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I met Karensky three years ago at the orphanage. I will never forget it. Despite the pain in his eyes and his apparent discomfort, he smiled. He reached his arms around Dr. Leininger and squeezed as hard as he could. Dr. Leininger then asked how he was feeling and inspected his bulging stomach. My heart sank as I saw his sweet smile disappear. Karensky has a life threatening disease called Hirchsprung’s Disease, which leads to chronic constipation. It is completely treatable,

The family pictured is the Bélance family. They were blessed with a new home in the village in August 2012. Sadly, the father went to the Dominican to find work years ago and never returned.  When the mom, Esther, has extra money to buy products, she goes to the market, selling small items to make a living. As you can imagine, this is far from sufficient. On our last trip to the village, our volunteer photographer went to their home to take photos of their morning routines. W

Sometimes we all need a little inspiration. For me, I often find inspiration through real-life stories. For example, when I hear a story of a child who vigorously takes on a goal that is seemingly impossible for her, and then actually accomplishes it – that’s inspiring. It may even cause me to tear up as I see the pure faith and hope in a child’s eyes and her complete lack of fear over failure while taking on a project bigger than herself. Child-like fearlessness seems to ign

The other night I had a dream. For those who hate to hear someone else’s dreams, I will keep it short. 🙂 A menacing man in black was chasing me. I don’t know why he was chasing me but I knew that he meant to harm me. So I decided to turn on him and be the aggressor. For some reason I felt that a jump into the horizontal position and a hard kick into his stomach would stop him cold. The only problem with my plan was that when I landed the kick, his stomach was as hard as a tw

It looks like John, Kenny and I will return to Haiti in April to build our final eight homes in the village. We have received donations enough for a few homes but still need more to complete the eight we have planned. Please pray with us for God’s provision and insight. There will be a sense of relief, of sorts, when we have finished what God had set out for John to do–build a village for the homeless. We have learned many lessons along the way: what to do, and what not to do

John and I will be be heading back to Haiti next month and it’s breaking my heart. When we go together it is usually because John has me oversee the building of houses. This past October we were there to build and give away 8 homes to the homeless, oversee some modifications to the water system in the village and (John’s idea) do a marriage seminar which he delegated to me. It was a very successful trip. During the building of these homes, we employed and contracted about 10