“Give
thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures
forever.”
Psalm
136:1
One
of our kids’ favorite DVDs is Steve Green’s “Hide ‘em in Your
Heart”. He takes Bible verses and makes them into
songs. Psalm 136:1 is one of the songs that our kids
have learned from this particular DVD. It is precious
to hear them playing during the day and singing “Give Thanks to the
Lord, for He is good!” over and over again. We are
reminded, especially with Thanksgiving day (at least for Americans!) just
passed of how much each one of us has to be thankful for. May
we always give thanks to the Lord, no matter what 
time of year; because He
is always good and He has promised us that His love will endure
forever! J
We
are thankful for the life of little
Emmanuel. Emmanuel was born on November 1, 2007 and was
admitted to Children of the Promise at 12 hours old! His
mom gave birth to him in a Church. She is a young
homeless girl that seems to have lost all hope. Out of
desperation, she tried to strangle Emmanuel. She
wasn’t in the position to care for him and she didn’t know where to
turn for help. The Lord directed people near her to
stop her from strangling him. They brought Emmanuel and
his mother to a missionary clinic so that the baby and mother could both
receive medical attention. The clinic contacted us and
Daryl and Arlyn went to pick up Emmanuel immediately. By
the time Daryl and Arlyn arrived, Emmanuel’s mother had already left.
At this point, we believe she has no interest in ever parenting him
and he will most likely be released for adoption. Emmanuel
is a healthy boy!! He was born at 7lbs 1oz and is now
up to 8lbs 10oz. He is beautiful and we are so thankful
that his mother gave him life and that there were people near her
to give her and Emmanuel help in their time of need.
We
are also excited to announce the birth of Adalyn Grace, born to Ryan and
Katie, our volunteer coordinators!! Addie was born on
October 31. She is a beautiful little girl and we are
excited to meet her the next time that we are in the States!
We are thankful for Addie’s
good health and for Ryan and Katie and all the work that they do for COTP.
Later
on in Psalm 136, it says “Give thanks to the God of Heaven. His
love endures forever.” We have had a lot of pregnant
nannies over the past year!! Two of those nannies,
Suzette and Fifi, gave birth to their babies this past month. Suzette
gave birth on October 31 and Fifi on November 22. Both
babies passed away during the delivery. For both
babies, the cause of death comes down to lack of good health care in this
country. Simple things such as resuscitation equipment,
fetal monitoring, and clean hospitals most likely would have given both of
these babies a fighting chance at life. But that’s
not the reality of Haiti
. This is reality here, but it doesn’t mean that
Suzette and Fifi and their families aren’t grieving. They
are both devastated and struggling to understand why this happened to them
and to their child. Please keep them in your prayers.
We are thankful that we (and
Suzette and Fifi) serve the God of Heaven whose love endures forever.
Suzette and Fifi know that this goodbye isn’t forever, it’s
only temporary. That is the hope that gives us all
strength to say goodbye to loved ones and let them go into the arms of our
Father.
The
next few months will be busy and packed full of volunteers! We
are thankful for the many people that
give of their time to come to Haiti
and use their gifts to bless Children of the Promise, the babies, the
nannies, and all of us long-term volunteer!
-
Rog, Robert, Nancy, Marte, Lauri, and Carlee from Napa
Valley , CA were here for 10 days. They worked hard on
screening in our back porch on the volunteer house. Now
we have a beautiful screened in porch that will give us more room for
volunteers to sit and for kids to play. We are working
at setting up a little preschool area on the porch where we can work
one-on-one with our kids on developmental and educational activities.
This group also took care of Emmanuel for the first 10 days of his
life. We are thankful that
they were here and willing to do those middle of the night feedings!
-
My (Sara) older brother, Ben, and his girlfriend, Anna, came
to visit/volunteer for a week. We had an absolutely
wonderful time with them and they were a huge help to me. Daryl
had a very busy week when they were here and it was great to have Ben and
Anna here to help me with the daily jobs that needed to be done.
We also managed to get away for a day in town and then another
morning we were able to hike up to the Citadel. Ben is
a Computer Engineer so he fixed up our computer system, our wireless
internet, and fixed Antonio’s computer after a virus ruined everything.
He also set up our brand new server that was donated to COTP by a
computer company in Michigan
.
-
Nancy from Montana
and Christina from Michigan
are at COTP volunteering right now. They are both here
for around 4 weeks. They are wonderful with the kids
and spend a lot of their time working one-on-one with as many kids as they
can fit in! We are so thankful
for their giving hearts and loving attitudes towards all of the
children.
We
have very exciting adoption news to share with you this month.
Three, yes 3, of our kids have gone home (or are very close
to going home!) in the past two weeks!
-
Reubens went home to his adoptive family on November 14.
Reubens is 3 ½ years old and had been at Children of the Promise
for all but 4 weeks of his life. He has gone home to
his adoptive family in Minnesota
. 
We are thankful for the chance that his adoptive
parents had to spend a few days at COTP getting to know Reubens in his
familiar environment.
-
Wilnise went home to her adoptive family on November 31.
She is 2 ½ years old and had been at Children of the Promise for
just over a year and a half. Her adoptive family lives
in Florida
. They were able to spend a couple of days here in Haiti
and once again we were amazed at how God sends the perfect adoptive family
for each child. Pray for Wilnise as she adjusts to a
completely new life in a new country.
-
Nadege is still here but will be headed home to Alberta on
Tuesday (December 4). Her adoptive dad is here right
now and is enjoying getting to know her, her likes and dislikes, and her
stubborn, yet so sweet, spirit. J
Nadege will be 3 in March, she has been at COTP for 2 ½ years.
Please
continue praying that the other eight children close to going home will
have all their paperwork in order soon so that they can be home by Christmas.
Some specific prayer requests for these 8 children are:
-
Jesse, Moise, and Isabelle all have their passports and are so
close to that last and final step of scheduling a visa appointment.
However, errors were found on Jesse’s and Moise’s paperwork.
Pray that these will be fixed quickly.
-
Mathieu’s visa appointment is Tuesday, December 4.
Pray that all goes well and he will be able to head home to Oregon
immediately after that!
-
Jack has his passport and he will be going to Port-au-Prince
on Monday for his medical exam. Pray that the exam will
go well and that shortly after that his family will be able to make a visa
appointment for him!
-
Noah has his passport and will also be going for his medical
exam on Monday. Pray that we will have a date soon
for his birthparent interview. After those things
happen, his visa appointment can be scheduled.
-
Kassandra has her passport but is being adopted with Robert
who is still in MOI. Pray that Robert will come out of
MOI soon. Pray that Kassandra’s medical exam on
Monday will go well and that we will have a date soon for her birthparent
interview.
-
Pierre is still waiting on his passport. Pray
that a passport will be issued to him soon. He is being
adopted with Jeffley who is still in MOI. Pray that
Jeffley will come out of MOI soon.
Pray
that more of our kids will come out of MOI in the next couple of weeks.
It has been awhile since we have had any exit MOI. This
still seems to be the major hold up in the whole adoption process.
Thank you!!
This
month we started working with a Marie Simon who runs an orphanage in Port-au-Prince
. We have heard very good things about her and her
ability to complete adoptions efficiently and quickly. We
pray that this new relationship will be a good one for COTP, especially
for our children. She has received her first file from
us and we are excited and hopeful that things will go smoothly.
We ask that you continue to lift up all our children in prayer as
the best place for them is in a family, whether that be their biological
or adoptive family.
It’s
hard 
to believe that Thanksgiving
is over and Christmas
will soon be here! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day
– complete with a turkey meal! Agape Flights has
donors (Churches or individuals) that sponsor missionaries for Thanksgiving
by paying for a complete turkey meal – turkey, sweet potatoes, stuffing,
pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce – you name it, we had it!! We
are so thankful for all the people
that worked so hard to bring us Thanksgiving
here in Haiti
. Agape Flights flies in the turkeys and the other
foods two days before Thanksgiving.
It was delicious!! We invited Antonio and
Paulaine and their two children, as well as Cleguy (Cleguy works on
adoptions with Antonio and Paulaine) to experience an American
Thanksgiving dinner. It was wonderful to have them
here!! Oh – and a Thanksgiving Day wouldn’t be
complete without the Lions game! We have satellite
radio here now so we were able to turn on the Lions game and listen
to them lose . . . not a surprise to anyone. J
Now that Thanksgiving
is over, our (fake) Christmas
tree is up and I have Christmas
music blaring from our CD
player! Without the snow and cold weather it
doesn’t really feel like the Christmas
season but the tree and the music help a little bit. J
One
more story before I’m done. J
I want to introduce you to a sweet little girl in our care here at
COTP whose name is Jeniflore. Jeniflore is 21 months
old. She came to Children of the Promise at the end of
Feb 2007, shortly after she turned one year old. She is
HIV positive and when she was brought to COTP, she was very sick with
tuberculosis. Her father is a wonderful man that
brought her here because he was at a loss with how to care for her.
His wife, Jeniflore’s mother, is also HIV positive. Jeniflore
is a fighter and she has made an amazing recovery. She
has just finished her TB meds and will continue taking HIV
meds for the rest of her life. She is now a silly,
happy, well-adjusted, and confident little girl. Her
mother has gone back and forth between being hospitalized and being well
enough to be at home. 
Jeniflore also has a new baby
sister that was born in August. She is healthy and
doing very well so her parents are able to care for her at home.
Jeniflore also has 4 older siblings who love to come and visit her
whenever they have the chance. Jeniflore’s parents
want nothing more than to have the whole family reunited and under the
same roof again. They are very excited for the day they
can have Jeniflore back at home with them. We had set
up December 17 as Jeniflore’s going home date now that she is healthy
and done with her TB meds. Jeniflore’s dad came just
the other day and told Daryl that his wife is very sick again.
She is in the hospital but will probably be discharged in the next
couple of days. However, the doctor has given her
strict instructions that she can’t do anything for 6 months –
she is on strict bedrest in order for her to gain back her health and
strength. Jeniflore’s dad was devastated when he came
to us and shared this news with us. He then, with tears
in his eyes, asked if we would be willing to keep Jeniflore for longer.
Until his wife is better and is able to be up and around again.
Daryl made it very clear to him that we are here for his family and
we are going to do whatever it takes to make sure their family stays
together. We love Jeniflore and we have great respect
for her family and the dedication and love that they have for each other.
A family like that is rare here in Haiti
and it is refreshing to have the privilege of helping them in whatever way
we can. Please join with us in praying that Jeniflore
will be able to be reunited with her family as soon as possible.
Pray for strength and health for her mother. Pray
for wisdom and clear thinking for her father and he is carrying a lot of
responsibility for his family on his shoulders. We call
Jeniflore “ti-chef” (little boss) because she loves to follow Daryl
and I around while we are working and “help” in whatever way that she
can. She’ll often “help” us with meds in the
evenings and then sit and watch the movie with the older kids.
Another song on the Steve Green DVD is “You Knit Me Together In
My Mother’s Womb” – taken from Psalm 139. During
the song it shows all different babies. Jeniflore loves
this song and is fascinated by all the babies. The
other night she was intently watching and listening to this song and it
brought tears to my eyes. How unfair that this family
has struggled so much. All they want is their family to
be together and to be healthy. Jeniflore was knit
together in her mother’s womb. She is fearfully and
wonderfully made. We praise him for Jeniflore’s life
and for the love of her family. We pray that she will
soon be back with her family . . . nothing can take the place of family.
“Give
thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures
forever.”
Daryl
and Sara Huinink
