To know Haiti is to love her. Just seeing her cerulean blue sea and sky, her sparkling white beaches, her concrete block bare-floored homes with tin roofs, you have the backdrop for a people you will never forget -- their haunting dark eyes and warm brown hands, faces you long to see brighten with the love of Jesus.

So many of them do. I think of Solinor, his huge eyes on fire with excitement hearing the word of God, Luslande's soft laughter and submissive "Okay, okay," when I told her to keep hoping in Jesus, Flavi tippy-toeing up to her room with the gift I had given clutched to her little chest, Woodsy's chubby arms lifted, asking me to pick him up. All of these are memories from the orphanage at Cazeau, one of the loveliest places you'd ever hope to see. Maybe not so lovely by our standards -- having to wait for a bucket of water in the arms of a seven-year old to be able to flush the toilet -- there is no working plumbing in the bathrooms. But so very lovely for the presence of God our eternal Father reverberating through the children's voices, in song and in gratitude.

The people of the jungle in Pageste are also blessed with godly joy in their lives. Families -- toothless grannies, children nurturing children, endless cornfields open to everybody anytime they are hungry, the four teenage boys who have perfected a rap-type song praising God for His protection and His bountiful return on their labor. Sad, though, to see how many trees have disappeared here in two years.

Back to the harshness of desperate circumstances in the maze of roads to the city of the sun -- Cite Soleil. Our bus wound in and out of the nooks and crannies while we earnestly hoped there would be room somewhere to turn around instead of having to back out the whole way.  A stream of people flowed into the church for worship through the bullet-holed gates.  In our video it resembled a human river.  My daughter Julie told the ladies they were to "shine like stars in the universe as they held on to the word of life" from Philippians 2, translated by our little Haitian missionary Jezula. The children were amazingly quiet.  Ladies fanned their perspiring faces with Bible tracts. And then we were gone, old and young watching us, waving and showing "thumbs up" signs as we went.

From there to the Youth Conference, teenagers pouring out of and down from their buses, loving the fellowship of God's people teaching His word, three meals a day and recreation. In a recent e-mail, Kenel said he was doing "my" work with the evange-cube, but then he corrected: "I guess it is really God's work."

To God be the glory. Amen!

Anne Georges, Missionary