StephenByxbe.com

So much to do – so many things to get in the way. Driving places in Haiti is just ridiculous. Traffic is always awful. This morning I dropped my mom and aunt off at the airport – yes, so sad. I didn’t want my mom to leave… or my aunt. It was so good to see my mom. I can’t wait to September when I get to see the rest of the family.

After the airport, I headed up towards Petionville with Marconelle for a meeting. It took forever to get up there this morning because of traffic… long story short, I got a great nap. I had a great meeting with a new friend for the majority of the morning. He had a great view at his house. It was nice to relax for a few minutes as well. I headed back down the mountain around lunch. I went to Terre Noir to change clothes and grab some lunch. After lunch, I headed to the job sites in Cite Soleil. I needed to check on the progress of all the foundations that were being worked on. Also, we are putting a roof on the new building at the Cite Soleil compound so I tried to help them for a little while.

It is really hard working in Cite Soleil because there are so many people in need that have lost everything or don’t have anything and there isn’t anything I can do. It is hard to tell people over and over – I’m sorry, I don’t have any jobs or I can’t build you a house or anything else they want. Spending 3 weeks in Cite Soleil will wear you thin. But at the same time it is such a blessing to help people who absolutely cannot help themselves.

Something fun that happened this week was Soles 4 Souls came down to Haiti. They have been staying with us at the Blanchard Resort. They have passed out over 1500 pairs of shoes in 2 days! It has been amazing to hear the stories each day when they finish and to see them passing the shoes out to the kids here. They are coming back in August and I can’t wait!

Tomorrow I am hoping to take a little time off and rest before we have 50 this week. I need to spend some time reading and catching up with people. We’ll see if this actually happens or not.

Today was great overall… one of the busiest days I have had in a while but always fun.

Thanks for all of your prayers. I look forward to seeing everyone soon.

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

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

Last nights devotion and time of sharing was still close to my heart this morning when I woke up. This group that is here shared so much that was on their hearts and I was able to learn a little more about each of them through that time. It was sad having to watch them leave today.. but it is something that we have to do.

It is really hard having teams come in, really get to know them and then a week later they leave. I wish everyone could stay forever.

So this morning around 6:15am I loaded the first group up in the big tap tap and headed to the airport (while everyone else was at church). I dropped them off.. said my goodbyes.. and headed back home. When we pulled into the compound there were people standing all outside of the church. More people standing around than I have ever seen.. especially during church. I stopped and asked Byambison what was going on and he said “There is no more room for anyone. The church is completely full.” That is sad and amazing at the same time. To see how the church is growing so much makes my heart happy.

Since I didn’t have a seat, I went up to the room and started reading a new book that Christopher & Elizabeth Almon sent me. It’s called “Decision making and the will of God.” Its a really good book so far. I read a few *very important chapters* and then took a nap on my window bench.

I scheduled a meeting for all of my skilled workers (the Bosses) at 10 am this morning.. not thinking that I would be in the middle of a beautiful nap. So I rolled off of the bench and headed down to meet with them. The subject of the conversation was changing from weekly pay to contract work. Good news… it went over VERY well. I got everything set up so work will be a little easier once we get started on the new pay schedule.

We wrapped up the meeting around lunch time, but I forgot to eat. I headed up stairs to my roof top cabana that I set up. I stretched a rain fly, from a few pieces of rebar, about 4 feet off the ground and then laid a thatched banana mat underneath. I hung out here most of the afternoon. Unfortunately around 1:30pm I had to take the rest of the team to the airport. Sad to see them go. Autumn rode with me to the airport, as did 2 of the new guys that just showed up. We dropped them off and then drove around town to the grocery store and to a few other stores in search of a couple different items. The first store was closed so we headed on down the mountain to Delimart. We parked at Delimart and went inside. We bought a bunch and stuff and the headed outside. When we got outside, someone had blocked our tap tap in so we were stuck there for awhile. Finally we managed to get out.. I just wanted to ram the car.. but the driver didn’t approve of that plan.

We stopped at one more store and then headed home. Once we unloaded the truck, I headed back up to my roof top cabana and took another nap. It was extremely nice this afternoon, I may sleep up there tonight.

Supper was the usual Sunday night goat – delicious as always. After dinner we had game night. We had all kinds of games going and people laughing and carrying on. It was great. The best part about playing games and socializing together here is that most of these people that come on these trips don’t know each other that well, but they go to the same church, school or live in the same town. So when they are here it is so much fun to watch them meet each other and get to know each other better. Sometimes these people would have never talked with one another until after they came on this trip.

I am so blessed to be a part of this HUGE project that God has put together. It is great to be able to wake up every morning and REALLY look forward to everything that is happening every day!

It’s time for bed now… Thanks for reading.

Always with Love,

Stephen

I moved my bed to a different place in my room. I am trying to find the best possible place for it. I think I found it. When I wake up I can see straight out the window to the AMAZING sunrise every morning. Who could ask for more than that? To be blessed by such an inspiring sight first thing in the morning helps me start the day in a positive direction.

I will start out by saying that I LOVE to buy things. So the job that I have right now is amazing. I get to buy SO much stuff every day. Too bad its the same thing over and over – but I still enjoy it. Also, I think part of the enjoyment is calculating how much we need and finding some way to transport it… sometimes by hand :/

So… this morning – Up and at ‘em again. Breakfast, team meeting and tap tap to Cite Soleil. We dropped the team off at the Church and me and Ronic (the driver of the BIG tap tap) headed to the job site. All the workers were there working hard. I walked around and found out what we needed and then me and Ronic headed to Prefab (the place that makes block). I was planning on buying a lot of block and just picking them up whenever I needed them. The area where you go in and wait/pay is very very small and it is always crowded. Ronic kinda cut through the line and went up to the window and told them what I wanted. When he said I needed 25,000 block they opened the little gate and ushered me back. It was pretty cool. I sat at a little desk for a while and counted stacks of money. The guy who was helping me, Raphael, is the son of the owner. I learned a lot about him. He went to school in Florida at UF. I thought that was pretty interesting. He is a nice guy. I told him I would be buying this many block every month so I would like to work out a good deal. He said no problem and then asked if I needed anything else. I needed about 500 sacks of cement. He told me he could sell then 100 at a time but he could refer me to a guy that would give me an even better price. He asked if I needed sand.. I said for the right price yes. His price ended up being close to half of what I pay now. I would say this trip was well worth the hour of 2 I spent there.

After we left the office, we drove around and picked up 200 block and 25 sacks of cement. It was a great work out throwing block down the line of people and into the truck. I need to go do that everyday and I will be HUGE. We finally got everything loaded and headed back to the job site. When we got there, they had almost half of the foundation poured. It was exciting to see the progress. The crews are really getting good at building these houses.

I walked around and checked on everyone and made sure everything was going as planned. It rained the night before so all 4 piles of sand were wet and couldn’t be used for stucco. So they had to spread them all out in the road to let it dry faster. This delayed us just a little.

Lunch Time. Back to Terre Noir. Ronic was going to get 3 more loads of block so I rode with Marconelle. One of the groups here this week wanted to go site seeing so I called in another tap tap for me to use and shipped Marconelle out with the Americans.

I worked on some emails during lunch and then headed back to the job site. I brought the workers some clean water and helped them with a few things. I checked out another house in Cite Soleil that needs to be rebuilt. Nadege joined me for this trip to Cite Soleil because we needed to go to the store. I was looking for a propane tank and a stove for the guest house. When we got to the store we were looking around and asking for pricing. Long story short… and I mean REALLY long story… the people at the store assumed me and Nadege were together and they gave us a Mother’s Day discount. Haha.. We just played along with their assumption and laughed. They ended up giving us a nice discount!!

We finally made it home around 4:30 – 5 and I took a quick nap. After the nap… THIS IS WHERE IT GETS GOOD! Byambison and I installed my carpet! It is sooooo amazing. I can walk around barefoot, lay on the floor, sleep on the floor, roll around on the floor. I never thought I would EVER be this excited or happy about carpet. Also, I am pretty sure I am the only person with carpet in their house for miles. That’s a pretty crazy thought to me. When I finish my room I will take a picture and upload it.

After the carpet installation.. I laid on it for a few minutes… as did Nathan and Byambison.

We started our workout pretty late tonight. Nathan was painting his room in between sets of curls. Our weight set is portable shower bags filled with water. They are pretty heavy. It was a fun work out. We enjoyed some Taylor Swift on Pandora while we exercised and painted.

Today was a really good day. I think I have a lot of mosquito bites… but I know I will survive. I say I think because they are large red whelps… who knows… they are some sort of Haitian something-or-other! Maybe they will go away…

Anyways.. it was good talking with all of you. I hope you are all doing great, trusting God and loving one another. Live each day to the fullest. If you aren’t – you are missing out. What do you have to lose?

Get on facebook and send me a message. I would love to hear from you!

Always with Love,

Stephen

The team that is here right now has a few construction guys that work *almost at the pace I do This is great because we get so much work accomplished but the bad part is as soon as I drop off the supplies they are finished. These 3 or 4 guys are MACHINES! I wish they were here for a few weeks. I think they would get pretty tired of it by then.

So today was fun. It rained last night, so everything was mud today – like always. Got to Cite Soleil and needed cement, rebar, sand, block, wood, boards. It was like we hadn’t worked a day there at all. The workers just waited until the last minute to tell me they needed things. So I jumped in the car and made a supply run. I got everyone enough “stuff” to start with and then kept collecting supplies. I went by the cinder block factory and cut a deal with the guy on buying 20,000+ cinder block. That will hold us for a week or so.. he was pretty happy about that as well.

I was so out of it today. I was going in so many directions and couldn’t relax and was so stressed that you could see it in my eyes. The pastor of the visiting team saw me and stopped me. He was asking me if everything was ok and then prayed with me. Without even knowing what was going on he covered it all. I love the teams that come down here. They all are so uplifting and its refreshing every week with new faces.

Over the next few days we will be closing out most of our current sites and start 2 new rebuilds. I am going to focus all of the workers on the 2 houses so we can try to finish them quick. I think we will be filming the whole process as well. It’s going to be a fun time.

Anyways.. I am going to try to go to bed early. So I am finished for the night. Time to get cleaned up.

For anyone new to the blog, or faithful followers, please check out the rest of the site. There are some amazing photos up. Also, you can learn a little bit about me. If you feel led to donate, you can check out the donate tab.

Thanks again and I love you all.

Stephen

This is where the routine has been developed.. Saturday: people leave & people arrive. Typically at the EXACT same time which makes it *fun* for me and Nathan. We bounce back and forth from arrivals and departures… fighting off Haitians and tossing luggage around.

So this morning our medical team packed up and we sent the first crew to the airport (in creole – ayeopo) around 9:30. The tap tap came back and we loaded up again around 11 to make the second trip to the airport. We dropped off a medical crew of 10 and picked up a crew of 14. The new team of 14 took 2 tap taps and a truck. The truck was loaded down with luggage. It was a HUGE pile. Nathan rode on top of the luggage across town to make sure nothing fell off. We got this team to where they were staying (Coconut Villa Hotel) and got them unloaded. Me and Nathan took a break for an hour or so, by the pool, and grabbed some food before our return to the airport. For all who commented on facebook – that is why we were at the pool!! We weren’t slacking Anyways, 3 o’clock rolls around and back to the Airport we go. This time we bypassed the security guard and sat inside the gate next to the door. All the teams were running about 2 hours late so we had to wait a little while. For everyone reading this is planning on coming down – be prepared. The team finally made it through customs, so we got their bags and headed out. Everyone outside the gate and inside the gate wants to “help” you. I have learned lots of useful phrases in creole to tell them that we do not need their help… however they choose not to listen. After we made it out the gate, there is a big puddle of water/mud/trash so we try to avoid it. At about that time a tap tap bus pulls up and blocks the way for everyone. A group of 20 or 30 thought they were special enough to get to load by the door. I explained the problem they were creating… they said “we all have to work together”.. I responded “so working together means you parking by the door, blocking the walkway and having your group just stand in the way – while we walk a block down the road?” Im not sure how well that went over! We all finally make it to the car where 2 Haitian men have decided they wanted to help us. I walk up and stop everyone and tell them all we do not need their help.. so I continue on and say if you are helping us we didn’t ask for it and that we aren’t going to pay you (not because we don’t want to.. but because we don’t have any money.. and we didn’t ask for it). They were absolutely not happy about this. The began to get upset with me and told me that I would not do that to people in America. I responded and told them actually all the time. They didn’t believe me.. they just said that I had no respect for Haiti. I tried to tell them that I have a lot of respect for Haiti (especially since I moved here for a year) but they were pretty angry by now! We began to drive off as they yelled (and cursed) at me.

Now to clarify a little about the situation. The 2 main guys causing the problem have seen me and Nathan at the airport for the past 3 weeks and have talked to us each time we have been there. So they knew that we show up with a large group of Americans that wouldn’t know what was going on. So they are just trying to make some American feel guilty to get money – please don’t feel bad.

So! If you come down here.. don’t let anyone touch your bags.. other than the two american hippy looking guys!!

So Saturdays are a busy day down here.

Im headed to bed.

Always with Love,

Stephen

So… another day has passed. And you all out there, mostly back in the states, are following along pretty close and want to know what is going on and how we feel. Well, today was tough. We had some things to do today that just didn’t seem like they were going to get done – and they didnt. So that kind of drug me down. Building the bunk beds is an ongoing task that takes a lot of time and a couple people. Right now, as we are still getting used to everything our days get soaked up by everything very quick. I got one bunk bed finished (minus the lag bolts) with the help of Byambison. Nathan made a lot of progress on the video with Nadege but not finished. Knowing that all of these projects have to be done very soon is tough. Also, we ran into a issue with the cooks. We had to figure out a per person price for food each day so I can set the money aside. This is where I began to get frustrated and worn out. Seeing as I can understand only a little of the language – 2 hours of translating and speaking is ROUGH! It will wear you out very quickly.

I finally wrapped up the meeting with the cooks – we settled on a price – and it was time to head to Cite Soleil to pay the translators and driver. When I got to C/S they still had people waiting to be seen by the Dr’s. This is the first time I have seen the patients at the clinic. To hear the stories and to see the people is completely different. I was correct when I said I didn’t want to be there. That is a very sad sight – our health is something we don’t even think about. It is beyond taking it for granted.. we know that we will be healthy (for the most part). We live in clean places and have everything we need within arms reach. A lot of these people suffer from things that are easily preventable.

I know that we will see more things that will open our eyes while we are here. I pray for the people here that they will have peace while things get back to normal and as the rebuild begins. And that they will see God’s love and power through the relief workers and minister in Haiti.

A good quote from one of the medical team members tonight… “I try to live simple so that other may simply live” – this hit home as it is what I struggled with for awhile. I saw how much I had – and didn’t deserve – and saw people in such great need. There is nothing wrong with having a lot… but when you have the ability to help/serve and you don’t, that’s where the problem arises.

Sorry for the sad post, but you all wanted to know the emotions and how I feel. So here it is.

ALWAYS with Love,

Stephen