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03 June 2016

just a little bit of everything...

Yesterday, right before our good-bye dinner for our friend Valorie, Matt and Pam and their crew showed up with solar panels!  YES, the solar panel installation guys have already been here (when the panels were supposed to be here) and gone, YES, the panels have been in Haiti since April...locked in the port. Welcome to customs.  We were ALL super thankful to have another company (Matt and Pam's) getting the panels for us, navigating all the customs for us, and even delivering them to the campus!
Phil, of course, wasted NO time getting them going, and he and Matt and even Em were out there bright and early this morning installing and plugging them together and all that.  
I'm so excited about...
NOT writing a check for 20,000 gdes ($333 USD) a week for diesel fuel for the generator, 
NOT running the generator (it is SO loud and directly in line with our bedroom window), 
about being far more environmentally friendly (especially in a culture that is not), 
about having Junel available to help Phil one more day a week (instead of doing diesel runs and fills, which take hours!) 
about how the money saved can be used to further His kingdom through our staff and student,
and being less concerned about the fuel shortages that come with every political upheaval! 
I am still a little mad that Phil cut down my FAVORITE palm tree.  But.
He insists that he has planted 8000 other new plants, and.  It's true.
Praising the LORD for the many people who have helped make this possible...for His kingdom!

So while they were doing THAT, the girls were off testing, and having Sofie's school b-day party!
Ah, Sofie.
Girlie is somehow going to be FIVE tomorrow.  Goodness.

This is her first birthday that Matt will be with us for (he is always in England working on his doctorate, but doesn't have to go this summer because he does his final defense in October!) and she is so excited about that!  She was also pumped to take cupcakes to her class today, and that Rachel was there to help her teacher start testing!

While the big girls were off at school, Nora was eating spaghetti, which is her new VERY favorite thing, complete with lots of lip smacking and clapping for herself.
Jodenel (otherwise known as another member of my "God's grace in Stacey's life" team) and I finally closed May today, and I continue to just be so thankful for his wisdom, character, patience and steady and c-a-l-m manner.  Even when there are three people waiting, two people at the desk and someone on the walkie talkie and I can't find the thing we're looking for, he is rushed by NO man, and will do consistent and reliable work regardless.  

There is NO better person who could balance me out in the office :)   I have NEVER seen this man stress.  Never would have dreamed when he was a first year student years ago that he'd become such a faithful ministry partner!

After dinner with the team, we got the girls to bed (which included Rachel, after spending all day in kindergarden, going to bed...and then Matt at 7:30 going to bed) and I finally did Sofie's birthday cake, which was to be "round, big, white, with different ways of pink flowers all around in a circle with a blue five in the middle" and decorated the house, which in five-year old Sofie-world is apparently very important.
Tomorrow we are off to town to hopefully find a crib for the family moving in this week with baby Joel. There is a stretch of sidewalk near the ocean that sells patent leather couches from America, an incredibly long row of toilets, and baby cribs.  SO.  

Sunday Matt is preaching at a very special church that's been meeting in a home since their beginning (picture 40-50 people per Sunday, sitting on all the stairs, every chair, on the floor, out on the porch) several years ago, giving and saving and tithing and praying, and block by block, their church building is now finished!  Sunday is the inaugurating day of the building they have built themselves...we have only helped through tithing generously when we attend...and I'm so excited to see it completed and praise the Lord with them for completing this work that felt so impossible for so long!

Adventure.


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