Bayonnais Peanut Butter Project (update)

PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME!!!
I have quite a visual right now.  No, it’s not just the dancing banana but rather what it must have looked like to see me hopping around the room, raising the roof and switching from foot to foot.  It was during the StartingBloc Boston Institute this past February, and a vote the [...]

SHOWING UP

I just returned from eight days in Bayonnais with an 18-member college team, my first trip back in over six months.  Though leadership demands set a fast pace for the week, causing me to forgo several house visits and conversations, I had an incredible experience.  Fortunately, I was able to assure friends that I would [...]

Peanut Butter

After much difficulty finding a peanut butter machine in Port-au-Prince and a period of waiting for peanut season, the Bayonnais Peanut Butter Project has officially begun!  Many thanks to Savannah Country Day School and the Isle of Hope United Methodist Church for their support which has made all of this possible.  Stay tuned for more [...]

Helicopter Food Aid

A special thank you to Myers Park United Methodist Church and all others who made this timely and novel delivery of food aid possible.  To quote one of the leaders of OFCB who writes to thank David Nichols and Kevin Wright for their participation in this event shortly after hurricanes Hanna [...]

Update

October 12th through 17th I had the opportunity to visit my Haitian family in Bayonnais.  It took two and a half days to greet people, catching up on how they were doing post-Hanna/Ike.  Trying to schedule meetings was somewhat laughable, as anyone at any given moment might well pull me to the side for an [...]

BLESSED ARE THE POOR

“There’s nothing like poverty to get you into heaven.” This Patty Griffin lyric seems to have been stuck on repeat in my head this past week. I imagine her tongue pressed softly in cheek as her passes on the guitar betray the gravity–and its rub–on the underside of the statement. I hear Chaim Potok’s fictional [...]

Casting Nets

(post started May 10th)
I am in the Miami airport, and my thoughts are clouded. The first wave of “culture shock” has me in a bit of a daze. I can already tell that this homecoming will be different from the last in December, for this time it involves a home-leaving as well. [...]

God is Good; God is Great

Yay for mangoes! They are delicious!
STARK FINANCES
It is difficult for me to balance occasionally giving a friend needed money to support his wife and new baby with teaching him financial planning and fiscal responsibility. He receives $450 (Haitian; roughly $63 US) per month for directing a local project. [...]

New Life

(This post is a few days old because WordPress was having problems that prevented me from accessing my blog.)
The rain is rolling its fingernails on the roof, and I am tired. Last night was unusually long, but it brought new life to Bayonnais, and I was blessed to participate in the delivery of a [...]

Somewhat uncomfortably at first. . .

GO CATS!!!
Three cheers for Davidson basketball this season and many more from me and students here in Bayonnais as you can see in the video above. Given my general lack of interest in popular sports, such as basketball, which makes me quite an oddball in North Carolina let me tell [...]