{"id":10695,"date":"2013-11-12T02:55:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T02:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10695"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:31","slug":"the-days-are-just-packed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10695","title":{"rendered":"“THE DAYS ARE JUST PACKED”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

That’s the title of a Calvin and Hobbes book.\u00a0 And the artwork on the cover features the little boy Calvin on\u00a0a tree branch reclining against his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, while nestling a water balloon on his lap.\u00a0 Both boy and tiger have big goofy, satisfied grins on their faces.\u00a0 Nothing of note is getting accomplished, but they’re tuckered out and happy.A lot of our days here feel kinda\u00a0like that.Take this past Wednesday for example:6:30 am<\/strong><\/u>\u00a0 I’ve just walked a fast 15 minutes from home to meet Ruysdael and Mikenn on the main road to catch a tap-tap to Ruysdael’s school in Cap Haitien.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n

\u00a0Mikenn is along to translate for me.\u00a0 Ruysdael needed me to come to school as his guardian for some parent meeting thing since his mom is currently in the Dominican Republic to see a doctor.Tap-taps zip by, one after another, but they are all filled to capacity.7:00 am<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0 We finally get a tap-tap.\u00a0 Ruysdael, Mikenn and I and four other guys are hanging off the back of this think.\u00a0 Periodically it stops to jam one more school girl onto the laps of the seated passengers.\u00a0 We take the “scenic” route down by the river.\u00a0 (Every time I think I’ve seen the ugliest side of Haiti’s\u00a0poverty, there’s some new depth that comes into range.)7:30 am<\/strong><\/u>\u00a0 Mikenn and I sit down to meet with a school official.\u00a0 The whole conversation is in Creole and I do nothing but look back and forth between the admin guy and Mikenn – who is nodding his head a lot.\u00a0 (Apparently most of it is about school dress code.)\u00a0 But it’s enough to satisfy the school and Mikenn and I soon\u00a0head out to find the bank where I am supposed to meet Melissa and our Director, Brett, and friends Phil and Emily Heckman.\u00a0 We are taking the day off from teaching because the Heckmans and the Grosses need to get a Permis de Sujour – a sort of Haitian “green card” – and Brett is our guide through the government hoops.8:00 am<\/u><\/strong> We find the bank but no sign of the others yet.\u00a0 Mikenn and I cross the street to find some shade\u00a0in front of a Sherwin Williams paint store.\u00a0 (Sidenote: Sherwin Williams?? This is the only American franchise of any kind I have recognized in this whole city.)\u00a0 Soon, we are approached by several people begging for food.\u00a0 8:30 am<\/strong><\/u>\u00a0 The bank opens and\u00a0soon Brett and the others arrive and we head inside for some sweet air conditioning.\u00a0 We opened an account here two weeks ago (a four hour process!) and now we need a letter from the bank attesting to that fact.\u00a0 More paperwork and waiting.\u00a0 We ask how much the bank charges for these official letters.\u00a0 Thirty five dollars apiece.\u00a0 Our jaws drop. \u00a0Between Phil, Emily, Melissa and I, we are spending $140 to get four letters from this bank saying we each have an account there!\u00a0 (Bank Motto: “We LOVE our foreign customers.”)9:30 am<\/u><\/strong> While Phil and Emily finish up at the bank, Mikenn leads Melissa and me to a photo studio to get two passport-sized photos for our Permis.\u00a0 The photographer has some equipment malfunctions and the power keeps going off and back on, but before long we have our pictures and the cost was not outlandish, so we are happy.10:30 am<\/strong><\/u> We are back at the bank and the letters are in our hands and we are ready to go to the Immigration Office.\u00a0 There, a pleasant, but business-like woman starts sorting through all of our documents and going down her checklist.\u00a0 I knew there would be some sort of hiccup and it doesn’t take long to surface:\u00a0our official letters of employment from OMS are in English and should be in French.\u00a0 Brett needs to go back to the office and redo them.\u00a0 Brett and Phil and Mikenn head back to Vaudreuil while Emily, Melissa and I decide to do a bit of grocery shopping at Kokyaj.\u00a0 The food there is all imported odds and ends – you never know what you might find.\u00a0 Finding unusual things is the fun part; deciding whether you are willing to pay the asking price for any particular item is the hard part.\u00a0 Melissa is excited over some Tostitos Cheese Dip and six precious Johnsonville Sausages.\u00a0 11:30 am<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0 We check out and, since we now have a few bags of groceries, we decide to wait at the convenient Kokyaj restaurant above the store.\u00a0 We order a couple of Cokes and, since we have little cash left, Melissa and I decide to split a beef kabob for lunch.\u00a0 Emily orders a chicken basket with fries.\u00a0 12:00 pm<\/u><\/strong> Pleasant conversation with Emily at our table is interrupted when Melissa announces, “My wallet is gone!\u00a0 It was here just a minute ago and now it’s gone.” We three jump up, start looking on the floor, in Melissa’s backpack, among the bags of groceries.\u00a0 All the while a young lady in a red t-shirt, who has been doing bits and pieces of cleaning in our vicinity goes about her work nonchalantly.\u00a0 The waitress comes and all of a sudden several employees are now involved and looking and sharing opinions. And the red-shirted girl walks by, still disconnected from the commotion.\u00a0 It’s obvious that her jeans are way too tight to conceal a wallet.\u00a0 Then Emily spots the wallet under an adjacent table, apparently stashed for pick up later.\u00a0 In the end, the young lady is fired from her job.\u00a0 I feel bad because she made such a bad decision and is now unemployed in a country where good jobs are hard to find.\u00a0 I’m left wondering if she was driven by greed or desperation.\u00a0 And on reflection later, I’m pretty sure the waitress was probably an accomplice. The incident shakes up Melissa and leaves us feeling violated but thanking the Lord\u00a0that the thief didn’t succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n

12:30 pm<\/strong><\/u> The guys return, our food finally arrives, meals are shared and we are ready to get back to Immigration to complete our files and to get fingerprinted.\u00a0 3:00 pm<\/u><\/strong> We are headed back to Vaudreuil.\u00a0 Miss Kate calls and offers to drive our kids home from school.\u00a0 Our family is reunited in time to turn around and head with the others to our weekly prayer meeting, this week hosted by the Ayars at Emmaus Seminary, a twenty minute drive down the road.3:40 pm<\/strong><\/u> Our family and a half dozen other missionaries are riding to Emmaus\u00a0together in the big van.\u00a0 Apparently, the gas gauge hasn’t worked for years.\u00a0 The only way to avoid running out of gas is to track the mileage since the last fill-up.\u00a0 250 miles is the max.\u00a0 We must be at 251.\u00a0 We coast as far as possible but we’re still a mile from the campus and now stranded precariously on the side of the road.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n

A gallon of gas is brought from Emmaus but there’s air in the line and Brett’s afraid of running down the battery with repeated attempts at starting the van.\u00a0 Fortunately, a friend from another mission is passing and offers to tow the van until Brett gets the thing restarted.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

The kids always love prayer meeting time because they get to play with all the other missionary kids – all together in one big group.<\/p>\n\n\n

Melissa and I always like prayer meeting time because it’s our weekly chance to reconnect with all the other missionaries, to share stories and praises and prayer requests.\u00a0 AND we love studying Scripture together each week under the guidance of Matt Ayars, the president of Emmaus Seminary. Currently we are studying the Psalms.\u00a0\u00a0We have a great discussion\u00a0about Psalm 42 – ”\u00a0 As the deer<\/sup> pants for streams of water,<\/sup>
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0so my soul pants<\/sup> for you, my God.<\/span><\/span>
My soul thirsts<\/sup> for God, for the living God.<\/sup><\/span>
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>When can I go<\/sup> and meet with God?”<\/span><\/span><\/span>5:45 pm We head for home, dinner, showers and bedtime. <\/span><\/span><\/span>So why share this day in detail?\u00a0 I guess I am still processing the difference in pace of life between Haiti and the U.S.\u00a0 On the one hand, it’s hard to get used to how little I get crossed off my “To Do List” on a typical day … or even a typical week.<\/span><\/span><\/span>But on the other hand, it leaves a lot more space for relationships.<\/span><\/span><\/span>And “panting”.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s the title of a Calvin and Hobbes book.\u00a0 And the artwork on the cover features the little boy Calvin on\u00a0a tree branch reclining against his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, while nestling a water balloon on his lap.\u00a0 Both boy and tiger have big goofy, satisfied grins on their faces.\u00a0 Nothing of note is getting accomplished, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10701,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10695\/revisions\/10701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}