Something that John Lorient – Adventures contact in Haiti, and a local pastor are doing as a community ministry is to help their neighbors who are in need. About a week before our team of six women arrived in Haiti, a strong wind blew off the sheets of tin that roof a number of Merger houses. A couple and their son and daughter live in one of the homes that had its roof of sheets of tin torn off by some strong wind. When the family asked John and his pastor friend for help to reroof their house, John purchased the 2×4’s and the roofing nails to reroof the one room house.
Because the floor of this family’s house was still dirt, John asked about the possibility of the team helping financially with buying the sand and the cement for a cement floor and helping physically with the mixing of the sand and the cement along with carrying the cement into the house where the pastor smoothed out the cement mix.
Before the work could begin, the bags of cement and the sand had to be brought up in bags from the street at the bottom of a hill to the top of the hill where the house was located – a grueling trek under the hot Haiti sun. Water for the cement mix also had to be carried up the hill. Once several bags of sand were dumped in front of the house and a hollow was made in the middle of the pile, a bag of cement and water were added and mixed into the sand. Today there is a family in Merger – with the team’s help, who are not only enjoying a new roof of tin sheets but also a home with a cement floor.
the path from the street to the house the one room house with a new roof of tin sheets
trying to pull a bag of sand to the front of the house filling up buckets with the cement mix
