We arrived in Gonaives last Saturday morning. We sat through meetings for the Awana training and then rested and slept. We woke up early Sunday morning to go and scout out Kapity, where we committed to do a medical clinic the following week. We were told it was only about 30 minutes from where we were staying...4 hours later we finally found it. We drove an hour to the city of Lester, where we were informed we'd passed the road to Kapity a looooong time ago. We turned around drove back another 20 minutes and asked along the way. We finally found a little dirt road and the man with a mouth full of gold teeth told us we'd found the road to Kapity. He said it's "just ahead". 25 minutes and 2 river crossings later we arrived at a small intersection and market. We asked if we were in Kapity and they pointed down another dirt "road" and said it was just ahead. We jumped in out Pathfinder and started it up...everyone began laughing and saying there was a huge ravine and no way for a car to make it through. After much thought and prayer we paid someone to watch our car full of medical supplies and jumped on two motorcycles. When we asked how long they said we'd be there and back in 20 minutes. We went down in the ravine, took our socks and shoes off, put our feet up high on the motos are started crossing a river.
This is the smaller of the rivers we crossed. There was just a better opportunity for a picture here. :)
Frantzy kept telling my moto driver to slow down and be careful as I continued to tell him that he was just being a paranoid boyfriend who's scared of my dad and to go faster. I laughed all the way up! It took 40 minutes to climb to the tip top of a mountain! One of the most beautiful drives of my life. When we finally found the church we walked in on the middle of the church service and asked to talk to Paster Jean. He walked out and declared that this was the "first time in my life I'm surprised!"
He was speechless. We began explaining we'd been trying to call for about a week trying to get directions but it always went to voicemail (because there isn't any signal on the top of the mountain!) so we just decided to find it ourselves. We told him we were hoping to leave the medical supplies with him and come back next week for the clinic. He put church on hold, sent his congregation to go and prepare their mules for the trip down the mountain and told us to wait for them. We jumped back on our motos and headed down the mountain. An hour and a half later 7 mules came walking down ready to be loaded with medical supplies!
We were in the middle of nowhere when we began unloading our vehicle. The Lord was so there, everyone helped us load the mules, no one asked for anything, and they were all so respectful and calm!
At this point Frantzy and I were so in awe of all that had happened that morning we just stood here and sobbed and prayed for their trip back up. We had a week in Gonaives training Haitian church leaders for Awana and then we traveled down to Port au Prince and surprised his family and spent the weekend with them. Monday morning we picked up Milo, Mckenzie and Gavin and began the journey back to Kapity. 29 minutes into our trip we were stopped by the police and fined for window tint and not having seat belts on (I've never in my life worn a seat belt here! I had no idea it was against the law. We're all convinced it was just because there were 3 white people in the car). The police officers told Frantzy he needed to go to Cite Soleil to pay the fine. Frantzy had heard there was a shootout between Haitian police and a gang right at the police station and told them they were crazy. They tried taking his license from him so that his only choice would be to go there. But when they found out where Frantzy grew up they apologized and said he could just pay them right there (dating a sweet christian guy from the ghetto has so many advantages!). We all laughed and buckled up very tightly! We arrived at the edge of the ravine a few hours later and we weren't able to get ahold of Pastor Jean to find out where we could park the car. We sent the 3 people who were with us up on motos and asked them to send mules back for the luggage. As soon as they left it began pouring rain. When the motos came back down they said the mules would arrive soon. About an hour later the car was safely parked and the mules were loaded. We walked down the ravine and the water was so deep and rushing that there wasn't any way to safely cross it. We climbed back up the ravine, climbed a small mountain but it was too steep to climb back down and cross the river with the mules so we walked back to the ravine, prayed the water would slow down and began crossing. It took close to 2.5 hours to get up the mountain. We had 2 mules, 3 Haitian boys, and a crowd of Haitians traversing the river with us. It was SO hard, but so much fun. We ended up crossing the river about 20 times because the paths were washing away.
By the time we arrived at the top it was just getting dark and everything was soaking wet. We slept in our wet clothes and got up the next morning to start the clinic!
Our home the last 3 days.
The church made us a toilet. :)
Haitian shower time!
We traded medical care for a place to sleep and food. The church sacrificed so much for us! They killed at least 2 chickens, a turkey, and they had bought a goat but while it was being brought up the mountain the rope broke and it ran away. We felt so blessed to see all of God's people working together!
Because haitian internet isn't the best, I'm going to upload this in two different parts. Part 2 will be up later. It'll take awhile for this to upload. :)
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