Our obvious purpose in Haiti was to spread the gospel - "to connect people to Christ and together grow in His Word", to use the mission statement from my church. We did our work within the ELCH (Evangelical Lutheran Church of Haiti) which is a sister synod to the LCMS (Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod). I will break it down a bit further into two simple tasks. The reasons we were in Haiti back in June of 2001: teach vacation bible school (VBS) to the students at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church and School and build a high school (the first Lutheran high school in Haiti).

The high school was going to be two floors in the shape of an "L" with several rooms per floor (I couldn't tell you how many - four, I think). Our team started with the first floor, I think literally from the ground up. (My memory is telling me the locals at least poured a foundation.) The first week's crew got it from the ground to waist or shoulder high. The concrete bricks are not heavy - Corey was able to carry three at a time. The second week's crew got it to where we were starting to pour the roof supports. (The next year already they had painted the first floor rooms and were using them while trying to build the second floor.)

A few things I should tell you about Haitian construction: 1 Building code, what's that? (I really believe that half of their buildings are held together purely by gravity and spit.) 2 Haitian concrete has no lime. For those of you who know as little about construction as I do, lime is what holds the concrete together. If there is no lime in the concrete… you have my argument for the buildings being held together by gravity and spit. Case in point - during the first day we were in Haiti our friend Ken put his hand on a wall that was supposed to already be a dry, firm wall… and it fell over. Our first order of business on the construction site was to rebuild the wall… 3 Haitian concrete is mixed on the ground. It is fascinating to watch. (I'll tell you more on the photograph page in the construction section - this way it makes sense.) 4 Wood is a valuable resource not to be wasted. It was not used as part of the high school building itself - it was rented to make the forms to pour the concrete in, and when the concrete dried the wood was taken down for use on another part of the building.

Some of the men were out on the site the entire time, some were out there the majority of the time, some were only out there when we had bucket brigade. (More on bucket brigades on the photo pages relating to construction. Bucket brigade is fun - make sure to check that one out!) A few of the women spent a fair time outside on the construction site, namely Sandy (nicknamed "Mom"). What she did was mostly playing nurse and doing what we called "watering the herd" - making sure the construction workers got plenty of water, water, and more water in their systems. (Filtered water, not the local stuff. I don't recommend that for anyone unless you want to get seriously sick.) They also carried water from the well to the concrete mixing station periodically - and got involved on the bucket brigade. Even I did the bucket brigade - that's how I know it's so much fun.

We had a handful of pre-planned lessons that were used the first week, then for the second week we ended up creating more lessons there. There was a daily opening of sorts, followed by singing songs in both Haitian Creole and English (did you know 50 kids can sing louder than most church congregations?), optional time for English Bible words for the older kids, reading the bible story in both English and Creole (which was usually acted out as a skit behind the storytellers), and doing the craft. The kids finished up with any other activity as time permitted - usually more singing. (The kids like it that much.) I will put this information again on the schedule page along with what the lesson and the crafts were for any given day for both weeks.

While most of the women spent the lion's share of their time teaching VBS, some of them helped out on the construction site… and several of the men helped out either exclusively or from time-to-time with VBS. They were especially helpful in the skits - even some of the Haitian locals helped out with the skits. (The pastor of the church was in the Samuel skit at one point.)

Well, that should cover most of the purpose stuff - this page was supposed to be a brief summary (emphasis on brief). If you want more info about what we did, check out the schedule, the photographs, and the journals using the links below.

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