great time at dinner with about 50 people. This is going to be a great work week as well. We are building 9 houses, 5 roofs, benches for the Blanchard cafeteria and running a medical clinic! Praise the Lord.

Thats enough for now.

Always with Love,

Stephen

Still exhausted today. I was up at 5:45am playing Pavarotti as a wake up call for everyone. All of the workers are in Terre Noir now, so I was out the door early as well going to the job sites. The workers are so fast now. They needed so many things. I was scrambling to get everything to them. After I finally left the job sites I crashed for an hour or so. I woke up and went back out to the sites again. I was trying to handle some issues they were having about small details. After I finished I went back to the compound for lunch. I fell asleep on the kitchen bench after lunch. Maybe this explains how exhausted I am.  After lunch I had to take a trip up to the pharmaceutical company on Delmas. Autumn went with me today since she hasn’t been out of the compound in what seems like weeks. I made it up there and bought some Amoxicillan and then headed home. We stopped at the Haitian SAM’s on the way back to pick up some other supplies as well.

On the way back from store I got a phone call from the guy delivering a load of sand to one of the job sites. He had delivered 4 the day before and knew where he was supposed to go, so I wasn’t too worried. I talked with him and explained where it was going – he said no problem just like every Haitian does no matter if they understand or not. I called one of the workers and said be on the lookout for him. They said “No problem” as well. Not 15 minutes later I get a call from Ronic, who is my supply manager, saying the the driver is dumping the sand at 3 job sites across town where it is not needed. I went crazy.. how much more clear could I have been? It seems that the workers just said “we don’t need any more sand – take it over there.” So now we have an 11.36 cubic meter truck load of sand in the middle of the road on the wrong side of town. It is going to cost me to get it moved. So frustrating. But such is life right?

Tonight was nice. We had a great day at clinic so everyone was happy. It is nice to get to work with happy people! I did the devotion tonight after dinner… felt like I was just rambling , but I think I communicated a decent message. Who knows.. it’s not up to me right. Just gotta put it out there and let God work.

Well. I am headed to bed. My eyes are closing rapidly.

Always with Love,

Stephen

The last few blogs that I have published have supposedly been a little depressing & discouraging. I apologize for that.. however, you are getting to see exactly what is happening and how I am feeling. Sometimes I feel limited as to what I can share because I don’t want to scare anyone or give the wrong idea. Over the past few weeks we have had some amazing teams come in and work. Great teams every week – that was one thing. We had large groups for the last month. Back to back to back – no breaks. Large groups aren’t bad.. they just required more attention and work sometimes especially when they are accomplishing a lot.

During the last few weeks we had a few more people get sick than normal. It is my responsibility to take care of the teams while they are here so when GI problems are popping up left and right it gets a little stressful. After almost everyone was well, the girls dorm passed around a stomach bug. There was one day where the clinic was closed due to the fact that we had no workers. So this is where my stress has come from over the past few weeks.

On a good note. We finished all the houses in Repatriote and they are all ready for roofs this week. We are started 9 houses in Terre Noir this morning and made some amazing progress. The workers have been doing such a great job. They love what they are doing just as much as I do.

During this whole time I have been constantly reminded, by you guys, that my strength is found in the Lord. That I can do nothing on my own. I completely agree. We can only make it so far when we do not stay in the Word and draw close to God. When everything around you is so difficult and needs answers immediately and there is tension and pressure – it is hard to stay focused and rely on the Lord for strength. That is where we become weak and He is still strong.  A good friend of mine shared this with me, “There’s a fine line between doing something for God because we can out of our own talents and abilities, which is fine to do of course, and then doing what we do because of His empowerment and presence….doing those things which we immediately admit we could and would never do own our own…that’s when we see his presence and power displayed.”
I pray that I can live a life of service that isn’t based on my abilities but it is based on my willingness to be used by Him. I pray that everyone down here working will strive to be Godly people so that when people see us they see Christ – that all the glory goes to Him alone.

I really want to type a blog today, but I don’t think that everything I have on my mind would do anyone much good. I would try to change the subject but I am pretty sure it would all point to a few things that are going on.

I am sitting here staring at the computer screen because I just don’t know what to write.

This week has been great. We finished up a lot of construction work in Repatriote and will actually be finished with everything on Monday. We have already started prepping everything in Terre Noir for the next round of houses.

I need to clear my mind tonight so I am going to finish up with this blog.

Please continue to pray for me and decisions that I am making for the future. Also, pray that the necessary funds will be provided to cover however long the Lord plans to keep me here.

Always with Love,

Stephen

I feel like I haven’t written a blog in the past few days.. O yeah.. that’s because I haven’t. So much for the book idea of 365 days in Haiti. Who knows. Anyways, I am hear tonight – listening to the sound of the rain. I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately, and not sleeping deeply. Nathan will inform you that I have been talking in Creole during the night. Seems pretty funny, but it means i’m not sleeping well. If anyone reading this is coming down soon, some Valerian root or melatonin might be good.

Last night was a difficult night. That is why I didn’t write a blog. On the way back from dinner last night we saw a police officer pulled over and cones set out in the road. No person was standing out in the road the car was just pulled up. As we slowed down and passed we saw that a man had been hit by a car and was completely mutilated. Sorry for being graphic but this is how it was. His arm was ripped off and his head was busted open. One of his legs may not have been attached. It was really bad to say the least. Everyone was pretty shaken up. It just doesn’t make any sense why someone wouldn’t even stop to see what they did. How do you teach that? Is it even possible?

On to today. I was all over the place today. We are almost finished with 4 more houses. 3 in Repatriote and 1 at the church in Cite Soleil. We really have a process going now. I am very impressed with the workers.  They are a lot of fun to be around.

This afternoon, it was so hot. I was drained. I had to take a nap after not sleeping well. I woke up around 2 or 3 or I don’t even know when and helped unload some stuff.. Then I passed back out.

Josh leaves tomorrow, which is going to be sad, and Sabrina leaves next week. This is going to be tough to let go of them. We have a HUGE group coming next week… So hopefully after this slow week we will all be rested.

Well, the sound of the flood outside my window is putting me to sleep.

I hope everyone is well.

Always with Love,

Stephen

Tonight was movie night… and it just ended. So instead typing my blog.. yes… I watched a movie. However, this movie was amazing! I recommend it to everyone! Please go buy/rent/ download “The Ultimate Gift” it is definitely worth watching!

Today was a relaxed day for the most part. Just working and working some more.

Shortest blog ever.

Talk with you all tomorrow.

Always with Love,

Stephen

This week is going to be a sad week. We lose two of our close friends… Sabrina and Josh. They have been so much fun to have here. Sabrina has been a HUGE help with communication with the teams and organization around the compound and Josh has done an AMAZING job with the art program. They are truly going to be missed.

Today I woke up and helped cook some pancakes for everyone. By help I mean.. I stood there and watched. They were delicious. Everyone enjoyed them! It’s like a little bit of home every now and then. After breakfast we had some translator problems, so I had to work up a different plan for the day. I finally got it settled and everything worked out.

I was waiting for Pastor Luc to arrive so I could use his truck for the day. It makes it so much easier to move around with my own vehicle. I ended up going to the bank with BMB. Then we bought some fans for the church. I made it out the jobsite right before lunch time.  I was able to talk with all the worked and have agood time with them. I havent seen then in a while.

Dinner was kinda weird tonight. We havent had a small goup in a long time so it was nice to be able to sit and talk with them.

I am getting extremely tired myself.. So I will see you omoeoq

Always with Loe