Family Time.

We just had a great week here with Rebecca's mom, who traveled down with Tynan & Emma. Sandrea, our previous school teacher for Emma came down for the week too! Since Olivia was here as well, we were only a couple of kids short in celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary on June 10th. While there is a bigger celebration ALL TOGETHER, coming up in September along with Ted's 50th, it sure was a precious time to make new memories & to share our Haiti life with Ruth Carrico! We are SUPER proud of her for taking her first international trip ever in her 70's & to such a crazy different place. She was a natural traveler & kept right up on our excursions, she even visited Operation Blessing's school on the shores of Lake Azueil & ventured into Kanez village with Rebecca to check on a friend's little boy who is sick. Syndie got to meet her first grandparent in person. She sure LOVES her "Grandmere" & also got spoiled with lots of gifts sent down from "Tante Renee", Grandpa Bob & Grammy M! 

Life is taking a turn here now as we head into summer time - hot, Hot & HOTTER! It looks like a busy couple of months coming up. 

The coming & going continues as our company left Wednesday afternoon and Olivia flew back to TX this morning to pursue work, school and to catch up on her medical care now that we have U.S. insurance again. Rebecca's brother, Bob arrives in a week to kick off the computer programming business initial stages. We also have our honorary "neice", Bethany Hatley coming down from CA with a friend for 3 weeks and as soon as they leave our cousin Becca from Rhode Island!

Ted's first few weeks at OB have been interesting to say the least. The area of one of their big projects has been literally invaded by an egotistical group of "do-gooders" from the US that have a heap of money & seem to think that they can just take over two villages & do whatever they want. It's a VERY sad and scary situation. PLEASE pray...these Americans are extremely RUDE, vague, ARMED with both guns & video cameras and possibly dangerous. Strange, never thought we would worry about needing security from the Americans here. 

Our main ministry NEED right now is a helper for Rebecca from July 28th through the end of August! She will be up in Hinche with Midwives for Haiti most of that time & will have Syndie with her. We are hoping to have someone who will help out with Syndie during the hours that she has to give her attention to work. It may include educational tutoring & play for her and also being a personal assistant for Rebecca who will be teaching / training on postpartum & newborn care for midwifery students for several weeks.

We are also looking for a teacher for the coming school year. This could start sooner if the same person wanted to stay for the year. See the post under Ministry Team for this position...!

And the Barlow Birthday "season" begins...

Two unique souls united by birth.

Happy 20th Birthday Em & Liv!!!

random June news...

Tynan & I (Rebecca) finally received physical DIPLOPMA's signifying our graduations from LeTourneau University in May and bringing an end to our studies for a while...well at least mine! We even took a few courses together, such as CS Lewis, the man & his works and Non-verbal communication. FUN times!

Tynan received his Associate in Interdisciplinary Studies degree.

Mine is a Bachelor of Human Services.

It's always nice to have a little hard work pay off with tangible results...!

Father's Day was generally a quiet one here, since Haitian Father's Day isn't until the end of the month and most Haitians tell us they don't really ccelebrate it much here...poor dad's.

Ted did enjoy a promised gift of more planters for his ever expanding patio garden, and dined al fresco with two of his kiddos over a home cooked dinner of lemon noodles, Haitian fried chicken, veggies & and a 7 layer oatmeal, coconut, chocolate chip dessert!

This month Emma also started the final leg of her high school education, including a Senior Practicum that she is very excited about! She is going to be slowly taking over full household management over the next three months. Not only is she getting credit, enjoying the challenge, and learning a LOT, but it has been a ministry that helps lighten the load for the rest of us as we focus on our new tasks.

Look at her latest creations:

YUM!!!!! Nice "working" breakfast for Ted & I this morning...

as if creating goodies to nourish us isn't enough...she designed this for her online art course as well:

Last Friday Tynan & I rolled out a new event at the Apparent Project boutique, cafe & book nook with the first ever STORYTIME! It was a great turn out, allowed moms to enjoy the cafe and a browse of the artisan's work, while the kids were absorbed by several "animal" stories. This week it will be Dr. Seuss!

 If you're in Port Au Prince on a Friday morning this summer drop by the Apparent Project and join us at 10 am...with (or even without) your kids!  @ Rue Cassagnol Prolongee #16, Delmas 75  

Last news worthy event up to date was a very special birthday party for one of our favorite people...

Little Miss Phoebe Kate turned FOUR!

Phoebe & her mommy, our dear friend Jessica Williamson, lived with us for most of last year before moving up the hill to Thomassin. We still miss having a little one in the house, but they are like family now, so it was an honor to enjoy another birthday with our little unofficial "niece". Looking forward to many many more!

So....that's a random summer news from Haiti wrap!

Farm Hike

While I (Rebecca) sat at home on kitten midwife duty, Ted took Tynan, Emma & our good friend Joel Elam up into the hills for a hike. Here is a minute of their day, which was much more exciting than mine!

Farm Hike from Ted Barlow on Vimeo.

RR - paint & more paint...

Today our reno reality was quite nice! Our fixer errands took us up the hill into Petionville to an actual Sherwin Williams store. Here we get to pick more color options than they have at MSC, it's great paint & we enjoyed a few minutes of air conditioning. The Haiti twist...it is impossible to get paint here the same day. So we put our order in & will have to drive back up again tomorrow to pick it up.

It's been worth it, we threw in a quick stop at Maison Handel to look at a bed for Emma, picked up a couple more padlocks to replace the ones we had to cut off, bought a really nice bushel of "fig" (bananas) on the street and stopped to grab a few groceries on our way back home.

60 sec 1.10 from Ted Barlow on Vimeo.