Some of the great people we met while working in Haiti this summer are keeping blogs of their adventures while serving with Heartline Ministries. Please check out their writing on the web and on Twitter!

Heartline Haiti Blog

John and Beth McHoul are the founding directors of the Heartline program. Their blog is at JohnMcHoul.wordpress.com. John's Twitter handle is @mchoulj.

Beth shared some sad news last week: Larry, one of Heartline's Mastiff "guard" dogs, died. She writes, "Larry came as a puppy from our friends in Vermont. He settled in at the guest house and had ruled the yard ever since. A mastiff isn't full grown until year three and he went from a gangling teen aged dog to massive 200 pound truck. He delighted all the dog-loving visitors and terrified or annoyed those that don’t like cow-sized canines. Free drool hung in strings as Larry would greet those who came and went from the guest house. Lots of visitors took photos of him. He was huge, he was friendly, and he wasn't what you would think of as a dog in Haiti."

The Livesay Haiti Weblog

Troy and Tara Livesay moved to Haiti with their five children in 2008, two years before the earthquake that so devastated the country in 2010. They had adopted two of their children in Haiti in 2002, and had felt the call to move to Haiti since then. The family blogs at LivesayHaiti.blogspot.com. Troy tweets as @troylivesay.

Tara wrote about the uncertainty and "degaje" (Creole for "make do") that accompanied the tropical storm that just swept through Haiti. In the midst of the storm, a woman came to the Heartline maternity center in labor. All turned out well for Heartline, and the baby was born safely and in good health.

Not everyone, though, escaped the pain of the storm. Tara said, “Different areas of the country had more rain and flooding than our area of Port au Prince. It definitely feels like adding insult to injury when so many have not even resolved and replaced what they lost in 2010, we're grateful in that we know it could have been so much worse. The last we heard seven people died as a result of the storm.”

Ryan and Melissa in Haiti

Ryan and Melissa Alberts were our hosts at the Heartline Guest House. Their blog is at RyanandMelissaAlberts.com.

After the storm, the two put up a very helpful post telling us all that they were safe and showing pictures and videos of what the storm did in Port au Prince. “All the Heartline people are ok,” they wrote. “Some broken down trees and cleaning up to do. The sky is beginning to clear, though we have been warned more rain could be on the way. Just heard an airplane! The airport must be open again.”

Trees and plants around the guest house looked pretty beaten up, but overall, Port au Prince was not hit too terribly. The unfortunate thing is that the people in the slums and tent cities are disproportionately affected by these sort of storms because of the nature of the living conditions there.

Haitian Creations Store

As you surf these various blogs and discover the many things that Heartline and the missionaries that serve the organization are doing for the people of Haiti, don't forget that you can support them—while directly helping the Haitian people they train and sponsor, who directly receive a significant portion of your purchase price—by purchasing craft items at Haitian Creations.

“Hesed” is a Hebrew word that means “kindness”, “mercy”, “loyalty”, “loving-kindness” or “steadfastness.” It’s the way God intends us to live together—a “love your neighbor as yourself”, active, selfless, sacrificial, caring-for-one-another brand of living contradictory to our fallen natures. The “Heseders” are continually looking to work together to share some small measure of God’s extraordinary love. Won’t you join us?