Haiti Update from Mac...

I returned from Haiti on Monday. Everyone is still living in tents, but two people I know have plywood houses. A group of church members from Mexico built our partner, Pastor Eddy Francois, a wood house with a tin roof. It will last a few years, and right now Pastor Eddy, his wife and about 12 girls are living in it. The boys are still in tents.

We have been serving 1,300 meals a day in two meal programs. Since the quake we have served 93,923 meals, plus or minus a few thousand. And we includes you, we includes the cooks, the people who manage the line, the people who buy the food at the market and bring it to the kitchen, the accountant, the managers, and you and I who provide the funds. So congratulations to everyone. I bet you did not know you could make such a difference!

Precious Pearl is really only Steve Lovell and me and you. All our regular expenses such as car maintenance, airplane tickets, school support, gospel crusades and payrolls are still paid by Steve and me. That means that all your donations have gone into the meal program. A big thank you, I want you to know that with everyone's help all that you donated has gone to serve meals to hungry, broke, homeless children and families.

Life in Haiti is back to kind of normal. The school reopened under tents. Some people are working. People are able to buy rice, if they have money. Relatives abroad are able to remit funds to support their families in Haiti. But living under tarps, tents and plastic is difficult. Everyone fetches water in buckets, washing by pouring water over their head with a cup. When it rains people are either very humid, or totally rained on. Many people have no tents, and can't even buy one if they have the money. But the foreign hospitals are working, the injured people are helped. The acute emergency is over.

Now is a time for demolishing all the houses. Men break houses with sledge hammers and shovel the rubble into wheelbarrows and take it to the street. Then the city comes with a dump truck and ten men who shovel the rubble into the truck and drive it away. That was working well in March, but now the dump trucks have stopped picking up. So the streets are congested with broken houses, leaving one lane for traffic, and cars take turns letting each other pass. It develops nice driving manners.

No one is rebuilding because everyone is waiting on the master plan. Why build when the city could change a street and put it across your new house, or when the new building code will make your construction illegal? So building is on hold, demolition is in progress.

As of May 3 we cut back the number of meals that we are serving. The kitchen at the school is now serving the students on school days, 250 meals. The kitchen at Pastor Eddy's house is serving 450 meals a day. This is not a bad thing. 1,300 meals a day was necessary during the emergency, but unsustainable long term, and we spent the money that was given to us. Without asking, I will let you know that if we receive more donations we will serve more food. So your help is welcome and appreciated. You can mail a check, address below, or view photos and donate at our web site www.haiticharity.org.

We have organized a trip to Carrefour with Impact Nations, a charity that brings medical mission trips to poor people. If you want to come to Haiti, this is the trip for you because it will be well organized, there will be training, and there will be a nice hotel with a pool and good meals. So you can both help the poor and survive the journey. June 13 to 25, 2010. Read more at www.impactnations.com

On this recent trip Steve and I and Pastor Eddy had a gospel crusade. One lady was healed from pain in her knees that had lasted 12 years. She came back the next night all dressed up and danced all over the stage shouting how Jesus had healed her. You had to be there. Probably 100 people received salvation in four nights, and there was a really sweet spirit throughout the entire crowd the whole time.

All my love in Christ,

Mac