When you open this blog, Thanksgiving Day and weekend will be history.  And like me, you may feel and look like a “stuffed turkey” before it was carved and devoured!  While I enjoy every Thanksgiving Day with family and friends, I cannot ever enjoy such feasting without reflecting on my less fortunate brothers and sisters around the world.

My recent several weeks of ministry in Abaco, Treasure Cay, Andros and Freeport, Bahamas – as well as Haiti, was a great spiritual and physical preparation for Thanksgiving.  Both the Bahamas and Haiti are considered “Third World Countries” in comparison to America.  While there are small pockets of “Caribbean Paradise” in the Bahamas around the tourist industry, there is still much subsistence living and poverty a few rows back from the high rise hotels, posh condominiums and gambling casinos – especially among the thousands of Haitian Diaspora living there.  In the Bahamas, the Haitians – many of whom are illegal immigrants, do most of the menial work and manual labor.  But they have also built some of the strongest churches in the Bahamas – which we have been involved with for years through our Bahamian partners.  So the following pictures will give you a quick overview of some of my recent pre-thanksgiving ministry there – for which I give thanks to both God and you as my ministry partners, for making that time possible for Patt and me.

Preaching at a small Haitian church near Treasure Cay, Bahamas

Patt and some friends enjoy the service in the small, cramped building

Outside the small “Pink Church”

The old School Bus that is their only Sunday School Class for the children

The new building under construction by the “Mud Dogs” businessmen friends of NDI

The congregation inside their unfinished building

A new Bahamian partner we will be working with in agricultural development

30 year friend and partner, Pastor Wilbur Outten of the Freeport Bible Church

Wilbur is one of the best preachers and Biblical expositors in the Bahamas

Former NDI member, Ambassador Lewis Lucke, visits one of our Haitian partners we are building a home for

Ambassador Lucke with Chavannes Jeune, long time NDI friend and partner

Ambassador Lucke and me with Chavannes who is running for the Presidency of Haiti in 2010

Ambassador Lucke meeting NDI partners, Mr. & Mrs. Edner Jeanty and Mr. & Mrs Esperandieu Pierre

Esperandieu takes me to a school he has started for poor children who never had gone to school

His “Nehemiah Academy” is a combination of academic and practical learning

Homes like this is where the children come from.  And you thought we had a “housing crisis!”

This mud hut with dirt floors is where you could be cooking your Thanksgiving Dinner!

A father builds his “stick & mud” home for himself and family—all they will ever know without our help

This crippled woman has 2 children attending the school sponsored by Pierre

Give thanks that this is not how you will have to wash your Thanksgiving laundry

Pierre outside his home for HIV children

Some of the precious children of the school.  A real cause for Thanksgiving!

In His Healing Love,