Trip to Haiti 1

My friend and team mate Adam Simpson and I arrived in Haiti today.Adam and Tracy Simpson are in the (long) process of adopting a couple of kids from Haiti. Part of the procedure includes visiting the children and the orphanage in Haiti, and that is what prompted this trip. As you can imagine, things are pretty much a mess regarding adoption in Haiti. One of our hopes is that by being on the ground, at the orphanage, we can access the most up to date and accurate information available. Adam is pictured below with Daniel in the foreground and Kelly Thomas right next to him.

Ideally, Tracy would go with Adam, but since she is now 3+ months pregnant, this is not a good time to be heading to a 3rd world country that’s been ravaged by an earthquake. Adam asked me to go with him, and I am happy to go along to visit the kids and support him as continues to engage in the adoption procedures.

The plan is for us to stay at the orphanage. We have packed some gifts for all of the children including candy and sports equipment etc.

While in Haiti,we are also hoping to hook up with some of our national and regional Campus Crusade leadership to begin talking more about how we as a campus movement at Cornell can be involved in the ongoing relief efforts. Campus Crusade is already working in Haiti, and is planning to continue working in Haiti for at least the next 5 years.

We currently have two students –Dean and LaMont who are raising financial support to go to Haiti on a summer project this June. They will join with Christian college students from Haiti to do medical missions, Food Pack assembly, set up solar/wind powered water purifiers etc. And on campus, we have joined with the other Christian ministries to sponsor a 30 hour famine type of event to raise money for World Vision’s efforts in Haiti.

Please pray for us as we travel!

We will be there til Thursday.

Chalking the Word

One of the interesting peculiarity's about Cornell is it's fondness for "Chalking". We have been on no other campus that was so excited about sidewalk chalk! It is one of the primary mediums for advertising here on campus. Of course there are e-mails, facebook groups, and bulletin boards, but whenever a group has something big going on, you can be sure to hear about it with chalked out messages on the ground.

Our ministry has utilized this method of info-dissemination in the past, but the week after Easter, the Christian groups on campus mobilized together in a massive effort to colorfully decorate the walkways of the campus with verses of scripture.

Every few nights, groups of students will gather together and go out 'chalking'. I got the chance to go out last with our Tuesday night Bible study.

It has actually begun to generate some dialog on campus. First there is the dialog going on with chalk. A few people have begun to chalk quotes by famous atheists and cynics on the sidewalks in response to the proliferation of verses. But additionally, we have had the chance to talk with students about their reactions and thoughts on the whole endeavor. Most of the personal interactions have been pretty positive -even the one that students Larry and Will had with a couple of people who were scribing an athiest quote on the ground. As they engaged in conversation, the girls simply remarked that they thought the verses were very "Christ centered".

Yes!

Some Big Break pics

While at Big Break a few weeks ago, we used most of our cameras to take short video clips. in the end, we were a bit short on still pictures. Here are a few that I ended up with.

Me and Larry Lin at Big Break

Will, Keren, and Eddie.

These are the Cornell guys, singing a country song written for the girls.

Here are the girls.

We took our boys' light-sabers for occasions like this. It had been my plan to incorporate the light-stabers into different pictures and send them to my boys while I was away. I didn't end up doing too much of either.

Still Looking for a place to Live

As we get ready for next fall, we must find a new place to live. The home we rent now is in a great location, pretty close to the campus. We have adequate space, a yard for the kids to play in, a great land-lady and a very reasonable price! We have been so blessed to live here for the last couple of years.

But we've gotta find a different house because our land-lady is going to be moving into this house. I want to ask you to please pray for us because we are having a hard time finding a house in our price range anywhere near the campus. As we have been looking around town and praying for a place to live we have looked all over the place. Every neighborhood or section of town has it's pros and cons.

Ideally we'd like to be near campus, nearer to our team mates and not too far from the Lutheran preschool where the boys go. But so far every lead has come up short. Yesterday was discouraging as we visited a house. It was pretty close to Cornell and it was in our price range but it was right off the highway and it was totally destroyed. There are a lot of houses we would feel comfortable living in, but this one was absolutely nasty. I call it the "bombed out death shanty". It's obviously been rented to college students in the past, and they have used and abused it!

Please pray that God would guide us to the right place.

Prayer Letter coming soon.

It has been our hope to update the blog every 3-5 days, and I think I've averaged about every 6 days!

This week I hope to finish up a prayer letter and mail it out, as well as post a bunch of pictures from our spring break missions trips.

Sorry for the lame update.

check back soon.