Riot Free and Haiti Aid

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for the prayers!  Cap Haitien successfully had an election WITHOUT any riots!!  There were riots in Jacmel and Port au Prince, but none here which we were very thankful for!  We should know in a few weeks who the winner is and who will be the President of Haiti.  This is a very important election as this President will be the one who decides where all of the Haiti Aid goes and begins the process (which will probably take decades) to bring infrastructure to Haiti.  This has been one of the most important elections for a while.  Many are saying that they were not held honestly and that a lot of corruption took place.  Please continue to pray that this all works out and that Haiti can begin to move forward!

We have often been asked "Where is all the billions of dollars designated for Haiti Aid going?"  We can't completely answer that, but we can tell you that we have definitely seen some of it flowing into Cap!  The Dominican government is paving a few mile stretch of one of the main roads here; the one that goes from downtown out to the hospital.  They have been working on this since we moved down and are nearly finished with it.  They are doing it really well too, so we are hopeful that it will last.  The few paved roads around here are less than 2 inches thick, and this one is over 4!  We sure appreciate this road as it cuts down on the wear and tear on our vehicles and makes travel a lot easier and faster!

Also, the Venezuelan government is fixing our airport which will allow major airlines, such as American, Spirt, Air Canada, etc to fly into Cap.  This means that my Mom won't have to worry quite so much about coming to visit us!!  Rumor has it that it'll be done in 18 months, but who knows.  We have also heard that they are building a whole new terminal!  This should bring in a lot of commerce to Cap and hopefully help create more jobs here!

So funny story about the Cap airport!!  This may or not be true because rumors are common here, but this is what we have heard!  Several years ago they were going to make the Cap airport big enough for Jets, so they started on each end and met in the middle, however when they did so, they were off by a foot!  Essentially half the runway is unusable because there is a foot drop off half way down it!!  The other half is now used for people like Nick to take their bikes out on and Joy ride!!

Anyways, just wanted to let you all know that things are starting to improve here and that some of the money is being used for it's intended purpose!!  All of downtown Cap is under construction right now, which is currently a mess, but will make things a lot better in the future!  We feel that Cap Haitien in particular has a lot more potential in the next ten years than it did in the past ten years!