Saying Goodbye to 2012

Tomorrow, January 1st, we will load up ourselves and our stuff and move to our new home in St. Marc, Haiti. We are really ready and excited to get there! But we are already missing the people and places we will leave 3+ hours behind. Today we have said more goodbyes and are enjoying our last day in the cool mountain air in Fermathe, Haiti with our family. We ask for prayer for continued financial provisions as we settle into our new home (which is yet to be furnished and as the kids keep whining "will be very hot"), and for the new adjustments that await. We especially ask for prayer for our children as this will be a big transition for them. They have been somewhat spoiled as the Lord has blessed us with playgrounds and plenty of play space everywhere we have lived in Haiti. Our new home will not have a yard nor does the school where our children will be attending starting January 7th. Our boys will now be experiencing full immersion as they will be the only blan (white/foreigner) at their new school. We are thankful for our time at Quisqueya Christian School and at the Baptist Mission which has given us a wonderful transition our first year and 1/2 in Haiti and has helped prepare our family for this next adventure. Pray for Eric as he leads our family and for his new leadership role as principal at El Shaddai Learning Center. We have a lot of work and sweat waiting for us in the days to come! But today as we say goodbye to 2012 we are resting in his faithfulness, dwelling on his promises, remembering our many blessings, and looking forward to bearing good news in 2013!

Elisabeth, Elita Marguerite, Ethan, and Evan arrived home to Eric and Esmée in Haiti on Christmas Eve. We told the kids who had just returned not to expect a big Christmas because they already had 15 Christmases in the states! But somehow all these presents appeared the next morning as kids slept in late (except Esmée who was actually expecting some presents)! Ethan woke up and said, "I thought you said we were just having a little Christmas! That doesn't look little to me!" This made his very tired parents very happy to hear such thankfulness!
Thankful hearts = happy hearts!

Thankful for these 4 wonderful blessings!
We had a wonderful Christmas!
Thank you to all our friends and family that sent gifts back from the states!

And a huge thank you to Trey and Chelsea Salter who graciously shared their lovely home with us this past month while they were stateside and we were waiting to be able to move into our rental house.  This was a very special Christmas wish and an answered prayer for provision. Little did they know that Elisabeth had prayed all year that we would be able to spend this Christmas in the mountains. Travels and transitions added to this prayer that our family would be able to spend Christmas together. We are in awe of how God chose to answer the desires of our hearts!

We will miss this beautiful place and the treasured friends we have made on this mountain! 

We will miss playing here, climbing and swinging from the trees, running through green grass, and breathing fresh cool moutain air.

We will miss playhouses and the many hours we spent playing with friends here. 

Most used saying of the year...and probably the past 6 years...

"Where in the world is Evan???"

We will miss this loquat tree and the yummy fruit we devoured from it. 

We will miss this view and having a great place to ride bikes.
Here is Esmée with her new bike which she received as a consolation prize since she did not get to go to the states with her siblings. She hopes our new neighborhood has a place to ride too!

We were blessed to share Christmas dinner with dear friends!
Imensky is a big brother to our boys. We are so proud of Imensky and know God has big plans for his life. Imensky's parents were both killed in the January 2010 earthquake and we first met him at the orphanage where our girls used to live. Imensky unexpectedly came to us last summer and through a series of difficult events we helped him find a new home after living with our family for 6 weeks. He has worked very hard and has been accepted to a good English school starting in January that will help prepare him for a bright future. We are thankful to the family that has cared for and loved Imensky with us and are so blessed to watch him grow spiritually, emotionally, socially and academically to be all God desires for him to be! It was very special for us to spend time at Christmas together! 

We got to share our American Christmas dinner with these sweet ones as well!
Please pray for continued progress for their adoptions!

You won't find leftovers here! 

We will miss Anderson and Figaro, two special guys that Eric spent time discipling this past year. 

Baby Evangeline...one of our biggest blessings of 2012!
Evangeline was born the last weekend of September we were moving out of our house. The good news of her birth was a reminder that even during our hardest times that life is a precious gift!

Evangeline and her mother Genise lived with us in October and November after they were robbed at gunpoint in their home. Genise's husband Enoch entrusted them to us while he was looking for a safer place for his family to live. It was so special to have them with us during Evangeline's first months of life.  Please pray for protection and continued provision for this sweet family we love dearly! 

We helped choose the name Evangeline which means "bearer of good news". We pray that her generation will grow up and bear the good news that we celebrate at Christmas and share throughout the year!

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Luke 4:17-21

Jesus says shortly after, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent". Luke 4:43

Thank you Father for sending your Son Jesus to give us the good news of the gospel, to show us how to live it out, and to give us the hope of glory! Thank you for the opportunity to leave our comfort zone, friends and family once again to journey to a new town and share the good news...because that is why we are sent! Haiti is such a vivid picture of the creation you intended and how sin has ruined it. As bad news swirls all around us, help us not to forget that this is a time of the Lord's favor and grace! Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus!

May we be bearers of good news in 2013!