..Saturday - travel day, homeward bound & final thoughts
We woke up to a beautiful sunrise in Dallas. A good way to start our return! God shined on us!
Jim had commandeered the entire shuttle van the previous night for our entourage of people and luggage. It was a tight fit. Bob and Cindy spent the night in Minneapolis and were preparing to board a Delta plane to meet up with us in Portland.
This was a screenshot of the seat screen on our final approach to PDX. Home at last!
The adventure and mission was over. We all proceeded to the baggage area and saw Bob & Cindy awaiting our arrival. We had a glorious re-union and awaited all of our specially-marked large suitcases. Friends and family met us and hugged us. Once we assembled and double-checked our luggage, we gathered in a tight circle and Jim Shaw said a few words and thanked the team for a job well done. Cindy offered up a prayer. We hugged each other and left for home.
This was a remarkable team effort. Everyone pitched in and offered help to whatever effort required more muscle or organizing assistance. Especially in the constant high heat and humidity which was very energy draining. Sleep was hard to come by due to this heat and bugs and strange noises. But, who needs more than 5-hours? The delicious Haitian food energized you, and also helping, more importantly, was the infectious energy and positive attitude of the people. You saw this in the pictures everyone took and inserted in these posts.
And .. HOW GLORIOUS do they LOVE THE LORD! Wow! The Catholic and Protestant religions have done a marvelous job in giving the Haitian people hope and community. The churches educate most of the kids in the country. Some still practice voodoo, but not as much as in the past. Please consider joining our team next year for the experience of a lifetime! It will change you! It will make you appreciate your life even more! You'll feel so loved by another part of the world, by people who have nothing, and by the RMI Haitian staff who appreciate your visit to their country!
We, the USA, owe SO MUCH to this country ! Read below (excerpts from Wikipedia) :
Haiti was landed on by none other than .. Christopher Columbus in 1492!
In 1697, after decades of fighting over the territory, the Spanish ceded the western part of the island to the French, who henceforth called it Saint-Domingue (Haiti).
On 14 August 1791, slaves in the northern region of the colony staged a revolt that began the Haitian Revolution. Tradition marks the beginning of the revolution at a vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman (Alligator Woods) near Cap-Français. The call to arms was issued by a Houngan (Vodou priest) named Dutty Boukman. Within hours, the northern plantations were in flames. The rebellion spread through the entire colony. Boukman was captured and executed, but the rebellion continued to spread rapidly.
As the tide of the war turned toward the former slaves, Napoleon abandoned his dreams of restoring France's New World empire. In 1803, war resumed between France and Britain, and with the Royal Navy firmly in control of the seas, reinforcements and supplies for Rochambeau never arrived in sufficient numbers. To concentrate on the war in Europe, Napoleon signed the Louisiana Purchase in April, selling France's North American possessions to the United States. The Haitian army, now led by Dessalines, devastated Rochembeau and the French army at the Battle of Vertières on 18 November 1803. On 1 January 1804 Dessalines then declared independence, reclaiming the indigenous Taíno name of Haiti ("Land of Mountains") for the new nation. Most of the remaining French colonists fled ahead of the defeated French army, many migrating to Louisiana or Cuba.
If only, this country of former slaves, could have a stable government that cares about its people ...
these loving and hard-working people could have many more opportunities to enjoy life.
Thanks for reading about our adventures and mission. God is still present in Haiti!
Jim had commandeered the entire shuttle van the previous night for our entourage of people and luggage. It was a tight fit. Bob and Cindy spent the night in Minneapolis and were preparing to board a Delta plane to meet up with us in Portland.
This was a screenshot of the seat screen on our final approach to PDX. Home at last!
we had taken a large loop pattern for our landing approach
The adventure and mission was over. We all proceeded to the baggage area and saw Bob & Cindy awaiting our arrival. We had a glorious re-union and awaited all of our specially-marked large suitcases. Friends and family met us and hugged us. Once we assembled and double-checked our luggage, we gathered in a tight circle and Jim Shaw said a few words and thanked the team for a job well done. Cindy offered up a prayer. We hugged each other and left for home.
This was a remarkable team effort. Everyone pitched in and offered help to whatever effort required more muscle or organizing assistance. Especially in the constant high heat and humidity which was very energy draining. Sleep was hard to come by due to this heat and bugs and strange noises. But, who needs more than 5-hours? The delicious Haitian food energized you, and also helping, more importantly, was the infectious energy and positive attitude of the people. You saw this in the pictures everyone took and inserted in these posts.
And .. HOW GLORIOUS do they LOVE THE LORD! Wow! The Catholic and Protestant religions have done a marvelous job in giving the Haitian people hope and community. The churches educate most of the kids in the country. Some still practice voodoo, but not as much as in the past. Please consider joining our team next year for the experience of a lifetime! It will change you! It will make you appreciate your life even more! You'll feel so loved by another part of the world, by people who have nothing, and by the RMI Haitian staff who appreciate your visit to their country!
We, the USA, owe SO MUCH to this country ! Read below (excerpts from Wikipedia) :
Haiti was landed on by none other than .. Christopher Columbus in 1492!
In 1697, after decades of fighting over the territory, the Spanish ceded the western part of the island to the French, who henceforth called it Saint-Domingue (Haiti).
Prior to the Seven Years' War (1756–63), the economy of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) gradually expanded, with sugar and, later, coffee becoming important export crops. After the war, which disrupted maritime commerce, the colony underwent rapid expansion. In 1767, it exported 72 million pounds of raw sugar and 51 million pounds of refined sugar, one million pounds of indigo, and two million pounds of cotton.[8] Saint-Domingue (Haiti) became known as the "Pearl of the Antilles" – the richest colony in the 18th century French empire. By the 1780s, Saint-Domingue (Haiti) produced about 40 percent of all the sugar and 60 percent of all the coffee consumed in Europe. This single colony, roughly the size of Hawaii or Belgium, produced more sugar and coffee than all of Britain's West Indies colonies combined.
In the second half of the 1780s, Saint-Domingue (Haiti)accounted for a third of the entire Atlantic slave trade. The population of the African slaves imported for these plantations is estimated to have been 790,000. Between 1764 and 1771, the average importation of slaves varied between 10,000–15,000, by 1786 about 28,000, and, from 1787 onward, the colony received more than 40,000 slaves a year. However, the inability to maintain slave numbers without constant resupply from Africa meant the slave population, by 1789, totaled 500,000, ruled over by a white population that, by 1789, numbered only 32,000. At all times, a majority of slaves in the colony were African-born, as the brutal conditions of slavery prevented the population from experiencing growth through natural increase. African culture thus remained strong among slaves to the end of French rule, in particular the folk-religion of voodoo, which commingled Catholic liturgy and ritual with the beliefs and practices of Guinea, Congo, and Dahomey. Slave traders scoured the Atlantic coast of Africa, and the slaves who arrived came from hundreds of different tribes, their languages often mutually incomprehensible.
On 14 August 1791, slaves in the northern region of the colony staged a revolt that began the Haitian Revolution. Tradition marks the beginning of the revolution at a vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman (Alligator Woods) near Cap-Français. The call to arms was issued by a Houngan (Vodou priest) named Dutty Boukman. Within hours, the northern plantations were in flames. The rebellion spread through the entire colony. Boukman was captured and executed, but the rebellion continued to spread rapidly.
As the tide of the war turned toward the former slaves, Napoleon abandoned his dreams of restoring France's New World empire. In 1803, war resumed between France and Britain, and with the Royal Navy firmly in control of the seas, reinforcements and supplies for Rochambeau never arrived in sufficient numbers. To concentrate on the war in Europe, Napoleon signed the Louisiana Purchase in April, selling France's North American possessions to the United States. The Haitian army, now led by Dessalines, devastated Rochembeau and the French army at the Battle of Vertières on 18 November 1803. On 1 January 1804 Dessalines then declared independence, reclaiming the indigenous Taíno name of Haiti ("Land of Mountains") for the new nation. Most of the remaining French colonists fled ahead of the defeated French army, many migrating to Louisiana or Cuba.
If only, this country of former slaves, could have a stable government that cares about its people ...
these loving and hard-working people could have many more opportunities to enjoy life.
Thanks for reading about our adventures and mission. God is still present in Haiti!
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