Done with lessons

This past week was an exciting week. We completed our creole lessons in Milot. As you all could probably guess Laura scored much better than Kurt on the final exam. The exam was quite difficult and our teacher blamed Kurt's poor result on Laura's inability to speak enough Creole to him outside of our lessons. He seemed to miss the point about Laura's better than average intellect. We are glad to be finished with our lessons and back to the orphanage.

In other news, Laura faced the treacherous back roads of northern Haiti in a red diesel 4x4 pick up truck as she mastered the manual transmission. Laura was a natural and ruled the experience a success because all goats, roosters, and small naked children remained safe. Laura's newly developed skill should prove to be important with trips to the hospital in Milot or Cap Haitian.

The children are doing very well and enjoyed taking part in a small parade recently. Some volunteers that were left this week made hats and small drums to wear as they danced around under the mango tree. Any small special event that makes these kids light up is fun to see.

We have a few kids that need special care and spend the night in the rooms of volunteers. Over the weekend we had a little boy with hydrocephalus who has been here for the past few months since he got abandoned at the hospital. His head is getting bigger and is in a lot of pain because of the pressure. In our best efforts we try to make him feel comfortable. We have mixed feelings about his future. There is a desire for his pain to end but it won't be easy to see him go.

Please keep all the children in your prayers. The next few weeks could be very important for the orphanage because we are having the liscencing organization come to visit to potentially approve us to complete our own adoptions. Currently we have to go through Port a Prince in southern Haiti to approve an adoption. But they've been saying they are coming soon for the past few months, so it's really hard to know. Pray that we can get our creche liscence soon and we can get these kids to loving homes where they can be cared for better than we can.

Soccer is going well. Our team finished 4th in this past tournament. The whole village was disappointed by the result of the last game because of a goal that was scored but taken back. I couldn't figure out why. Two players asked me for shoes at half time because their shoes were worn out. I didn't expect that but I guess I can understand.

We can't believe its been a month already.