Haiti bound...

We will be leaving this week Wednesday for our Haiti mission trip! I probably won't even go to bed Tuesday night since we're meeting some of the team at church at 12:45 AM and then leaving from Nate and Brenda's house at 1:00 AM!!! We're flying out of Detroit since the airline tickets were $400.00 less per person than flying out of Grand Rapids!!! I think I can handle a little drive time!

We'll again be doing Vacation Bible Schools while there among other things that need to be done. So far we have 4 VBS's lined up in various villages. We've never been to this area before so it will be new to all of us! We're planning on 150-200 kids per VBS. I have 900 crafts and 1000 snacks packed so I hope we don't run out... if we do, we'll just love a lot on the kids there and praise God for them!! :)

We'll also be doing prayer walks after each VBS and some of the kids will be handing out tracts around their village. This is the plan at this point but we always go knowing that all of this can change... God knows what will happen and that's all that matters.

The first night and the last 2 nights we'll be staying in (or at least very near) Port-Au-Prince. The other 5 nights we'll be staying at Ebenezer with some pastors. This is located in Petit Goave a little west of PAP along the ocean.

I will try to put our itinerary on this blog in the next day or so in case any of you want to track our flights and tentative schedule. We will most likely be out of touch while gone and I'm actually looking forward to an electronic free zone for a while!

God is awesome and is doing amazing things in Haiti. I am very humbled to be a part of His plan and I'm looking forward to seeing what He has for us to do! I'm asking for your prayers for us during this week and next... safety and God's will to be done!

Be a blessing wherever you are planted today!

Diane

Pics of earlier this week...

As promised, here are some pics I took from Logan and my trip to MIT earlier this week...

This one I took in the MIT museum but I can't remember what it was exactly...

I thought it looked cool though! ;)

Here is the dome... a lot of pranks are done on this dome - a lot of stories...

The next 2 are pics of the Stata Building - this is where Logan would be spending a lot of his time if he gets accepted since it holds a lot of the computer science departments including the AI department.

This is one of the classrooms in another building - I actually could only get about 1/3 of it in the picture.

MIT is known for it's many practical jokes known as hacking. These are some of the big ones!

Here is the actual fire hydrant water fountain that is shown in the above picture.

Logan and I had a lot of fun and got a better feel for the college. It obviously focuses more on academics rather than sports. There isn't much competitiveness going on because a lot of the work requires group effort.

The freshman year is graded on a "pass" / "fail" system so that they can have a chance to get better acclaimated to the college life. Cambridge/Boston area is a scary place to drive but the public transportation system is exceptionally good!

Logan will definately be sending in his application there and we'll just have to see what happens. I know that if it's God's Will for him to go there, that is where he will end up going.

So much more to say on this school but I will save it for if Logan gets in. :)

Be a blessing!

It was a long 3 days but so worth it!!!!!

I have spent the last 3 days...
driving... 34 hours ... 1,700 miles
walking... estimating about 10 miles
spending time with my son... PRICELESS!!!

I will be posting pictures of our visit to MIT later... I am just too tired and sore to do a lot right now and I should get some laundry going and unpack! We didn't get home until about 11:20 last night and I am exhausted! I'm not sure if we could pack much more into three days than what we did! We probably should have had one more day in Cambridge but schedules just did not allow that right now.

Better get to work now!
Be blessed today!!!
Diane

MIT visit

Yesterday Logan and I drove all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts! It took us about 17 hours! That was a long drive and we were very tired last night by the time we got to our hotel but we were able to get a pretty good night's sleep. We headed out after breakfast this morning around 9:30 to catch a tour that started at 10:00 with an informational talk until 11:00. We then went on a tour that lasted until almost 12:30. We then booked it over to the admissions building since we had set up another tour at 12:30. We were a little late but were taken over to where the others were. This tour was only us and another boy and his dad. Logan was able to ask all the questions he wanted and after the tour we were able to talk to a lady in admissions. Logan was given a packet about MIT. This lasted until about 2:00 so we went to get a bite to eat in the Strata Center. Then we headed over to a few other places Logan wanted to check out including the MIT museum... really interesting!!

We didn't get back to our hotel room again until almost 7:00 so we're just chillin' the rest of the night. We plan on leaving tomorrow morning around 6:00 and we'll just see how far we get. Logan thinks we can drive the whole way again and just get home REALLY LATE! We'll see how that works out...

I will post some pictures later when we get home. I took some video too... only about 1/2 hour since some places didn't want you to take any pics.

Fun day... busy day... tiring day... but all very worth it!!! :)

'Til next time...
Diane