I know I'm protected

Today was an interesting day. It's been all hands on deck at the Torcelle orphanage to get it finished soon. Sunday I helped the Beaverton, OR team of 3 guys do plumbing and electrical which was great. This morning I mostly ran errands. I drove to the church and back twice. Once by myself and again with Pastor Mark. I'm getting a lot better at driving!!
I went on errand with Gregory, a Haitian man who helps organizing the hired Haitian workers at our job sites. Gregory spent several years in Boston where his family currently lives, so he speaks fluent English. He's a good guy. Our errand was to get Ragaman, which is a Haitian energy drink that tastes like liquid candy apple, and pâté, which is a sandwich with meat that has been deep fried. We stopped at a little roadside stand that we usually get pâté at and know is safely cooked. The stands are right in front of one of the UN compounds. I took that opportunity to ask Gregory what he thought of the UN. I hear a lot of complaining about them, and several American activists on Twitter and such hate them and say they should withdraw, but I wants to hear what a Haitian that I respect felt. Gregory said, "I can tell you one thing that I know: If they leave, you leave." He went on to explain that while the UN isn't really all that active day to day, their presence keeps missionaries like us safe. The Haitian police force is corrupt and not trustworthy to Gregory. "...They won't stop people from robbing or attacking you."
On Friday the Prime Minister of Haiti resigned. We've been hearing that a lot of parliament are trying to make things hard for Martelly and want a return to times of corruption and big government paychecks while the people suffer.
Sure enough the night after the PMs resignation someone (or people) burnt the Tabarre open market to the ground causing loss of thousands of dollars for Haitian people. And we've mostly heard that the people who miss Aristide and Preval caused the fire. They're all happy too about how Martelly is handling it, tracking down anyone who might know who's responsible, including the night security for the market.
After my trip with Gregory, we went back to Torcelle to work, and I was holding a ladder for Gregory while he was up helping secure a piece of OSB on the ceiling of one of the rooms. He went to hammer the piece of board to into place, and the board broke and his hammer slipped out of his hand and hit me in the face just below my right eye. It knocked me silly for a few moments and hurt like crazy, but I'm fine. Gregory thought he killed me at first, but all I have is some cuts and a black eye.
I got to go with Pastor Mark and Gregory to Sarthe after the accident. I even got to drive out there which is a lot further out and a lot rougher of a drive and I passed. :)
We checked on the progress of the orphanage there and it's crazy how different it looks out there already. We talked with Pastor Renold who is being extremely patient with the progress. He is starting to get concerned for his family and the orphans' safety though, as now that there's work being done he's worried that the surrounding people are going to assume he has money. At some point we're going to build a wall and secure the property but it's moving up the list of priorities now.
That was all before lunch and after lunch I had english class for adults and after our lesson we played "Heads up, seven up" which was a lot of fun! They really enjoyed it.
Here's a photo of me driving cause I was so proud of myself at how much better at driving I am now. And with my little friend at Sarthe whom everyone tells me is my Haitian son, because I'm always with him every time I'm out there.









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