Days 297 – 300 (9/09 - 12)

Sunday – Today is a double whammy Sunday. It is the dedication of the new St. Martin church and the installation of Pastor Paul for his 2^nd term as President of the EMH (officially referred to as the Consecration of the 2^nd Mandate). The date was chosen to coincide with all of the dignitaries being in town for the Roundtable.

The original St. Martin church and school collapsed in the earthquake and several people were killed. The new church and school has risen from the rubble and is a beautiful building – school on the first floor, church on the 2^nd.  I’ve watched this being built from the foundation up and have done several inspections for UMCOR. It is one of the best built structures I’ve seen in Haiti.

We left the Guest House at 8:00 A.M. for the 30 minute ride to St. Martin in Port-au-Prince. There were already a lot of people there when we arrived. The 9:00 service started at 9:15, which is almost a record in Haiti. There were 6 choir performances; 4 scripture readings; 4 congregational hymns; speeches by Rev. Sylvain Exantus, the President of the Protestant Churches in Haiti, Mr. Gerard Granado, the Secretary General of the Caribbean Council of Churches and Melissa Crutchfield, the Director of International Disaster Response for UMCOR; a sermon by Pastor Paul and to top it all off – communion for the 500 people attending a 4 hour service. The previous record for me was 3 ½.

After the service invited guests went back to the Plaza Hotel for a late lunch and a couple of more hours of speeches. Lucky me.

The EMH passed a beautiful booklet with pictures and a history of the progress made within the Methodist church since the earthquake. One interesting table showed the actual damage to church property and parishioners. Deaths - 76; Injured - 117; Houses Destroyed - 410; Damaged - 360; Churches Destroyed - 9; Damaged - 23; Schools Destroyed - 8; Damaged – 18.

Monday – We have one team in-country, one team arriving today and two more coming in tomorrow. So, I spent a good part of the morning walking the Guest House Renovation with the site engineer making sure the finishing touches were put on the completed rooms and the remaining work was following the agreed upon schedule. The afternoon was spent getting the site engineer on the GH Staff Annex prepared to start the installation work of the 2^nd story. The evening was spent preparing for the marathon of meetings taking place over the next couple of days.

Our new team did arrive in time for dinner.

Tuesday – Today is the 11^th anniversary of the9/11 tragedy and the 21^st birthday of my oldest granddaughter, Nicole - a bittersweet day.

We got our new team off to their work site in Bercy, which is a new site about 1 hour out of Les Cayes. Then Tom and I rushed over to Pastor Paul’s office for the meeting of the EMH Housing Project Management Team. We are having serious problems with the inability of one of our contractors to complete 10 houses in Mellier and the meeting was to formulate a plan to deal with the situation before meeting with him tomorrow. The second meeting, also in Pastor Paul’s office was of the Joint Leadership Team. We did a review of the just completed Roundtable and discussed the current EMH – UMCOR – UMVIM projects. There was quite a bit to go over and we didn’t get out of there until 1:30 P.M.

We got back to the Guest House in time for a meeting with Gareth Lewis, the Shelter and Reconstruction Coordinator for UMCOR. We are coordinating another training session for Haitian construction workers on new and better construction techniques. We also are planning a training session for Site Engineers and Site Bosses on Construction Management skills.

Just before dinner we welcomed our 2 new teams.

Wednesday – This morning we got the equipment and supplies staged for our 2 teams going out – 1 to La Tremblay and 1 to Petit Goave . But Tom and I had to leave the final loading to Mario and Danette because we had to be back over to Pastor Paul’s office for the meeting with the Mellier contractor. It was not a pleasant meeting. The committee offered a plan for the completion of the houses and he refused. He was given a week to reconsider and the committee will meet next week to make a final decision.

The next meeting was also in Pastor Paul’s office and was on the New College Bird school project. College Bird is in Port-au-Prince and is the largest Methodist school in Haiti. About half of the campus was destroyed in the earthquake. The reconstruction of this school was the number 1 priority project of the EMH. But because of delays created by the Haitian government’s changing their rebuilding master plan, it is just starting, 32 months after the earthquake. It will be the largest EMH construction project to date – over 3 million dollars and consist of 3 buildings. It is not being funded under the Haiti Response Plan, but by a separate UMCOR grant and a large contribution from the Church of the Resurrection. The EMH Head Engineer and UMCOR have asked me to serve in an advisory capacity and provide some oversight for UMCOR and COR. Something to do in my spare time.