gettin' ready

I did tell you the EBS world was going to CETA, right?  Oh man.

Matt described hosting this conference tonight as "like hosting the Olympics of Theological Education in the Caribbean."  That is totally what it feels like.

Today, after working until 2:30 on finishing sign-up sheets and a formal conference schedule, I ran home to eat and grab the girls, then we all headed to the EBS kitchen to teach the lovely kitchen ladies how to make French toast.  Again, we're thinking our delegates might not want spicy garlic spaghetti with mayo for breakfast.  Which means we had to come up with something new.

Measurements are pretty non-existent in Haitian cooking, but instead everything goes by handfuls or spoons.  So, I let my American ways go, did everything by hand, Granny writing furious pages of notes the whole time, Mona, MaCodo and Paulcine following every step, the girls trying to stick their fingers in the syrup.  By the time the bread was actually on the griddle plate of the stove (first time it's ever been used) a gathering of students had accumulated.

By the time it was time for taste testing, I felt like I was on some kind of a cooking show, entirely surrounded by twenty or so very anxious to taste something new and "American" adults.  I tried to explain that I don't think "French Toast" is American...but Haiti's never all that thrilled about anything French.

So fine.   And they loved it.

I mean, it's not spicy.  And there is NO garlic.  Nor mayo.  And Giselaine was PRETTY sure that they syrup wasn't good for her diabetes.  But they think they can swing it in the weekly rotation for a week.

As soon as we were walking home from that, we discovered the Sleasmans came back a few days early, much to everyone's delight...we've been missing them while they've spent a few days at Children of the Promise...and that everyone was already arriving for prayer meeting.

I am officially pooped.  And the conference hasn't started yet.

However, watching the students moving rooms, packing in, washing and scrubbing, painting trees (a sign of any true Haitian celebration), going above and beyond...watching Phil digging three feet under the ground to rip out a sidewalk over a water main break and somehow redo and repour the whole thing in record time before the conference....watching the canal crew go crazy finishing the canal (to fix the drainage issue that knocked down our whole wall in the last flood)...it helps.

We're all in it together.

Meanwhile, after 2.5 months of good news turned no-news, I have an awesome testimony of the Lord opening a totally unexpected door, of redeeming love, of Him knowing and moving.  

Soon.  First, the Olympics.