Last night Lee and I met with the Rev. Jack Martin, the Petersburg District Superintendant and the Volunteers in Mission work team he is leading here in Haiti. We had dinner with the group and then Jack asked us to make a presentation about the work of Stop Hunger Now.

The presentation went well and there were a lot of good questions. A number of folks came up to us afterwards to get more information. Lee will be getting even more invitations to hold packaging events once the team returns back home to Virginia.

This morning at breakfast we had a wonderful, though brief, meeting with the Rev.Leon Deleans, the pastor who has already been receiving and using our meals in his school feeding programs. We had been trying to reach him by phone since we arrived, but had been unsuccessful. Since visiting his feeding programs and assessing the success of our meals is a major focus for the trip, we were beginning to be a little concerned.

When he appeared at our table we were first surprised, then realized it was just another incident where our prayers were being answered, even before they could be uttered. Such has been the grace of this trip.

At 10 this morning we had an extremely productive meeting with the Rev. Raphael L Dessieu, President and General Superintendant of the Methodist Conference in Haiti, and Dr. Junie Hyacinthe, an MD and Methodist pastor who heads up the Conference children’s ministries.

We spent an hour a half discussing the potential of using Stop Hunger Now meals to help feed the children in the 105 schools now run by the Methodist Church here in Haiti. We all agreed that there needs to be a partnership between Stop Hunger Now, the Haitian Methodist Church and UMCOR (the United Methodist Committee on Relief) to make sure more food gets to hungry children here in Haiti.

After that meeting we had a moving visit with delightful artist named Jojo. Although Jojo was born without any limbs and has been confined to a wheelchair his entire life, he has taught art and has demonstrated to all who know him that the true size of a person is not physical. Jojo has the biggest heart and the most gentle spirit of anyone I have ever met.

After leaving Jojo we made a “special stop” for Lee at a Bible Bookstore so she could buy a French Bible and French prayerbook. She said it was important to have them since her future plans include more time being spent in Haiti. I suggested she might want to discuss that with her husband first…

Tonight we meet with a local Rotary Club, and tomorow we will spend the entire day visiting the feeding programs where our meals are already being used. Every day is better than the one before. Grace abounds.