Tag Archives: Renault

Happy 16th Birthday Katie!

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Dear Family and Friends; 

It is Katie’s 16th birthday and that also means that this year will mark 16 years in Haiti for us.  We are so thankful for Katie and would love it if you would send her a birthday greeting as she turns 16 (Feb 5th).

We’ve had a few months without visitors, so it is great to have teams coming again. Last week, together with a team from Michigan, we did a wedding for 28 couples and a camp for about 150 young people.

More than 2300 children came to Renault Sunday school at Christmas and they all received some very nice gifts.

It was a huge distribution which took about 4 hours, so we were really thankful for the help from Deb’s English class, who are also part of our volleyball club. 

We also held a special day of activities for the young people in our volleyball club. They divided up into 4 teams and competed in many events including tug o war, 

Timed team Toyota push,

High Jump

Anytime we have work projects we have a great crew of young people from our volleyball club who are ready and willing to work.

Our long time employees Roro and Nadair are learning carpentry and woodworking and they are doing great. We are planning to make 200 of these chairs, Lord willing, to replace our rusted folding chairs. The chairs stack together and are made out of local Haitian cedar. 

Thank you for your continued partnership as we begin this new year. We truly appreciate your prayers and support. 

Bye for now, 

 Love Rod, Deb and Katie 

Glory to God in the Highest

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Dear family and friends; Merry Christmas!

The kids at Sunday school this morning singing Glory to God in the highest.

Today’s bible story was about David and Goliath, and I thought for a moment about 3 people doing a Sunday school for 1500 children each week and just as God fought for David, He also has given us what we need to continue this ministry. Each Sunday as we arrive, Deb greets the children and exchanges money for coins that they have found. Katie organizes the kids as they get seated and Rod sets up the equipment.

At 15 years old, Katie does a great job of leading the singing.

Deb helps the kids who need medical care, usually by putting triple antibiotic cream on cuts and scrapes and other creams on skin diseases.

We are so thankful that the Lord is really working in the lives of Stanley and Joseph who have been in the Sunday school for 10 years and are now taking leadership roles. They both read the bible and give a short talk and prayer every week.

We would appreciate your prayers for Stanley and Joseph as God seems to be really working in their lives and they both live in difficult situations.

Deb always finds time to care for even the smallest needs.

Rod does the bible story, Katie helps give out the Manna packs and Deb does a short medical clinic every Sunday as we finish up.

As the children leave, there is always a group of adults that come in with medical needs. Deb is giving antibiotics to a young man who might lose his middle finger. It is very swollen and these people have no other place to come for medical care. We are very thankful for the Missouri medical team who leave enough meds with us each year so that we can help serve the people.

Several times we have had to use our Dewalt cordless shop vacuum to remove rocks or bugs that get trapped inside ears.

This little guy today wasn’t too excited about the procedure once he heard the sound of the vacuum. I use a small tube to reduce the suction of the vacuum.

We had a very special visit with our long time friend Max whom we hadn’t seen for many months. Max has aids and we worked together with him 15 years ago, helping people who have aids and also building an orphanage for children who have aids. Max recently had a stroke, but thank the Lord, he is recovering well.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support. Merry Christmas, Love Rod, Deb and Katie (the Wrays)

September News

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Dear Family and Friends; 

Here in Southern Haiti we are experiencing the heat wave of the year with clear blue skies and there is no wind, which is unusual for us. We are thankful that no hurricanes or big storms have passed our way so far this year.    
Deb and Katie took the Angels volleyball team to the beach over the summer break. A couple of the girls have departed and gone to play volleyball in Port au Prince, but we are thankful for a faithful group of Angels who continue on.
We recently hosted this wedding in the Camp Mahanaim yard and it was very beautiful. There are many requests, but few wedding parties who agree to the No alcohol rule in the yard.
Last weekend we held our big “Back to School” volleyball tournament which was a lot of fun and a huge success. It’s a unique tournament because girls and guys play together at a very competitive level. 
When our good friend Marv Owen passed away, a scholarship was set up to help children and young people in Haiti pay for school, and this year we had the privilege to administer over $4,000 in scholarship funds which greatly helped many people with school and college fees. 
The Renault Sunday school has gone well over the summer. We are really thankful for the help of the monitors who are young men who have grown up attending the Sunday school and now are great helpers. There are seven of them and their names are (from left to right) Berlin, Junior, Joseph, Andy, Stanley, Watson and Emile. We would appreciate your prayers for these young guys as they truly are trying to live for God and learn more from the Bible. 
The girl standing beside Katie is Cassan. We can’t be sure of Cassan’s age, but we know that she is very close in age to Katie. Cassan has been in the Sunday school for about 10 years and we believe that she is now 13 or 14 years old. Sometimes when a young child is severely malnourished, they do not grow. 
Thank you so much for your support, prayers, encouragement and emails.      We appreciate your partnership in ministry.

bye for now,

Love Rod, Deb and Katie 

Camp Mahanaim Waterslides

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We finally completed the rebuilding of the water slides here at Camp Mahanaim and they have already been very well used. If you would like to watch some videos of the water slides in action you can click on this link: Camp Mahanaim Water slides

It is very exciting to see the Haitian kids enjoying the slides so much and one of the favorites is the new tube slide.

On the first Sunday in March, Lord willing, we plan to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Renault Sunday school program.

10 years ago we started out with one small tent and a group of about 50 children. Many of the children that now attend, have come faithfully for ten years.

With the help of visiting teams we have done several weddings these past few weeks. The couples have been especially thankful for the opportunity to get married. I believe it was this couple that had 17 children and had been together for many years.

Katie has done an amazing job of dressing the brides. She has a great ability to pick out just the right dress for each bride. Several of her friends from the Angels volleyball team help in ministry also, which makes it fun for all.

The brides were beautiful.

One of the pastors insisted that Deb and I speak in the church as the couples were being married. I was wearing jean shorts and a white t-shirt, so the pastor loaned me his suit jacket and I hid behind the pulpit so people couldn’t see my jean shorts. Deb looked great as always.

Thanks to the help and partnership of teams, we had a great camp last week with about 150 Haitian young people.

It was a week full of fun activities for us all.

They jam about 75 kids in each bus for the two hour trip to get home.

Thank you so much for your support and prayers! We are thankful that the Woodmizer sawmill has arrived and we look forward to putting it to work.

bye for now,

Love Rod, Deb and Katie

April Showers

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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