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September Medical Team

We had our first medical team (and first Leve group in general!) here September 11-18. A group of 5 ladies, 4 of which are nurses, from Nashville came to run a medical clinic in the village. The week before the team came, we had the Pastor at the church help with getting people signed up to be seen at the clinic. I’ll admit, I expected a bit of chaos and unexpected issues to arise on the first day. I think we were all surprised how smooth everything went! 

The team wanted to do more than simply see tons of patients, they wanted to get to know the patients and do an assessment. They started medical records for each person, so we have something to go off of for the next team. While everything went fairly smooth, I think we realized we’d have to make a few adjustments to how things would be done in the states. On the first day, during the kids’ clinic hours, most of those kids came by themselves. It was a bit hard for the team to get information from them. Most of them didn’t know their birthday, so we settled on getting their age for their records. 

Here is a letter from one of the team members to their Pastor: 

Pastor Tom, 

As I count my blessings this morning for clean water to brush my teeth with and to drink, for a warm shower and for a washing machine and a roof that doesn’t leak when it rains, I want to say how thankful I am for your and the church’s support for this mission trip. It was a life changing experience that I will not forget, and continued to draw me closer in my own Christian walk. I also am thankful that although there are many challenges and suffering people in Haiti, that we touched 200 lives through the clinic, started a charting system for a future clinics, donated medicines and supplies for future treatment and gave dresses, shorts, teen dresses and over 40 pair of shoes to villagers and orphans. We visited 3 orphanages and bought food for a family of 13. We also paid for a young mother who was in so much pain that she would not breastfeed her sick infant to have several abscessed teeth pulled and filled from a reputable dentist. These are just some of the ways that your support and donations helped us to serve in Christ’s name. Thank you for all that you do. 

Sincerely, 

Lisa

Your support matters! Even if you are not able to join a mission team to Haiti, support those that are able to come. Talk to your church about how your church can get involved in Leve Project and changing lives in Haiti!

A huge thank you to Bronwen, Kay, Colleen, Lisa and Leigh for your sacrifices in coming to serve in Haiti. Thank you to Hillsboro United Methodist Church for your support in getting them here and enabling the work they did here. 

Timoun Leve 8/11/11

Last week was our kick off for the weekly Bible Study for the children, Timoun Leve!  Around 60 kids showed up!!  Some of the kids had attended the program at the house the week that Deanne and Jill were here but there were many new faces. 

Hugues was a big help with the kids.  He got us started with some songs.  We sang a few Haitian original songs, as well as "I've got the joy, joy, joy", "Deep and Wide" and "The wise man built his house upon the rock".  We are guessing that many of the kids that were there did not attend church because they were unfamiliar with the songs.  This is amazing!

Our Bible story was from Matthew 7:24-27. Gwenn had kids come up and help act out the lesson. She had one group of kids that built a house as quick as they could. They wanted to hurry up building the house and didn't put much work or material into. It wasn't built on a good foundation. But, they finished their house fast so they could have fun. The second group put more work into their house. They had to keep working after the other group was finished and their house was built well. When a storm came, the house that was finished first fell down, because it was not built well. The second house stayed standing, because more work was put into it and it had a strong foundation.

The kids colored a dot-to-dot sheet with the summary of the story: Si ou bati fo, w'ap rete fem. If you build firm, you will stay strong.  We wrapped it all up with a few more songs and the kids enjoyed a snack before leaving.  The rain held out for the program but it began to sprinkle as we were dismissing and we were unable to hang around for games. 

There were several adults from the church that also came and sat in on the Kid's Program. Especially in Haiti, it seems we try to preach deep theological sermons, when they don't even understand the basics yet. The adults were just as interested in the story as the children were. Pol, who is at least in his 70s, participated just as much as the kids and piped in with "Amen" and "That's right!" more than once during Gwenn's story. :)

What's happening!

God is doing some amazing things with Leve Project on the ground in Haiti!  We've got several new programs starting. 

First off, we had such great success with the kid's Bible study program when Deanne and Jill were visiting, we've decided to make it a weekly event.  Every Thursday, we will host "Timoun Leve" which translates to Children, Rise up.  We'll be doing a Bible story, singing, snacks and games!  The church is kind enough to let us use their building for the study because several of the children cannot make the journey outside the village. 

This Sunday will be our first week for "Patage Primye Dimanch", first of the month fellowship.  The first Sunday of every month, Leve Project will provide a meal for the church.  Our goal with this program is to fellowship with the congregation and to meet those from our community.  In doing this, we can learn their needs and better serve them.  We are also able to bring believers closer together, strengthening the relationships within the church family.

The basis for almost all aspects of our ministry is taken from Acts 4:32-34.  With every new program we start, our main goal is to become one with the community.  We hope to keep adding more programs to our ministry so that we can achieve this goal.  

making brooms!

This woman from our village takes dried up palm leaves and makes brooms out of them!

Kids Bible Program Day 1

Bonswa from Haiti! This is Deanne and Jill from Evansville, Indiana, and we're visiting the Leve Project house for the first time. Today we experimented with the first EVER Leve Project Kids Bible Program. After a slightly rough start (the kids arrived an hour late), it went great! We had a great turnout...we had just under 20 kids from the village, plus some of their parents. Nicole led the kids in songs like "This is the Day" and "I'm in the Lord's Army" which we accompanied with a somewhat hilarious attempt at motions. They didn't quite understand the whole motion thing, but they enjoyed it. Francois told the story of the Good Samaritan and then we handed out chicos (Haitian cheetos) and introduced them to Veggie Tales. We ended the day with lots of fun and games like jump-rope, soccer, and the circle game where people dance and sing in Creole (we had no idea what they were doing but they were having a ball). Hopefully the next two days go as well as today!

Pòl

We met Pol when we first visited Cayes Jacmel in February. His wife brought us into their house to meet him. He was sitting on a mat on the floor where he'd been sitting for 3 months straight. He has diabetes. While diabetes are fairly common and treatable in the states... those same simple resource aren't as readily available here. Pol's feet and hands were swollen. And he had a diabetic ulcer on his leg. He didn't have a doctor to tell him what to do or a clinic to help him manage his diabetes.

But with the help of medical professionals in the states, Leve Project has been able to monitor Pol's blood sugar and treat the ulcer on his leg. Thanks Kay VanFleteren and Lisa Everhart, along with others who have helped us help this family!!

who's who?

who's who at Leve House??

We now have four, well make that four and a half, people living at the Leve Project house in Cayes Jacmel.

Francois Jean-Louis has been working with Leve Project since October, though he has been a trusted friend for much longer! He is our right-hand man on the ground in Haiti. He moved into the Leve House in May and started with some basic clean-up of the house and yard. Francois is our Haitian manager of Leve Project and does everything from run errands and yard work to helping with budgeting and planning.

The "half" that now lives with us is his 3 year old daughter, Paskalitha. She lived with her mother in Port au Prince, however after the flooding, their living conditions were not good. Shortly after the flooding problems, her mother was admitted to the hospital and couldn't care for Paskalitha, so Francois brought her here to stay with us.

Megan Haug is a co-founder and director of Leve Project. She previously lived in Haiti, working with different ministries, and moved back to serve as the on-site manager for Leve Project on June 1st. Her main focus right now is establishing a budget, financial reports, meeting people and establishing relationships in the community, communicating with & updating the Board of Directors in the states, as well as other administrative duties.

Nicole Joseph and Yonel SeraPhin joined us at Leve house on June 11th.

Nicole is currently pretty much everything house care related. She cooks us a meal of rice and beans everyday. Does laundry once or twice a week. Keeps the dishes and house clean. Goes to the haitian market to pick up supplies. Once things pick up at Leve house, we'll need to hire someone to help take on some of these tasks, but for now Nicole handles it all with ease!

Yonel is security and helps in the yard. He also runs some errands for us. He makes sure we have drinking water everyday. Get us phone cards when we need them. He is responsible for watching the gate and letting people in. He locks the house up at night. Yonel also helps keep the yard picked up and waters our plants when we don't have rain.

Tavek

Some pictures of the near-by village Tavek. The community of Tavek will be the main village Leve Project will be working with.

The House

Here are some pictures that Megan took of the house since she arrived last week.  As you can see, before we open it up as a Life Center to the people of Cayes Jacmel, some work needs to be done!

Here's the kitchen.

Most of the common areas are tiled, except this room, the hallway, and bedrooms.

This is the little house in the backyard.

This is the ceiling.

A shower.  It's not leveled so no water actually flows through the drain.

We need your help to get our house to a place where we can begin helping others!  We're excited to see what God is going to do after blessing us with this house!

Leve Project has officially made it to Haiti. Megan Haug arrived on June 2nd to our house in Cayes Jacmel. But our house is empty!! Before we can open up our home as a Life Center or start a loan program, we need your help! We have a needs list of items you can donate, and as people travel on mission trips here, they will bring donated items in their luggage. However, there are many things that we need to purchase here in Haiti. The following is a list of needs of those items. You can choose to give a monetary donation that will go to a specific item, or give a general donation and we will use it where needed most. 

4-6 beds       $100 each

small stove $325

refrigerator $700

kitchen table & chairs $250

desk & chair $75

wood for shelves $75

cooking pots $45

dirt & rocks to level yard $80

small generator $300

couch & other seating ???

This list is just the beginning. Look around your house. Everything you see, we don’t have and probably need it! Thank you for being a part of God’s work in Haiti and partnering with Leve Project!! 

friday in Jacmel

Eric, Francois and I (megan) left downtown PAP this morning on a van heading for Jacmel. Traffic was horrible, it took us over a good hour just to get out of PAP traffic. Once we did though, it was a smooth easy drive. When our van came to it's final stop, we hopped on three motto taxis in search of the Isaiah 61 guesthouse. It's a very nice (and fairly new) guesthouse run by Community Coalition for Haiti. After settling in and eating lunch... we were ready to house hunt!! We had three houses on our list, all of them in Cayes Jacmel, just a little east of here. The first two are houses that Francois found when he came here in December. Then when the director of Isaiah 61 heard that we were house hunting, she hooked us up with another connection for a house available to rent.  However, after much waiting and many phone calls back and forth... we were told that there was a demonstration going on in the streets, blocking the route to Cayes Jacmel. Apparently, the news of Aristide coming back to Haiti in March was announced today, so his supporters were celebrating/demonstrating in the streets. Though we were disappointed we didn't make it to Cayes Jacmel, we got to look at a house for rent here in Jacmel. It was in the process of being remodeled, and though it looks like a nice house... the asking price was way too high. We didn't bother trying to negotiate yet, although it was nice, there was nothing super impressive about it. It just didn't strike us. I think we're holding out and hoping that the house Francois has told us about will work out!! Our plan is to go check out the houses in Cayes Jacmel tomorrow, si dye vle (God willing).

Thursday

Today Eric, Francois and I (megan) met with Carine, director of Fonkoze. It was a great meeting! We were able to get some answers, fill in some blanks and share our vision of our partnership. We really seem to be on the same page as far as what we want to see happen. Leve Project will be a Ti Kredi center. Our center will have 50 (they will be put into small groups of 5) women enrolled that will all go through the cycle of the program together. Usually, a Ti Kredi program consists of several "centers", adding up to 200 women. We'll be starting with the one center, piggy backing with a larger Ti Kredi program in the area. This is a great opportunity to kick-off our partnership with Fonkoze!!

Once our center is fully funded, we will be able to start enrollment. The cost of the program is $140 per women, making the total cost for our initial center $7,000. Be on the look-out, we'll be sharing more about Family Sponsorships and how you can be a part of empowering Haitian families!

we're in Haiti!

Just a quick update from Haiti:

Eric and Megan met up with Francois at the airport... and of course spent time waiting around the airport, cause that's just the way things go. We're staying at the Methodist Guest House in Petionville. Lots of other people here and while it's not quite as fun to be in a crowded room and not be able to spread out... it's always nice to meet other people and make new connections.

Eric was able to meet Sebastian's (his son from Three Angels) dad for the first time. Sebastian's mother died in the earthquake, so it was especially special to be able to make contact with his dad. Eric was able to show him pictures and tell him how Sebastian is doing.

We are meeting with Carine, the director of Fonkoze first thing tomorrow morning. We made a list of questions and made sure we were ready for that meeting! We are excited to finally meet Carine and discuss what our partnership will look like.  After our meeting, I'm sure we'll have lots of planning to do! We also hope to swing by Three Angels and say hi to some friends other there.

Friday morning, we'll head to Jacmel. This is the part we're really looking forward to!! We're looking forward to seeing a new place, meeting new people, staying at a new guest house.... and FINDING A HOUSE TO RENT!!   We'll stay in Jacmel Friday and Saturday night and head back to PAP on Sunday. There are a few other things we'd like to do-- price check a few items, meet some new contacts, etc. After our meeting with Fonkoze and trip to Jacmel, we'll have a lot to discuss and decisions to make!

Nothing to Wear

We want to share something new and exciting with you! 

It's the Nothing to Wear challenge. The challenge to stop being apathetic towards poverty. You've been told you're suppose to care for those in need, remember the widows and orphans, give your money away, pray for hurting people and serve the least of these. We're not going to tell you anything. We're going to let you experience it. It's easy to be indifferent to something we can't identify with. Like poverty. Through the NTW challenge, participants will get a small taste of poverty by having nothing to wear. They wear the same shirt day after day, while raising funds to help fight poverty. 

A launch group from Evansville, Indiana will be participating in the first ever Nothing to Wear challenge in February. We started out by committing to wear the shirt for 7 days straight, and for every $100 raised, we will wear the shirt for another day. Because of donations already given, we're wearing the shirt for 13 days so far. Our goal is to wear it for the whole month of February. 

Don't miss this opportunity fun opportunity to get involved in fighting poverty! Your money goes directly to Haitian families in need. You can donate any amount to help towards adding another day for the group. 

If you're interested in having your own group participate in NTW, contact me at megan@leveproject.org

You can donate through paypal on our website, or send checks (be sure to put "nothing to wear" in the memo) to: 

Leve Project

2956 N. 425 E. 

Danville, IN 46122

ntwchallenge.org

http://vimeo.com/18556581

Megan Haug

Leve Project director