Photo/Video Update

This is a casual afternoon rainstorm and a fairly light one at that. This is the view from my window.

During the Festival de Sainte-Croix last Sunday, 5 priests, including my priest, Pere Kerawin, were named archdeacons of different regions of the Diocese of Haiti. 

The festival was quite an affair! There were two times the number of people the church could hold for a 4 hour long service! I met the President of the Haitian Senate too!

Sainte-Croix used this day as a goal for fundraising. They had been promised many things by many groups after the earthquake that destroyed their school and church, but these promised donations have not come through. They desperately want a church and have been holding fundraisers and a special collection every week for the rebuilding fund. Their goal for the festival was to raise about $11,000 USD to start the construction. They exceeded that goal by a few hundred dollars and were very proud to lay the first stone of the new construction!

Bishop Duracin during the Festival de Sainte-Croix 

This week was the festival at an Episcopal church a few towns over. I went with students from the school, it was a lovely service full of music and dancing. Right before communion, they have representatives from the congregation dance forward goods from the field, to give thanks for the goodness of the earth. I was especially impressed with the woman that danced with the live chicken on her head and the man who had the honor of dancing with the goat on a leash! 

During the priests stay at the school two weeks ago, there was plenty of work to do in the kitchen and most of the staff got recruited. It was great bonding time and also a great introduction to Haitian cooking! Here, Alex demonstrates effective juicing techniques. I must have juiced close to 200 citrus fruits in those 4 days! 

 Have I mentioned that we get a beautiful sunset basically every night? There are no tall buildings here so the sky is just huge and on fire! Not pictured, I saw an incredibly bright shooting star last week: it was beautiful and I was so excited, I ran to tell someone! They were very confused why I was so excited: in Haiti, seeing a shooting star is a bad sign. Oops!

We have a lot of poultry that wanders the grounds. Occasionally they walk around the kitchen, I guess to understand their fate. I propose that we eat the large one on the corner next because he has a habit of hissing and chasing after people.