StephenByxbe.com

I don’t know if it really is possible to melt… but I think today was pretty close. I started sweating the moment I got out of bed and continued to sweat until 9pm tonight. I lost at least 10 lbs today in sweat. I got up this morning with intentions to go to Ibo Beach and look at the construction. There wasn’t really a reason for me to go to Ibo today, but I was going anyways. However, I didn’t end up going. I decided there were a lot of things I needed to do today.

I gave Ronic everything he needed and then I started working here. I have been building a “depot” or storage shed over the past week or two. We have so many supplies coming that I needed a place to put everything out of the weather. I had two sections already built.. about 32′x16′. We went ahead and put all the boards in that came the other day. So this morning I moved a huge pile of rocks out of the way, which were in a gigantic ant pile. We lit the ant pile on fire after this. It was a lot of fun. We spent a few hours moving rocks and broken blocks. After we had cleared it all out we put gravel all on the ground to make a nice floor for everything.

Once we finished cleaning up, I built the next section to the depot. It is 11′X16″. It was about lunch time when we got the first 2 rafters up. We stopped after the first 2 and ate lunch. After lunch we finished with the rafters, lats and with the gravel under the new portion. I didn’t have any roofing nails so I couldn’t finish with the tin. I took a break and waited for the nails and the generator. As soon as that arrived I was back at work finishing the metal and starting the next section of the depot. It is the corner piece. I got half of the rafters finished and then called it a night around 6:30pm.

It was a productive, sweaty day. I liked it.

Now it’s time for some much deserved sleep.

Always with love,

Stephen

P.S. – the internet was down at the Insurance and Tag office today so we couldn’t do anything. Also, the alternator was bad so they had to get it fixed.

I know I know.. I didn’t write a blog yesterday. Just shoot me now… I probably ruined someone’s night because I didn’t post. Sorry.. really.. I mean it. I can’t say it won’t happen again, because it will.

Anyways.. nothing fun happened yesterday that I can remember. So on with today. I woke up a little late, but we had planned to go to Cite Soleil Church, so it was ok. However, we all had our own “English Church service” so we didn’t end up going to C/S at all.

The new group arrived around 9am or so. They got settled in, I talked with them, explained the work for the day and moved on. I was supposed to have a meeting with the bosses but I moved it to 5pm. I remembered that I needed to go to Cite Soleil to pick up some money for a door, so I hopped in the truck with Marconelle and rolled out.

I needed to leave for the mountain around 11:30am but I was waiting on Cola to arrive. He finally showed up around 11:45am and we started on our journey. I didn’t want to use a tap tap today because it was so hot so I rode with Cola on his motorcycle. It was a great time weaving through traffic, not getting stuck in traffic jams. I think I need to get Marconelle a motorcycle and just let him drive me around on that. Bad news though. When we got to Petionville we had a flat tire. I hopped off and waited about 30-45 mins while they fixed the tire. I arrived at my friends house around 1:30 – just in time for lunch. Lunch was amazing by the way. I was stuffed. Over lunch we talked about everything that is going on, what the government is doing/isn’t doing, other things we could do to help, how they could get involved with helping and lots of other things. After lunch we hopped in the car and drove up the mountain a little further to look at a piece of land that he owns. He wanted my opinion on it for an idea that he had. It is beautiful land on the side of the mountain. It was a fun drive getting back there to it as well.

I left my friends around 4:15pm and headed home. I made it home just in time for my meeting at 5pm. I worked everything out with the bosses and then joined everyone for dinner.

After dinner I rode with Pastor Luc to his house because I need to use his truck really early tomorrow morning. It was nice to ride out to his house. After we dropped him off, me and Byambison stopped at a fast food place and got a snack.

It was a relaxing day. This is going to be a busy week. The group here is ready to work. The goal is to build 8 roofs this week. I’ll keep you updated.

Gotta get some sleep now. Headed to St Marc in the morning.

Always with Love,

Stephen

The alarm clock sounded – 5:15am…. snooze. Again at 5:20am… snooze. Again… no snooze.. just turned it off. Finally I got up and ate breakfast.. I didn’t get to finish breakfast. I had to go out to the gate and make sure all the workers were here and ready to go. When I got up I had a pretty bad headache, so I had decided I wasn’t going to the job site in the morning. They didn’t need me there anyways. I had worked out the majority of the problems yesterday.

So.. I returned to my room and finished with breakfast. I went back to sleep for a little while.  I didn’t get to sleep too much longer because we were shipping the group out for some touring of PAP. I sent the group off and headed to the depot… aka the soccer field. At the depot the guys were starting to put together groups of 1/4 rebar. They are tying it 20 pieces at a time to use for the foundations. They are also moving stuff around so we can build the storage shed for all of the supplies.

I then headed to Cite Soleil to check on the work that is going on. We are building 1 house and 2 roofs. The houses are starting to look really good. I was happy to get to see the workers in Cite Soleil. It has been awhile since I have seen them.

After C/S I took a nap to try to reduce my headache. It didn’t work very well. After the nap I went to the welder’s house and picked up some doors for the houses we are building. I brought them to the “depot.”

After lunch I sat down and started working on the numbers for the houses. I am trying to squeeze the budget a little bit to be able to offer a couple different things. I spent a good hour or two working on the numbers. I ended up going to Cite Soleil again to look at the work and saw one of the home owner’s. He was so happy. He is planning on bringing me some creole chicken when we are finished. These families are so nice. I love them all.

The day ended pretty nice. Some of the loudest thunder and craziest lightning I have ever seen. It was a fun time. I will admit I jumped a few times. The devotion was fun tonight. Talked about hope… hope for the Haitian people.

Tomorrow the team leaves. Always sad when a group leaves, but good news – BILL FUDGE is coming. FOR A MONTH! Bill Fudge is one of my favorites.

Anyways, thats it for today. Nothing crazy. Just a regular day in the life of an American-Haitian

Always with Love,

Stephen

Finally.. it will let me write. I think my blog wanted me to take the night off last night. However, I stayed up late trying to make it work. No worries. I didn’t disappear… I am still here.

So let’s see. What happened yesterday. OOoooo some randomness on the job site. One of my workers (Fredo) stops by the compound before work. He has a headache, but is telling me something about gang members trying to steal from him or from the workers and shooting at him or someone else. It didn’t really make much since, even after Byambison came out there. But, this alerted me that something was going on. After Fredo left, Ronic came by to give me an update on everything. He told me there had been some confrontation at one of the sites resulting in him only being able to take what they could use in one day. Where we are working now there are a lot of problems with things “sprouting legs” and walking off. There also seems to be a problem with people forcefully taking items… What I don’t understand is why someone would pull a gun on a worker for a bag of cement. Really… are they going to pull a gun… hoist a 100lb bag of cement onto their shoulder and expect not to get hit with a shovel as they “run away” with a bag of cement. This is just me thinking.. this has not happened.. so please don’t worry.

Anyways, I am pretty good about rambling on and on about all kinds of things. I wish I could stay on topic, but I think the blog would probably be boring then. Ok. So, yesterday. I am on foot in Cite Soleil all morning checking out job sites. At first I was with Ronic and then I saw Marconelle walking around so he joined. We scoped everything out, fixed a few problems, heard the real story about the “stealer,” and talked with some friends. The real story about the stealer was – a guy robbed the grocery store next to one of the job sites. The whole community started chasing the guy and he got scared so he pointed the gun behind him and shot, kinda up into the air. If it had not been up in the air it would have hit Rigo or Fredo. That was what Fredo was trying to tell me. I wasn’t as concerned after I heard this. I thought someone came up to them stealing from them.

After this, I had no transportation, so Marconelle and I took a nice walk back to Blanchard. It was kind of relaxing. We had a good talk. I love Marconelle, he is awesome. His new title is “Driver and Body Guard.”

After lunch, I hopped on the bicycle and peddled around Terre Noir checking on the roofing projects. It started to rain while I was riding around which made it kind of nice. I stopped by a friends house and said hello. I hadn’t seen him in awhile. By the time I made it back on my bike it was time to call it quits for the day. I ended up having to run some late errands with Ronic so I made it back to the compound around 8:30pm.

Now on to today. I think 75% of the staff woke up today with a headache and other sickly feelings. We all took a little longer to get going today than usual. Long story short… today was a little more of slow day. However, we finished framing one house and finished with the metal on 1 other. I had to make a bank run and then when I got back everyone, including me crashed. I was out until 6pm. Not sure what happened, but I hope everyone is better tomorrow.

This next week is going to be sad. We lose Ella on Tuesday & Lucy, Gracie and William on Wednesday. Half of our American staff gone in one week… It is going to be a hard time adjusting to life without them.

Well.. look at the time. 11:15pm – only an hour and 15 mins past my bed time. This 10pm thing is hard. Maybe tomorrow…

Goodnight for now.

Stephen

This is my attempt to explain what happened yesterday.. and then some amazing things that happened today.

So.. last night… before dinner, one of the groups of workers came by the compound to get paid. They were working on 3 houses that we had already finished with the foundations. So, that being said, the contract would cut in half. Everyone knew this – I went over it numerous times. Anyways, they came by the compound to get paid. I went through everything with the boss and then I went and ate dinner. After dinner, I realized they were still sitting down there. I went down there and they were talking about how it wasn’t enough money. I assured him it was exactly what we had gone over. All of the workers were upset with the bosses. There are 3 bosses and 7 workers in each group. Byambison and I sat down there for a long time with all of them and tried to help them understand what was going on. After awhile they said that it was good and there was no problem. I went back up stairs and was talking with the engineer and working on bills when someone said they needed me. I said I would be right there. Madam Pierre then came and said she needed me… followed by Nadege and Pierre. Pierre told me that the workers were so upset with the boss that they had broken some bottles and had rocks and were waiting on the bosses to leave the compound at that they were going to attack them. I grabbed Byambison and headed down to check out what was going on. I walked out of the gate and found a mob of my workers waiting for the bosses to leave. When they saw me they immediately hid their “weapons” of choice. I walked up to the main guy causing the problems and started asking what in the world he was doing? He immediately knew that he, as well as everyone else, was about to have a BIG problem. My level of “upset” quickly started to rise. I called for everyone to go inside the gate. I made them sit down on a pile of blocks and not move for this whole conversation. This whole ordeal lasted for an hour and a half. I tried to figure out what the major problem was and he most I could figure out is that the bosses told them that they were going to make more money than I told them. So all the workers thought the bosses were keeping money from them. I explained to them what was going on and that no one was keeping money from them. At this time all of them are still ready to kill the boss. Next, I started going through a series of questions including: Why are we building houses? Who are we building houses for? What happened to those families? Why can’t they pay for their own house? These questions were followed by : How many people around here have jobs? The only response I got was “No one…” I said “That’s right. No one has a job around here. So do you know how lucky you are to have what you have? You see all the people everyday that cannot even afford food for their families, but yet you are complaining about a couple dollars when you know you are going to get paid again next week.” This all started to sink in with all of them. Nadege started to speak up now saying “Stephen and the rest of the American workers came down here to help and to work. They do not get paid at all and they do not need your help, however, they choose to give you a job. When you sit here and try to hurt each other and complain it really makes me sad.” This whole conversation brought me to tears. It is so sad when money and greed take over. These guys are such hard workers but something wasn’t working out. I still don’t understand what was going through their brains. Finally we began to work some things out, then everyone got fired, and then we started working out a new deal. I was mainly trying to change the guys mind that was leading this revolt. I worked out a deal with him and we were able to call it a night. I let the bosses go about 20 mins before the workers and then finally let the workers go. It was a crazy night.

I know there are probably a lot of details left out of that but I think that gives you a pretty good idea. Please don’t let this give you the wrong idea. It is very safe here. This was just a small disagreement.

Now for today. I got everyone up and got them started. We had groups for the retreat, construction and site seeing today. I went with the site seeing group to start off. They wanted to see some of the houses that we had built so I took them for a walk through in Cite Soleil. We had a really fun time. We the group got to the first house we ever built, the lady was so happy to see up. She is one of my favorite people. Her name is Michelle. The group wanted to pray for her and she gladly accepted. The lady that prayed was so awesome. She thanked God for the light that this lady was to the community and for all of the wonderful things that she is doing. There was nothing in the prayer about any situation that she is in or to get her out of the situation or to only bless her. She asked that God would continue to bless her with even more amazing things in her life. Michelle was glowing. She was so happy after the prayer. I was almost crying again. It was amazing to see this group come in and want to talk, pray and meet with people so bad. Their interaction with everyone has been so inspiring. When teams like this come it reminds me of what broke in my heart when I first came.. to see the love of these people towards everyone.

Well, it’s time for me to head to bed. Sorry for leaving out so many details…. I’ll try to do better next time.

Always with Love,

Stephen

Sorry for not writing the blog last night… I know it probably threw everyone’s schedule off Anyways.. on with today.

Today was Sunday – you know what that means! Church and a Day OFF!! Wrong. We were out of water this morning so me and Jordan rushed to get water this morning before church, but it took us so long we missed most of church. One group was leaving at 9:15 anyways so I had to help them get out to the airport. After all of that jazz I took a nap. That was about the only relaxing thing at happened all day.

William and I left around lunch to go to Cite Soleil and finish the water filtration building’s roof. It has to be done by Monday afternoon because they will be using it on Tuesday – so we are on a time crunch. William and I worked on the roof until after 6pm. It was crazy.. so hot.. and nasty, but we are almost finished.

Around 4 o’clock the coolest thing happened. I am standing on the roof in what is supposedly a fairly dangerous place, where everyone is not just poor but extremely poor. Everything is dirty, sad and feels like there is no hope… when all of a sudden I hear a single voice singing Amazing Grace – in English. I couldn’t help but stop everything I was doing and sing along. As I stood there I thought about all of the people who have nothing but are sitting in this church praising the God of the Universe and crying out to Him saying how amazing He is, how thankful they are for His love an grace. Every time I see this, it reminds me of how small I am… how NOTHING I am.

After Amazing Grace they sang “Who Am I” by Casting Crowns.. hearing this song.. knowing what the Haitians have gone through.. I don’t even know how to explain it. Some things just don’t make sense. I know I wouldn’t be handling this situation the way that any of them are. They are such strong people. I love how no matter what happens.. no matter what is thrown their way, you will continue to hear them singing praises to our Mighty God.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week. God Bless.

Stephen

This morning was sad. We all woke up and shipped out the team from Lifespring in Ohio. They were some hard workers! They finished 4 roofs, cleaned out the 3rd floor new construction, worked with the kids in the school, passed out lunches, taught english, read to the students, helped with recess and passed out hygiene kits. They stayed busy the entire time they were here. But they had to leave… so we shipped them out at 6:30am.

After that the staff split into 2 groups. 1 group was with me and Mama Byxbe. It included Nadege, Autumn, Byambison, Aunt Karen, Mama and myself. We headed up the mountain to “The View” and to a few other places. Aunt Karen was in Haiti about 10 yrs ago and worked in a village up on the mountain so we went to find it. After a lot of searching, we found it. They have since then rebuilt the church and school to be much bigger than before. It was nice that she got to see it again.

After we found the school we headed on up the mountain to Furcy. It is a little village WAAYYY up in the mountains. It is well worth the drive. It is GORGEOUS. There is a little bed ‘n’ breakfast up there call “The Lodge.” We stopped and hung out and ate lunch. We talked for a few hours over lunch, took a lot of pictures and then headed home. We stopped by the Baptist Mission on the way back to get some ice cream and do some shopping.

Overall it was a great day hanging out with my mom and Aunt. It was fun to talk about old stories and for everyone to meet them. I am so glad they were able to make it down here. We left this morning at 8:30am and didn’t make it home until 6:30pm. We were gone for a long time… but it was well worth it.

The second group stayed at the compound and reorganized and cleaned. The kitchen area looks amazing now – Thanks guys! Also, they started building some cabinets for the kitchen which are going to be awesome. After they finished with the cleaning, they headed to Visa Lodge to relax and watch the soccer game.

For the next few days we have no teams here so we can catch up with everything.

Pray for Nathan as he is in the States right now.

Thank you for everything and remember to keep September slightly open!

Always with love,

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

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.