New House

John is taking the blog back for at least one blogging here. So we have moved into the house and below are a few pictures of the outside. We are on the north side of South Bend - not far from the Michigian Line. Our lot is 3/4 of an acre and is about half wooded. I actually can mow this lawn faster than the yard in Noblesville.

Here is the front yard, please ignore the large dirt spot. Just last weekend there were some large and unsightly bushes that covered the view from the road. As you can see there is a lot of landscapeing that was done by previous owners but the bushes had to go.

And here is the back yard at an angle - the trees behind the swing set are ours. It goes on for another 30 yards or so. The lot diamentions are 100' by 308' (roughly a football field).
And another backyard shot and so ends this short post.

House update

We have another house that we are in the process of buying. It is a cute house and has a nice yard. We have a purchase agreement, and have had our inspections. We are now waiting for the inspection reports so we can respond to the inspections. There are a few things we are hoping they will fix for us, but haven't started that part of the process yet. If all goes well, we should be in at the end of the month. YAY!!!!!!!!!!! If I don't post before then, I will post pics when we get moved in.

I've been very busy with work. My caseload filled up easily, and I have even had requests after I had "closed out." It looks like I shouldn't have too much trouble keeping busy up here:-) And my Spanish has definitely come in handy. I haven't had any need for my French yet, but I have only been here for 2 months so far, and I only had 2 families who spoke French in the whole 4 years I was working in Indy. I'm off to watch TV and be a bum for the rest of the evening.

Still no house

Well, the house we wanted to buy didn't work out. We had found a house that was built in 1864. It was a cool old house on 4 acres (3 of them wooded). Unfortunately, it had foundation problems, and the septic was not a septic... there were 2 cess pools instead. So we have backed out of that house, and are now on the hunt again. John and I went last weekend to talk to some builders. We would still prefer to find an existing house at this point, but there amazingly isn't much new out there since we were looking before. We are going to see a few houses later this week, so hopefully one of those will work out!

My job transfer has gone pretty well. I have a lot of kiddos to work with, and have been getting phone calls to take more even after I have closed my availability. I guess my Spanish has definitely come in handy here:-) John has good days and bad at work, but hopefully things will calm down a bit as he learns more about what he is really doing, and is able to work more on an independent basis.

Not much else happening here - just hoping to find a house and get back to living on our own!!

Moving on up to the North Side :-)

We've been very busy with the move up to the South Bend area. Our house sold quickly, but closing got put off for a long time because our buyer's buyer had a crappy lender. They finally closed on that on Thursday (about a month later than originally scheduled), and I will be driving to Noblesville this week to close on our house and get that step over with. We started the house hunt process up here, and were really striking out for a while. We found a house this past week that we really like, and made an offer on Friday. We are hoping to come to an agreement soon on price so we can move into our own house.

John started his job and is liking it pretty well so far. He has been learning a lot, and is home every night:-). I have started working up in the South Bend area as well, and my caseload is filling up pretty quickly. I think I will have a full caseload very soon.

And, of course, what would a blog post be without a few pics of our four-legged children.

The girls helped me babysit John's cousin's little girl for a day when they were in town. Ebony was being "Nana" here watching over what she was doing.

Elsa looking sad and depressed, but really trying to also protect the baby:-)

Elsa keeping watch over the back yard. Better not try to do anything silly you ground squirrels or rabbits.

Ebony being camera shy in the backyard.

And as a final note, please keep the people of Haiti in your prayers. The rioting over the rise in food prices this past week has made life even more difficult. People are blocking the roads that lead out of Port-au-Prince that would normally be used to transport food to other parts of the country. Haitians live on an average of $2 a day, and the rise in food costs have made it even more difficult to feed their families. Haiti is not the only country being affected by this (Egypt, Senegal, etc), but since before our trip down there in November, I have felt the need to pray for the people of Haiti.

I'll post more once we know about our house situation!

Lots of News



Where do I even start? Things have been crazy around here. We completed the work we were doing in the laundry room (new floor, cabinets, and paint). Then John accepted a job in South Bend. He had started looking a little bit for a job that would keep him home more. So when this came up, we decided to move him up there, and that I would be staying here to sell the house. So, we contacted the realtor to get started on the process of selling our house. Patty (our realtor) came by about 2 weeks ago to look at the house and talk about what we could do to help stage the house for showings. While she was here, she mentioned that she had someone who might be interested in looking at the house. So, the next day, Patty called to ask if she could bring the woman through. By Saturday we had an offer, and about Tuesday of last week we had a sales agreement. This is all happening so fast, but at least the house sold and we aren't sitting here for months with it on the market. I have closing on the house on March 19th (13 days!) and we hand over the keys that day. We will be staying with John's parents until we get a new house. We haven't gone looking at houses yet, but have been checking some out online.



John has started his new job and is still learning the ropes. He should be home about 80-90% of the year, instead of traveling 80-90% of the year (yay!!). When he does travel, it will be international travel as his company sends their products overseas. So he might be making trips to Mexico, Europe, and possibly some other places. Maybe I'll get to tag along!



I would love to show off our work in the laundry room, but John has the pictures on his computer, and he is in South Bend.



This weekend is the big moving truck day. We plan to get almost everything out of here on Saturday, and I will live here with the bare minimum for the next week while I close out my caseload here before we close on the house!

Haiti - Post #2

The last post gave you a run down of our trip. This one is just going to be some of my favorite pictures from the trip.

Pretty flower:-) Johnny took this one.

Me with Dala. Her aunt works at the rectory, and she was there most of the time we were. I'm not sure how old she is, but she was very well behaved.

Children sitting in the chapel at St. Georges waiting for us to come inn and finish Mass. There was music and singing going on when I took this picture.

The view from St. Georges chapel

These kids were on their lunch break. They were standing in the gate checking us out as we stood in the schoolyard over at the High School.

Schilly - our driver extraordinaire and translator. He is also an architect. He comes to the States often as some of his family has moved here. He is one of 17 children - 8 brothers and 8 sisters.

This guy showed up on Saturday, our 2nd day at the rectory. We wondered if we would be eating him while we were there, but he was still there when we left:-)

We freaked this kid out. We were probably the first white people he had ever seen. He started crying, and cried the whole time we were in that classroom. It was the preschool section, and he was probably about 3 years old.

This little girl had the biggest smile, and kept smiling like that the whole time we visited her class. I snapped this picture after taking a larger group picture. I just zoomed in. She didn't realize I was taking a picture of her.

I took this one while visiting the preschool too. I just thought it was cute. Notice the girl over her left shoulder... peeking at us over her shoulder out of the corner of her eyes.

This is the nun who runs the clinic. She was standing in the window watching the kids on their lunch break while we visited at the high school. The clinic is in the same building as the high school.

We think the girl giving the thumbs up is John's new girlfriend. As we were leaving the school yard, she ran up and linked her arm through John's, and called him her boyfriend:-)

This little guy was out in the schoolyard at the High School. He was with a few women who were there to sell things (mostly candy it appeared) to the kids on their lunch break.

Isn't she adorable! The preschoolers were on their way back to their classrooms after lunch when we visited the Sisters' school. She stopped to check us out and John snapped a picture.

These kids were learning to write. I believe these kids were in the 4-year-old room.

The four-year-old class at the Sisters' school.

After lunch, the kids went back to their classroom. This little girl was taking a nap at her table when we visited her classroom. We saw several other kids napping in the younger kids rooms as well.

One of the better shots of the beach taken from the car. We were supposed to go to the beach while we were there, but it rained all day that day, so we didn't get any good shots of the beautiful blue water.

Just thought I'd share some of my favorite photos, and give you a glimpse at what we saw. These were some of the pictures of the beauty of the people and the landscape. Our pictures of the poverty didn't really come out the greatest, but they are still a reminder to us of what we saw.

Sara

Sara takes over the blog - our trip to Haiti

Okay, so Johnny has been slacking on posting, so I decided I would do my first post. Life around here has been pretty routine for the most part. The only thing of any major importance that has happened since the last post was our trip to Haiti in November. We went on a mission trip to visit our sister parish in the southwest part of the country right along the coast. We traveled with our pastor, and another couple from the church. It was very interesting to learn about the country and its people from our driver/interpreter. We took a lot of pictures while driving through the countryside and small towns, but were also able to get some neat pictures and short videos at other times throughout our trip. We learned a lot about what our sister parish needs, and how we might be able to help. Here's a quick run-down of our trip:


Thursday-leave very early for Haiti. Flight left around 7 am, so we left the church at about 4:45 to get to the airport. Arrived in Haiti about an hour late, around 3:30 p.m. Apparently the flight from Miami to Port-au-Prince is late almost every time! Maybe the airline starts functioning on Haitian time while still in the US if the flight is terminating in Haiti:-) Got out luggage, got through customs, and went to the Matthew 25 house, where we would be staying for the night.



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Friday-Left Matthew 25 House around 5 am. There was some concern that the road to St. Louis du Sud might be washed out because of Tropical Storm Noel that had just passed over in the past day or two. They wanted us to have time to turn around and get back to Port au Prince if we needed to before dark. The road was not washed out, so we made it to the rectory of our sister parish by about 9 or 10 am. They were surprised we were there that early, but quickly prepared the first of many meals for us. Most of the rest of the day was spent just hanging out around the rectory. We did walk over to the parish center that was built with money donated by our parishioners, and walked down to the actual church as well, but since it was locked, we couldn't go in. That night, after dinner, Fr. Marquis got out some Haitian rum, cokes, beer, and snacks for us. This ended up being a nightly event!



The back view of our Sister Parish's main church: St. Louis-du-Sud

This is the best view we could get of the main entrance of the church. There were puddles everywhere, it was muddy, and there was a downed power line, although we doubt it was live since it was jumping, etc in the puddles!

This is the parish center that was built with funds from our church. It is used for various things. When we went in there was a group of people in there (having a class of some sort it appeared). They are wanting to buy some chairs to put in there next!

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Saturday-After Fr. Marquis had his office hours for the morning, we got into the cars and drove over to Les Cayes, which is the nearest big city - about a 45 minute drive. We had brought some money with us to go shopping while in Haiti to buy some school supplies on top of what had been donated. We spent a lot of time driving in what seemed like circles (I swear we drove around the same block about 4 times), but did manage to find parking places and go into a store and buy some notebooks, math kits, and pens for the students. One funny story from Les Cayes relates to this picture:


We were standing on the sidewalk waiting for the school supplies to be payed for, and this guy asked John to take a picture. So he did, and then this guy asked for money. John didn't want to say no, but we didn't have any coins on us, so we gave him the smallest bill we could find... the equivalent of about $7! Now, remember, most Haitians make about $1 a day, so this was A LOT of money. Oops... next time we won't take pictures of people who ask us to, cuz they then want to be paid for them. Now we know.

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Sunday-We had mass at the main church, and then went up to one of the 10 chapels in the countryside. Mass at the main church was long - about 2 1/2 hours. Part of that was because the Gospel and Homily were both done in English (for all 5 of us) and in Kreyol. When we arrived at the chapel in the countryside, they had already done part of mass, and were waiting for us to arrive so Father could do the Gospel and then finish mass. After returning to the rectory and eating our meal, we went over to the Sisters' school to drop off the medicines we had brought with us to donate to the clinic run by one of the nuns. We socialized there for a little while before going back to the rectory for the night.

Father Tom with some of the the kids after mass at St. Georges chapel. The students wear their school uniform to mass, and sit with their class.

John standing on the step of St. Georges chapel after mass.

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Monday-We got to visit the schools today. We visited the school at St. Georges, which is the chapel we went to Sunday for mass. All but 1 of the chapels in the countryside has a school associated with it. We visited several classrooms, saw some of the needs, and made some children's day by showing them the new soccer balls and other toys we had brought along with us. Two boys in one of the classes talked to John for a few minutes in English! We then went over to the High School that is run by our sister parish. John has a new girlfriend there:-) We also visited the Sisters' school and visited some of those classes. The children are all beautiful. Our parish has sponsored about 200 students each year for the past few years. We are hoping to increase that this year. It takes $100 to send a student to school for a year, and give them a daily meal. After visiting the schools, we went back to Les Cayes to have lunch in a restaurant and then drove back to Port au Prince. We got back to Port during rush hour, and after dark. I was a little nervous being out and about after dark in Port au Prince, but everything turned out okay.

St. Georges school.

And their latrine at St. Georges school.

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Tuesday-Sight-seeing in Port au Prince. We visited the National History Museum and learned about their history. I never knew how much our country has messed them up, but it was all completely believable. We also saw the White House, the outside of the Catholic Cathedral, and visited the Episcopal Cathedral, which very easily could have been in America. After lunch we went to St. Damien's hospital, which is a children's hospital that is run more like an American hospital than any other hospital currently open in Port au Prince. After getting a tour there and playing with a few of the kids (Mathilda stole my heart, and Johnny had a blast with Clarens). We then visited a feeding center run by Missionaries of Charity (Mother Theresa's sisters) where we played a bit with some of the older kids, and then I loved on some of the sickest babies who had not been there long and were skin and bones.

The White House. This is where the equivalent of Congress is in Haiti.

St. Damien's Children's Hospital.

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Wednesday- Travel home. We flew out around 1:30, spent several hours in Miami on our layover, and landed back in Indy around midnight. We brought back 150 pounds of Haitian coffee. No problem getting them through customs!

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Overall, our trip was insightful. We learned a lot. I was able to use my French to talk to the Seminarian and the nuns. Kreyol is close enough to French that I was also able to understand a lot of what was being said when listening closely to what was going on. John started brainstorming ways to help them with water collection, as well as how to help them with electrical stuff at the rectory. I look forward to going back again, whether it be with our church, or on my own to volunteer at an orphanage or something.



Now that I have gotten started on this blogging thing, I hope to post more often. I can't guarantee how often I will post, but it will be more often than every 3 months!