Thoughts on Friday

Friday was going to be a very busy day.
I would need to talk to the current sewing ladies, all of the staff at the school and finally the bead ladies.
So many thoughts, what to say?
There would be some changes coming, no one likes change.
I really don't like breaking the news that change is coming.
How to make this a good thing.
For me, I could see so much good, finally, good things are happening again in Haiti.
But, in transition, things are not easy.
Growing pains are exactly that, pains.
The goal, going to the next level.
Increase sales, develop a bigger market place, get wholesale contracts....
It takes time.
Time is kind of like "wait". No one likes to wait.
Again, it is a time of transition.
How do you talk about transition, the need to increase sales and develop products.
Wisdom.
Lord, I need wisdom.

I would meet with the sewing ladies first.
The ladies that started this whole thing.
I would start with telling them, again, just how this whole thing started.
How all the sewing machines got there and how the program started.
It started for me on my very first trip to Haiti, being held at gun point and with the death of a little boy.
These very women represented my dream and desire to bring hope to children, to keep families in tact.
My dream was real and sitting on folding chairs in front of me.
They all had money in their business accounts to help them in the lean times and all of them would be fine.
This wasn't about money, it was about hope and dreams, believing for the future.



Meeting number two, lunch planned for the all the workers and the teachers.
For me, to me, they are what I would call "Life Givers".
They are, the women who impart the vision I have for these ladies.
They are imparting new skills, new knowledge and the chance for a new beginning.
Yes, it is a lot work and takes courage.
But, when they graduate, they will have been taught more than just sewing.
They are teaching team work, community, discipline - all things they will need to be business women.
While I talked and Marjorie interpreted for me she lost her train of thought when I said,
"there are one hundred fifty-nine ladies in the sewing school".
What?
She stopped repeating my words.
We started laughing.
I counted out for her all the classes, the number of women in each class and she said, "wow, I had no idea".
Funny, right!
In four years, we went from John telling me,"if I had one graduate, I would be doing good", to this.

Last, but not least, the bead ladies.
These ladies are near and dear to my heart.
I believe they have the ability to achieve greatness.
I shared with them just how I came up with the idea for the bead program.
Day after day I would watch women struggle with their struggle in mastering the skill of sewing.
I prayed, Lord please give me an idea so that ALL these women can be successful.
It was my hearts desire to have every single women be successful.
Remnants!
Everyday we had tons of them, not being used.
Even the Lord used remnants, he often called them his "chosen" people remnants.
We would take the remnants from the purses to create something beautiful.
This is exactly what they are doing, creating something out of nothing.
Beauty from ashes.

Craft Artisan's

Artisan's...
Last, but not least, we have a group of ladies working on many different hand crafts.
They will learn how to work with what we call "sisal" as in sisal rugs.
You may also know it from seeing bales of hay tied up with it.







Next they will work on embroidery and finally flower making and design.
These are often the classes the ladies who have just graduated from our literacy class start with in continuing their education.

Please pray for our ladies as they begin a new year in school, learning new skills that will make their lives better.
Not having to live on credit, paying for food, clean water, and their children's education.

Beads and Jewelry

This class was birthed out of my desire for every woman to be successful.
After two years of watching ladies come to sewing school and not being able to figure out the skills needed for sewing, I began to pray for new ideas. Ideas for the ladies to make a living doing something different.
Let's face it, even in the States you could have a PHD and still not figure out how to work a treadle sewing machine.
Those things are really hard work.
Everyday I would watch our yard guy, Billy, come in a sweep up all this fabric that wasn't being used.
I began thinking there should be something I can do with the fabric.
The sewing ladies wanted it all for making pillows at home and at times I would agree to give it to them.
It was on a visit with some adoptive parents that this whole idea was birthed.
Today we have seven ladies making jewelry full time and another ten in class.

Cooking School - New Beginnings

Just before I was leaving for Haiti Marjorie emailed me and said she needed a Kitchen Aid and stuff for cooking school.
I wasn't really thrilled about yet another trip to Wal-Mart, but I knew it would be good and I would be happy once I saw the ladies in class. Getting all my bags there would be interesting and costly, but again, so worth it.



In Haiti we call the man in charge "chef".
This is Heartline's Chef (John) really being a chef or trouble maker for those in class.
He was being good at taking hats and messing up stuff.



All the students did there own hand work on their aprons.
They have learned embroidery in the Craft classes.
Some have learned this skill much better than others.
This is "Tata".
She used to be a nanny at the baby's house before the earthquake, now she takes care of the kitchen at the women's house and is a student in the new cooking classes.
Gotta love how happy she is...



This year Esther is the "professor" for cooking school.
Last year she was teaching literacy, a very important class in my opinion.



Look what they did on their first day - pretty impressive!
Plus, in tasted good!
The big chef didn't have any because he doesn't like onions.
I think they are off to a great start.
I told them next time I want cake.
We will be looking into creative ways to sell cake and other goodies at different programs and guest houses.

Sewing Classes Begin - Again

Monday, September 5, marked the beginning of another new school year on Claircine 21 in Tabarre.
The house is packed full of ladies.
They have found their name on the printed list put on the chalk board and packed in the classrooms.
We have Literacy, Cooking, Sewing, Beading and Crafts...
This is one busy house!!



There are now two sewing classes with twenty-five ladies in each class, one upstairs and one downstairs.
Fifty ladies in sewing school, this isn't counting all of the other classes.
In total one hundred and fifty-nine ladies will pass through this house each day.
I will share those later...



It was so awesome to see them all in class ready to begin a new chapter in their lives.
This was indeed a dream of my heart to see the house full of ladies willing to take the first step.



There are now thirty-four ladies sewing for Haitian Creations full-time.
Each of them has money saved in her business account, that will allow their children to start school in October.
It is amazing to see how these ladies lives have changed.
Yes, they are better, yet still harder than what I can imagine.
They are all my heros.

Punjabi's and Sari's

Back in the late 70’s you could buy clothes at Pier One Imports. I had purchased a couple of outfits from my favorite store planning for the day I would go to India. My favorite one was white linen pants with a white embroidered shirt with white flowers. I remember my father asking my mother, why I had to wear such wrinkled clothes. I am sure she said something like, the same reason she has big holes in her jeans, she likes them.

I have thought back to those days wondering how we ended up in Africa, South America and Haiti. It has been one of those unanswered questions we all have. Well, that was until my last trip to Haiti when I was pulled out of customs and told I needed a “textile broker” or they would confiscate all of the purses I was bringing back for the ladies to sell at Haitian Creations. In all my years of travel back and forth to Haiti nothing like this has ever happened to me. I considered crying to see if that would help as I just spent the past two weeks in Haiti with an “almost” hurricane, the outbreak of cholera and after shocks still happening from the earth quake. Instead, I was the deer caught in headlights. I can honestly say, I think that God used the poor people who didn't speak English, who had not filled out their customs forms and needed a pen, who stood next to me, as my ticket out of the “you are in BIG trouble” line. I got a good yelling at and I was finally free to go.

What does any of this have to do with India? When I got home I made a phone call to a friend of a friend who has been doing import and export in India and other countries for the last seventeen years to ask him (Jim) what I needed to do to make sure this never happened to me again. At the end of this conversation, he asked me if he could ask me some questions about our work in Haiti.

As it turns out, he and his wife (Leslie) have been praying for the past fifteen years for a way the members of their churches in Andhra Pradesh, India could be in business allowing the pastors to be self-sufficient doing what they are called to do, supporting the church. Jim loved what we have been doing in Haiti and wondered if we could have a meeting to talk more in depth about working together.

It is now 2011, I have never owned a Punjabi or a Sari, but I have read tons of books about Mother Theresa and am teaching myself to cook my favorite curry dishes. I still love to wear blue jeans with holes and white linen shirts. It seems, in a around about way, the door is opening for God’s Plumbline to go to India.

We will be making a trip to meet pastors and potential students, while looking for creative new ideas to start another successful business. India is a country rich in textiles. We will build on our experience in Haiti working to create another self-sustaining business for the people of India. While we are there we will spend time at the Mighty Shepard Ministries orphanage Jim and Leslie run in Machilipatnam, while looking for a central location to work from.

• Machilipatnam known as Masulipatam under British rule is a city and a special grade municipality in the Krishna district, Andhra Pradesh, India. It is located 347 kilometres (216 mi) south east of state capital, Hyderabad. Hindu is the majority religion in India.


What is happening with Haiti? We are still deeply committed to our work in Haiti. We shipped 5000 lbs of fabric to Haiti that arrived February 28th and is now waiting to be cleared from customs. The sewing school and beading program continue to grow and thrive under the direction of our partners at Heartline Ministries. While we continue to make trips to Haiti supporting and praying for the program we are also aware that we have been called to build upon the knowledge we gained in Haiti allowing others in developing countries to work in a self-sustaining business.

Our goal will be to create a network within the 1400 churches Jim and Leslie work with in A.P. India, creating businesses for the church members. We will be looking into many different ideas including textiles and agriculture. As in Haiti, there is a huge need among the young people in this area to have a trade school once they finish primary school.

We ask that you would prayerfully consider helping us as we go and spy out the land, looking to the Lord for what He would have us do to help the people of India. What do we need to begin a new program in India? For now we need: • 2 round trip tickets ($1500 - $1800 each) • Rental car/driver ($750) • Room and board ($500) • Supplies for the orphanage • Travel visas ($275 each) • Prayer support (Priceless) as we go and discern what our roles will be in the short and long term – we are looking to leave the last week of April and will be gone for two weeks.

If You Hit Bone

With all the garage sales finished, it was time to get serious.
This was going to be my first medical trip.
I am not a nurse, but I could be if it wasn't for this sickness of laughing when people get hurt.
Not really a great combination, in my opinion, for those in need and in pain.
It was decided that it was time for lessons on giving shots.

To this day, I can still hear my friend Maryann saying, "if you hit bone you will need to pull back".
What!!
Bone?
Wait, hold on just a minute!
I didn't sign up for this, I couldn't imagine!
I still can't!
Those words still haunt me to this day.
There would be no laughing coming out of me on this trip.

Never in a million years was I remotely prepared for what we would see.
Thinking back, it wasn't the "bone part" that was hard to deal with it was the whole picture.
There was a disconnect happening for me.
These words wouldn't just apply one person, there where hundreds of them.
They walked for hours to come to clinic, desperate for medical care.
A zone with 50,000 people and no medical care.
At some point medical training didn't seem to be all that important.
No text book or training prepares you for the things you see.
There would be no time to process what was happening.
That would have to wait.
In my journal I wrote...
This was the closest thing to hell I have ever seen - I don't know how here and have any hope for life.
Row after row of tin shacks, person after person going to the bathroom on the street.
The smell, so much trash piled in the streets.
It is a picture that will never leave my mind.
It was like a dream and I can't imagine that there is a place anything like it on earth.

It was Wednesday, October 18, 2000, my life would never be the same.

From that point on I ended up in wound care.
I guess my first "hitting bone" experience was enough.
It can not be a rational thought because wound care was so much worse.
Elephantitus, burns, Leprosy, cysts, scabies, ring room....