Wiebe's Corner Quoting on Prayer

Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this - always obey such an impulse.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Lasstic Janurary 2013 Progress

From across the US & Canada our folks are starting to stream back to Haiti. Sam has been working there all summer, Jerome, Morgan, and Jalen arrived within the last week or so, and have been at work setting up the compound, and generally getting ready for this year’s work. The AC has been fixed on the DMax, new tires are ordered, the (new to us) quad has been rebuilt, and we’re mostly ready to go (more on that later).

In case there are those of you who haven’t been informed, water was turned into the project in February 2012. The system mostly worked during the year, with some startup pains, until the double blow of Hurricane Isaac & Hurricane Sandy that took us out of commission. Our task is to repair this damage, and strengthen for future threats.

We have rented the same house in Fond Parisien that we’ve had the last several years. This will be our first year without Raymond formally involved, although he was not on site last year because of his surgery. This year he plans to be off west building a bridge, and of course we wish him the very best at that. Quite a few volunteers from previous years will be there, and we’ll be welcoming new folks as well.

After initial setup, our first task will be to further assess the dam VS bedrock situation. A large amount of backfill prom previous years has washed away, and this gives us the chance to anchor all or most of the dam down to bedrock. With the help of the excavator, we’ll be probing to see how far we have to go. We anticipate about 175 yards of concrete will be poured to accomplish this, with about 5 tons of steel to be placed and tied. While this is going on, a second team will be repairing the limited damage to the canal, and we will also be revamping our gate/control layout to streamline that part of it.

A lot of time was spent during the summer and fall mapping and drafting the distribution area, and that project is complete. A total of 1419 gardens are being supplied with water, and each one has been mapped, drafted, calculated, and a “Sètifika Dlo” (water certificate) prepared. Each garden is cross referenced to our field notes, the district it resides in, and the map sheet & grid on which it is currently shown. As we continue to establish the local Water Committee and the operating budget, each landowner will receive his formal certificate as he pays his annual dues for water. In 2013 the fee will be about $35 USD per acre, or about $14 for the average size garden. It is our goal to have this completely set up and organized by the time water flows again, which we hope will be happening by the end of February.

Since we don’t have Raymond working with us this year, we also don’t have his tools and equipment. Last fall we made up an exhaustive list of what we needed to acquire for this year, as well as adding the routine consumables. This was all assembled in Pennsylvania near to CAM’s HQ, carefully packed into a container together with some items for Raymond and Keith Toews, and delivered to CAM. Due to circumstances seemingly beyond our control, they have delayed shipment several times, and it’s still sitting in their yard! Since it takes about 4 weeks to make the transit and clear customs, we will likely be half done by the time it arrives. We’re starting to take some alternate measures, but not everything has been resolved at this time. The current promise is to ship in two days (Wednesday), so we’ll see what happens.

Right now our funding is about 75% of our budget, so we’ve come a long ways, and our goal is almost in sight. As long as ya’ll keep supporting us in prayer, and with volunteers and funds, we’ll keep working.

Kevin Bronson

Are You A Prayer Warrior?

1 Thessalonians 5:17 pray without ceasing

I have been more and more impressed with the power of prayer. Why wouldn't you pray? We are such weak beggarly beings and yet we have a heavenly father and creator that is interested in our praise and requests. I have nothing to boast of but know that I am very needy. Alot of things I do not understand, but I do believe in prayer. When a plane is to make a tragic descent to the ground, its passengers resort to prayer if there is but any time to do so. There is so much to pray for. If you chronically complain about the way the country is run, and about the Media, your neighbors, or crime waves----it means you have a duty, yes a duty to pray to God about these things. No point being self righteous about it--you have power to pray about it. When you read a true story pray for the people. I remember reading a book of short stories. One left you hanging. One about about a poor Indian girl that was forced to prostitute to provide for her dying family. It touched my heart that I wanted to pray for her. In the next reprints they had to update the story to record that miracles had happened in her life. I believe readers were moved to prayer and it made a difference.
I love the people that I meet, but know that only the Holy Spirit can really make the difference in their lives. That means pray for them. As you drive away take off your hat and pray. When you pass out tracts pray. When you get out of bed-- Pray. Before you sleep-- pray. Any troubles---pray.
And then stop and think of how merciful God has been towards  you-- pray Thanks.
We do not need to recite prayers and think we will be heard for our ritual---We are here to put our hearts into it and make a difference. Christ is our intercessor and as we want to be more like Him it does us good to intercess for our family, neighbors, and national leaders. I have scratched my head and wondered if there is any Christian out there that has recieved the New Birth that has not been prayed for in some way.... JT

Ephesians 6:18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints,

 

1 Timothy 2:1-2 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

 

Post Hurricane Sandy---Lasstic Haiti Canal/Dam Project

A Little Overdue, but still Ongoing

November 2012

 

 

 

Several of us traveled to Haiti in mid October to review the damage caused by Hurricane Isaac that passed over Haiti in late August. In general, the whole country took a medium beating from the storm, with some roads washed out, crops ruined, houses damaged, etc. The roads leading to our project had some damage as well, although by the time we arrived the road department had repaired the main road. The side road that leads through several villages to our site had been repaired enough by locals that we were able to get through in low range 4X4 with a spotter guiding us through the rough parts.

What we found wasn't a surprise to us, because it had been described to us by several visitors just after the storm. The canal has some damage, with about 15' of the wall broken away in one point, and some erosion undercutting the floor. One of our control gates has broken away (parts of it were found about 3 1/2 miles downstream). We found large rocks, some as big as basketballs, that had washed over the control gates, and partially filled the canal beyond. We estimate that 50 yards of debris were washed over the top of the ±4' high gates - it's hard to imagine the turbulent water required to move that size of rocks over that high of a wall. The gates are pretty scarred, but still very usable. We expect the canal repairs can be done in a week or less, and in doing so, we will reinforce some areas for future storm resistance.

The erosion at the dam site is more spectacular. What we call the dam is really a retaining wall that crosses the river just downstream of the entrance to the canal. During construction we were able to locate bedrock on the river bank nearest the canal, and a knob about 2/3 of the way across the riverbed to anchor the dam to, but in between those two bedrock points we dug down about 12' with the excavator, and didn't hit anything solid. We decided that that 12' was about the maximum depth that we could open and dewater a hole for construction, so without bedrock in between we built a dam to span the river. It is 18' high, and when it was finished we backfilled it, which raised the level of the river bed and created a waterfall. The height of the dam is such that water runs around the end of it until the desired high water level in the canal, at which time excess water spills over the dam. To reduce erosion, we piled many tons of boulders at the base of the dam to form a splash pad. We moved in all the big rocks from the canyon below -everything we could dig up and move in with a Cat 320 excavator.

Based on the water mark evidence on the canal walls, it looks like the water came over the dam 4 ' to 5' deep. The entire boulder field was washed away, and not to be seen anywhere in the river bed downstream. It appears that once the erosion protection was gone, the falling water undercut the dam until the backfill from the upstream side started washing under the dam, and about 2/3 of the backfill placed in 2011 was gone. The stream ran just under the dam in two places, with about 2' of clearance in the deepest channel.

We spent a number of hours poking, prodding, measuring, debating, and calculating. By the end of three days, we had come up with a proposed soil stabilization method, a way to re-backfill the dam, and plans for repairing the canal and other miscellaneous damage, including to the two fountains we had placed in several nearby villages. We also spent some time in Port au Prince determining the availability and pricing of materials, we looked for another vehicle to purchase, and made general plans.

As we left the country October 24th, all eyes were starting to look south, where another hurricane was quickly forming. When Sandy crossed over Cuba as a Category 2 hurricane, the storm was big enough that is was raining all the way from Venezuela to Florida, and was certainly raining hard in most of Haiti. According to most of the people we have had contact with there, it was the worst rainfall event in many years. At our congregation in Oriani, it rained for 43 hours straight, during which time they received about 2.5' of water! Houses, crops, roads, bridges, and people's hopes were washed away all around the country. We all have heard about and seen the immense damage caused when Sandy hit New York - at which time it was "only" a Category 1 hurricane. Can anybody imagine the damage if it was a Cat 2 when it hit?

When our local inspectors finally were able to hike back into the canyon to inspect (much more road damage than before), they were all concerned that this storm might have been the water that broke the dam, but to their amazement they found the riverbed was scoured down to bedrock for some distance both upstream and downstream from the dam, I mean bridge. It is now "high and dry" with enough clearance underneath to drive heavy equipment through! The water was still rushing down the channel, but the opening down to bedrock is about 45' wide at the top, 25' wide at the bottom, and about 15' high.

We have enough data points from 500' upstream of the dam to about 3/4 of a mile below the dam to calculate the average change in river bottom to be about 18'. This means that in this 3/4 mile area, 18' deep X the average riverbed width, approximately 500,000 yards of material were washed away. And it didn't just was around the next corner - 3 1/2 miles downstream the river bed is down about 4', and along the way it widened the river about 75' through one village for about 1/2 mile, washing away to within about 3' of the nearest house, and made sundry other adjustments to the landscaping! This rock was deposited after the river slowed down as it widens out into the farming valley another mile or so downstream. Some of it washed an additional 2 - 2 1/2 miles and buried a few fields that were getting irrigation water from our system.

We don’t view the altered landscape at our dam site as a huge disaster, but rather it's really a blessing. We had debated the idea of excavating down until we found solid rock, but had ruled it out as to much overburden to move with the equipment, time, and space we had available With the bedrock exposed, we can construct under the dam/bridge down to it, and eliminate the problem of future erosion. We estimate it will take an additional 170 yards of concrete, and increase the height of the dam to 33'. I have been working with local engineering firm to come up with a plan to anchor this larger structure to the bedrock. Since we still have our rock drill there, we will drill anchor holes into the bedrock as part of that plan.

With our options narrowed down to just one feasible way to repair the damage, our plans have been advancing. Nobody involved thinks we should stop working now, so we plan to resume our work in mid January. Most of the same core team will return, and we expect construction to last somewhere from six to eight weeks. We have been assembling tools and supplies on the east coast, and that container should ship any day.

As most of you know, an old Haiti hand Raymond Withers has been helping us in the past. We have used a lot of his machinery, tools, vehicles, and expertise on this project. Last year he was laid up in Texas recovering from a surgery, but we had his dozer, pickup, quad, welder/generator, misc tools, and his hired man helping on our project! This year he plans to be building a bridge about five hrs drive to the west, and of course will be using all of his resources there. We are faced with ramping up our current transportation fleet of one pickup to at least one more vehicle, and at least one quad/ATV. We found and purchased a 1999 Arctic Cat quad; Sam has gone over it stem to stern, and almost $2000 worth of parts has shipped by air to rebuild it. That seems like a LOT of money to spend on a machine that is that old, but it has one major thing going for it - it's in the country with all the taxes paid! It is incredibly difficult and time consuming to import any motorized piece of equipment into Haiti, and we felt that this one was the most time, cost, and stress effective way to go. It's also the only utility/work quad I have ever seen for sale in Haiti - mostly we see sport type machines that the really rich people use for toys. The above mentioned container has a welder, cutting torch, shop tools, tires, and other stuff needed on board, as well as some supplies for some of the other mission efforts of the church in Haiti.

 

As mentioned above, some of our previous workers plan to return, but at this time we still have openings for mechanics, equipment operators, and concrete contractors, as well as general help. If you have an interest in putting in some time, contact Roger Jantz or Kevin Bronson for details on the openings and skills we're looking for.

In additional to the canal re-building project, we have also been forming a Water Committee to manager the distribution of water, and to maintain the canals in the valley. Slightly over 1200 farms receive water, and they have agreed to pay for the water to fund system maintenance and improvement, and asked us to provide that information. The agreed upon rates are based on the area of each farm, so we are mapping and calculating the area as part of this process. We have committed to having this mapping done, and issuing a "water rights certificate" for each farm when we return in early January. The CPS Unit in Haiti did the mapping field work in May of this year as one of their last major projects before the Unit closed. All that is left to do is the drafting & calculations, which have proven to be quite time consuming. If somebody with AutoCAD drafting experience has some time to volunteer for this project, it would be much appreciated. Please contact Kevin Bronson for details.

Wiebe's Corner Quotes DL Mayfield

What do you make of this?:

By DL Mayfield (an excerpt)

"But when God speaks and writes about the poor, he envisioned us seeing real faces, knowing real people, he never meant for it to be an abstract. And that is where we have gone awry, my friends, and this is where the word has become evil.

When we don’t know the poor, that is when they become the Other; easy to categorize, easy to help, easy to fix, easy to forget. When we only see them in short bursts, when we never truly live in their context, when we only get fleeting glimpses from our safe perch. It is not the language that is the problem here; in fact, when we try to sanitize it (the economically unstable, the financially depressed, low-income) it only serves to create safe and sanitized boundaries. But in the words of the Bible, the human condition is found. When we read the words “the poor,” we are expected to feel something. If you don’t, then this is a grave problem. For us, the term is one to be bandied about, argued over, molded into whatever best serves our purposes. But for people living in poverty, it is another story. We would do right to remember what the majority world already knows: beyond being theological or evoking imagery, poverty kills people. It ends lives, changes them irrevocably, fills them with suffering. According to Scripture, the poor are never to be pitied; but they are to be taken care of, to be at the forefront of our minds just as they are in the eyes of God."

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

People, I got to tell you I just read this book and it really impressed me. We went to Canada for Christmas and I borrowed this book for outload reading on the way home. It was good. I was a little wary that it was another holocaust book which leaves me too exhausted emotionally by the time I finish. This one rather challenged me that God is waiting for us to quite running on our own steam and rather trust him to direct our lives, through thick and thin. As a Christian I feel I have hardly lived----so many times I have not trusted God enough....
  This book tells of a dutch family that lived there lives for others in a watch shop in Harlaam. By the time WW2 came they just opened their doors a little further to include exiled Jews. They took the people others were too scared to help. Ones that coughed or looked too Jewish. It was hardly a secret to anybody in town what they were doing, but since they had helped everyone in need for so long nobody reported them. In fact they were amazed how involved they had become.
Eventually someone betrayed them and the two spinister sisters and their elderly father were hauled into prison for helping Jews and taking part in the Dutch Resistance. A man had asked for help and though they suspected him they could not say no lest he really needed help. The two ladies were sent to jail, labor camps and finally a concentration camp in Germany. Death stared them in the face everyday. They thanked God that could still use them in the darkest times to tell others about God. In the end the book brings you to the ultimate tests of love, devotion, and the key---forgivness. For God to forgive you must forgive others----even those that betray you or use you. What a test! And know it is only God's grace that will help you through.

I could not help myself but read a "Tramp for the Lord" the sequel. I have a Kindle that read this to me commuting to work. Do yourself a favor and read some books about testimonies of others and challenge yourself whether you are really open to see that God has a way through your "tough times".