April Showers

Posted on April 23, 2017 by Shelby

Dear family and friends;

We seem to live in the land of adversity, as again, we are receiving huge amounts of rainfall. This morning we measured that more than 30 inches of rain has fallen in the past 48 hours.

It’s been nice to have our son Tim here for the past 5 weeks doing one of his physiotherapy placements in Les Cayes. While here, Tim produced and filmed our first Creole bible lesson and we are really happy with the 16 minute film that we plan to use at Renault Sunday school.

Myrlande, who has been our long time partner in ministry, was married last weekend. She seems very happy and assures us that her ministry with us will continue.

It has been a very productive past two weeks as we have had a small team of semi-retired friends from Grand Rapids here, who have done a ton of work. They put an extension on the Renault Sunday school and they put two large roofs on at the camp. This pretty much completes the repairs since hurricane Matthew.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support. We totally depend upon God’s care and guidance each day.

Thanks, bye for now,

Love Rod, Debbie, Katie and Tim

Buckets of Love

Posted on February 26, 2017 by Shelby

Dear family and friends;

We have had a busy, but great start to 2017. We have been amazed by the way you have responded since hurricane Matthew hit Haiti. Thank you so much!

It’s been a privilege for us to distribute more than 600 buckets of love.

As well as giving buckets and food to many people, we have been able to build a complete new wall along the Laquille river to protect Camp Mahanaim. The wall is 8 feet high and 3 feet thick at the base with baskets of rocks under it.

We have also been doing weddings. When the dresses are washed and the sun isn’t shining, we hang the dresses in our house to dry.

We did medical clinics last week with the Missouri medical team and they saw about 2800 people in one week. We also hosted our first camp back at Camp Mahanaim since the hurricane. It was a soccer camp.

Katie turned 14 on Feb 5th. It is hard to believe that we have been in Haiti 14 years.

Many of the young girls who have grown up in our Sunday School have now had babies and Deb takes special care of them all.

Thanks so much for your continued support and prayers and partnership,
bye for now,
Love Rod, Deb and Katie

Transformation at Camp Mahanaim

Posted on December 19, 2016 by Shelby

Dear family and friends;
Merry Christmas! Thanks so much for your care and encouragement these past two months. We are going to try to show some of the transformation that has happened at Camp Mahanaim since hurricane Matthew struck just over two months ago. We are so thankful for your help and support as you have stood with us to make this recovery possible.

With the help of a team of 11 men we installed wire cages in the river and filled them with rocks. We are rebuilding the protective wall along the river on these rock cages. The river wall is 7 to 8 feet tall and is made of rocks cemented together. We have already brought in more than 110 truck loads of rocks.

This past month we said good-bye to our faithful old friend Rambo, who has been with us and served us well for many years. We also parted with the old army truck.

We are really thankful for the help and care from so many people in the village. They have been a huge encouragement and support to us. Thanks also to the team at Harvest International who have helped us greatly, including sending containers of food and supplies. We have been able to carry out distributions every couple weeks for the people who live near us.

Please continue to pray for us that God would direct us regarding the Renault Sunday school. This past Sunday we had more than 1,500 children. They really want to learn and are very well behaved, but we just don’t have enough space in the existing building and hardly in the yard.

It’s great to have our son Tim home for Christmas with us. He has made up a short video of the progress here at the Camp since the hurricane, if you’re interested in seeing the latest happenings in greater detail. We’re excited to have a real Haitian Pine Christmas tree this year.

Thanks again. Merry Christmas!

bye for now,

Love Rod, Deb, Katie and Tim

One Month Later

Posted on November 11, 2016 by Shelby

Dear family and friends;

Thank you so much for your prayers and emails. We have been lifted up by the encouragement and of family and friends over the past month. We have started clearing out and piling up some of the sand that Hurricane Matthew brought into the camp.

The large relief organization, Samaritan’s purse has asked to use Camp Mahanaim as their base for operations so they have moved in with us. The helicopter lands often on the soccer field.

Trucks and containers full of food and supplies fill the yard.

Thanks to great teams from Michigan and Missouri, the camp is back in pretty good shape and we have also been able to help many Haitians around us. We have done numerous medical clinics in several locations.

Deb and Katie have become great medical translators.

We have also been able to do many distributions including to some remote locations who haven’t had any help since the hurricane.

Thankfully the donkeys carried the supplies.

The devastation up near the tops of the mountains was unbelievable.

This church at Liktor village collapsed just as the village people were going to enter it for shelter. Thankfully nobody had entered yet when it fell.

The people were truly thankful for tarps and food.

Thanks so much for standing with us at this time and for showing your love and care for us and for the Haitian people. We are looking forward to a little rest this coming week, Lord willing.

We sure appreciate your prayers,

bye for now,

Love Rod, Deb and Katie

From the Wrays

Posted on October 6, 2016 by Shelby

Dear friends and family,

Tim here again with another update from my parents. With help from the people of Tiveni they were able to clear off the road and reach the camp this morning.

“The camp is unrecognizable. The whole drive out to the camp reminded me of scenes following a tornado, except here the devastation goes on and on.”

Rod, Debbie, and Katie worked to begin cleaning up the camp today and prepared the girls and boys dorms for locals who lost their homes and no longer have shelter. They will house 200 people from the village. The main generator was underwater so Rod began the task of disassembling and cleaning it out, with hopes of starting it tomorrow. Due to the lack of power and water they returned to Cite Lumiere for another night, but hope to stay out at the camp starting tomorrow.

The people of the village gathered and thanked the Wrays for saving their lives by warning them of the storm and setting them up at the French Canadian compound up the road. Pictured right is one of the homes in the village.

Rod had recently stocked up on Manna Pack rice for the Renault sunday school program. Luckily, it survived the storm and they were able to begin distributing it to the locals today.

Thank you for your prayers and support. We will keep you updated as we hear more.

Tim (Rod, Debbie, and Katie)

Serving God In Haiti

Sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the people of Haiti through medical help and the truth of God's Word.

Tag Archives: Camp Mahanaim

April Showers

Buckets of Love

Transformation at Camp Mahanaim

One Month Later

From the Wrays