Tag Archives: Renault

Many Hands Make Light Work

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Dear family and friends;
We have had an excellent summer and finished with some very good camps in August. We realized that our turtles weren’t living well because of the shortage of natural food in our turtle pond, so we decided to do a pond makeover and with the help of many hands in less than a month it went from the “turtle pond” to “the lake”. First we had to remove the grass and weeds. We caught the turtles and released them into the Caribbean.
   

We put down gravel and then sand to build the beach. The lake has become a great area for water activities.
 

The Caribbean has been filled with unwanted floating seaweed which continues to arrive on our beaches.

Our girls volleyball team (the Angels) won the regional championship, so we took them to Port au Prince for the national championships. They were held at the new Olympic center in Port au Prince and we had a great time, and the Angels came in 6th overall, which was great considering their age. 

A few reminders of why we don’t like Port au Prince; Garbage on streets and everywhere. Four goats tied to the motorbike. The white goat had the bad deal
as he was tied against the muffler and he would drag on the pavement every time the driver leaned to the right.
         

We were so thankful that we could have three camps this summer with the kids from the Renault Sunday school program. The kids were great, and they are learning so much about God. This lesson was about how our lives change completely when God lives inside us, like the caterpillar into the butterfly.
   

We are so thankful for the projector and Christian videos that help keep the kids keep focused at Sunday school.

Thanks for your support and prayers, and we hope you had a great summer!

bye for now,

Love Rod, Debbie and Katie

A mid summer’s Update

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Dear family and friends;

Early July started out with a girls volleyball camp and a large camp of 220 young people. Both camps went very well.

We had a team cancel for mid July, so we quickly booked flights and took a quick vacation back in British Columbia to see family and friends.

It was great to see so many family members. (Deb with 3 of her brothers in the picture). We were so thankful to spend time with our parents also.

We had a great time and are thankful to the Lord for His protection during all our travels. Immediately, upon arrival back in Haiti we had a huge turn out at Sunday school (this past Sunday).

Today we completed a goat project for a few of our young friends here in the village. The boys were pretty excited to receive their own goat and since the fishing has been so poor this year, the goats will be a huge help to the local families.

Please pray for us, as we have three big camps coming up in early August, and although we are feeling rested, we have a lot of work ahead of us.

thanks, bye for now,

Love Rod, Deb and Katie

Mother’s Day

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Hello family and friends;

This email is a short tribute to Deb on Mother’s day. Deb received some emails from out daughters today and here are a couple of quotes;
“I am striving to be even a little bit like you because then I know, that I will be doing great…. because you are amazing!!” and ; “You are a true servant with a compassionate and kind heart, I’ve learned so much just from watching you”.

Deb works together with Myrlande

Deb cares for the “least of these” at Sunday school.

Deb and I co-coach the Angels volleyball team. This is the Under 15 yrs group that we are hoping to take to Orlando, Florida for the AAU National championships in June. We are still praying for passports.

This is the new commercial wash machine at Camp Mahanaim. When camp finished it used to take 5 or more days of washing by hand, and now it takes one day. 

We recently had the “Trinity Western Spartans” ladies volleyball team at Camp Mahahaim. They helped host weddings for 45 couples and played lots of volleyball. They are a little taller than our Angels.

Fabiola and Cassan help Myrlande lead the singing at Renault. These little girls know all of the songs.

We continue to have many poor suffering people come to us asking for medical help.
We are very thankful that most often we are able to help, thanks to your partnership.

Katie passing out some bracelets.

We were down to our last box of “manna packs” rice, so were very excited when the big truck came into the yard today bringing 800 more boxes of Manna. Thanks again to your support and partnership.

Thanks for your continued support and prayers,

Happy Mothers Day!

bye for now,

Love Rod, Deb and Katie

A Request

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Dear family and friends;

We really appreciated Dan and Christie coming  to Haiti this Christmas again and we had a great time together. We were able to do several Christmas distributions again  this year to Haitians who live in very poor conditions.


Thanks to some gifts of children’s clothes, we were also able to do a Christmas give away at the Renault Sunday school program.

After a year of working with us here in Haiti, our son Tim has decided to move back to British Columbia to work and continue his education. We will miss him. He left on December 26th.

On Dec 27th our first team of the season arrived and together we hosted a special camp for youth, which went very well.


Last week we headed out to the Island of Isle a Vache with our second team. They did  a great job of helping many couples get married. This week we have a medical team here, who are ministering to Haitians in a community at the base of the mountains.

Our request is to ask you to please continue to pray for us. We often share with you about the exciting and positive things that are happening in our lives and here at Camp Mahanaim, but as we reflect on the year 2014,  we admit that there have been many extreme and demanding challenges that we have faced. One of our volleyball girls being beaten by a local young man using a large rock. An older neighbor man who has been a leader in the church for years, molested a 4 year old little girl right outside our gate and nobody in the community would call the police for fear of his relatives. One of our dearest, long term co workers was beaten by her jealous boyfriend and we gave her
sanctuary in our yard, and in turn had to face the wrath of this evil young man.
These are just a few examples of the many difficult situations that we have encountered this past year. In every case we have helped the victims and spoken out and taken action against the wrong, including calling the police to come and arrest the child molester. This has made us unpopular with some who live in our village as they would prefer that the deeds of darkness remain hidden.

A few days after Christmas we visited the slums of Cayes where Daphnie lives. She is a young girl who has come to our Renault Sunday school for many years. We don’t know exactly how old she is, but she is definitely less than 15 and this Christmas she had a baby boy.

In these and many other situations, we don’t know how to respond or what to do, but as you continue to pray and we continue to trust the Lord, we pray that He will give us the grace and strength and wisdom to do the right thing.

Thanks ,

bye for now ,

Love Rod, Debbie and Katie

thankful

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Dear Family and Friends:

We are thankful that we have an abundance of fresh drinking water.  In fact, since Rod put the well in up the road and piped it down 1 km to the camp, we have had more water than we can use. Thus, we have been able to share with the village folks around us. From sun up to sun down each day, our gate is open for all to come and get water.

We recently had Brie, a young lady from Langley, B.C. who excels in the sport of volleyball, here for two months. We enjoyed her friendship and really appreciated all of her help with the girls’ volleyball team. She and Tim spent many hours training the girls and teaching them English. We’re praying about an opportunity to take these 10 girls to the U15 AAU championships in Florida next June. If you would like to learn more about this opportunity, Brie’s family has set up a fundraising campaign  here.

The gym has been such a blessing. We continue to host weekly tournaments and continue to be amazed at the opportunities to share the gospel through sports. Tim continues to be a huge encouragement to the children of Renault. Each Sunday he is seen helping numerous children who are desperate for medical help.

During the months of Oct. and Nov. we haven’t had any teams so it has been a good time to do maintenance on all of the vehicles. We have been using this time to prepare for team season which will start in full swing the last week of Dec. This past week we were surprised with a visit from some of the folks that lived at the camp following the earthquake. They talked of how the camp was such an answer to prayer during those difficult days. We had a great time visiting with them before they returned to Port au Prince.

This month Rod’s mom was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Both dad and mom Wray are positive and recognize that their lives are in God’s hands. Here they are pictured together with Sawyer, Ellyanna and Wyatt our grandchildren. Thanks to Carly and Eylar for the picture, (and the grandchildren).

We want to thank each one of you for writing, supporting, encouraging, and praying for the ministry.

We are thankful for you.

God Bless, Rod, Debbie, Tim and Katie

If you would like to watch a video of the Camp Mahanaim waterslide you can click on;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTN53Ipk-1g&feature=youtu.be