My World Literature students are reading Victor Hugo’s classic, Les Miserables, even while, day after day, school has been canceled. At 800 pages (abridged!), it has been a good book for our lengthy involuntary recess.I have had abundant time over the past 3 weeks to reread it myself. The other day I came across a passage that really resonated with me in relation to Haiti’s current condition. It’s in the latter part of the book as the barricades are going up in a few neighborhoods across Paris. Marius’ revolutionary friends have chosen an ideal spot to take their stand right outside…

But first, a word TO our sponsors. 😉 I’d like to remind folks that our family has switched (almost) our sponsoring agency from OMS to TeachBeyond. If you are one of our ministry partners who HAS ALREADY switched your giving to TeachBeyond, thank you so much! If you are one of our ministry partners still INTENDING to switch, we’d be so very grateful if you’d take a few moments to visit OUR TEACHBEYOND PAGE to make it happen before the end of September. (AND if you’ve never given before but feel moved to help in this time of transition, that…

This has been a difficult week -A week ago, I was bringing Caleb and Sarah back to Indiana from a whirlwind trip to Philadelphia for Kacie and Mikken’s wedding. Melissa, freshly returned to Haiti a few days earlier due to Director responsibilities, was facing one setback after another, both at the house and at school. Sarah and I had six hours in Indiana to repack and say goodbyes before Grandma Trudy took us to the airport at 4:00 am Monday morning. Samuel and Hannah, old enough now to fly on their own, stayed behind to finish up summer jobs and…

Somewhat akin to God renaming Abram as “Abraham” in order to reflect the reality of his identity as “the father of a multitude of nations”, our School Board has determined that Cowman International School will this year become “Cap-Haitien Christian School”. This new name is meant to reflect at a glance both who we are and where we serve.Over the last few months, I have discovered that most people – even many of our students – have no idea where the name “Cowman” even originated. I have taught here six years now and it has never been clear to me…

It’s 4:30 am and I’m at the dinner table with my laptop, trying to make good use of my time after being awakened an hour ago when our battery packs died. The sudden lack of fan action never fails to rouse me from sleep. I slipped on some shoes and made my way in the dark out the kitchen door up to the generator house. This morning the monster needed fuel before I could start it, and by the time I was back in bed, smelling faintly of diesel fumes, I was wide awake.So I am missing Indiana a bit…

Recently one of my Facebook posts about a trip to Port-au-Prince that was part of Cowman School’s “separation from OMS” raised a lot of questions and I suddenly realized that we have not explained some exciting and challenging changes in the works for us and the school. Yes, Cowman is gaining its autonomy from One Mission Society. I want to emphasize that this is an amicable separation. Indeed, it is the initiative of OMS and has been in the works for several years. In the very near future, the School Board will “own” the school. There are three main realities…