what a day

**Disclaimer....I am writing this off of two hours sleep and  a crazy day so please excuse the spelling mistakes or terrible writing.**

These past couple of weeks have been very up and down.  We keep asking ourselves should we stay or should we go because of the coronavirus.  Once the cases were announced on Thursday evening, Haiti closed all their airports and the decision was made we have to stay.  OMS told us if there was any possible way of leaving then we should do that. By monday there were a couple of flights getting permission to land in Port au Prince, one of which was a chartered airline costing $1200 per ticket!!!!

Then last night at about 8.30pm we received a call from MFI (missionary flights International) that they had permission to fly and were coming in to pick up our team.  Right away we went next door to see if everyone else had got the call.  Our neigbours, the Ayars are finishing up their time in Haiti and had planned to leave in May, now they had not even one days notice to pack up a lot of their stuff.   This was not really how we imagined our last night together after 4years of being neighbours. But time was short so we started packing and once we finished we  tried to see if it was possible to get a flight to the UK from Miami.  Finally got one booked and fell into bed at 3am, to be woken up by the boys at 6.15am.

We told the boys we were going and left for the airport with the rest of our team.  We had been there about 30 minutes when we got a phonecall from MFI saying we could not board the plane because they only have permission from US border and customs to bring US and Canadian citizens.  A restriction that has been put on because they are a private airline and not commerical.  We called the UK embassy, the US embassy and back to the UK embassy...who were extremely helpful. The lady  tried as hard as she could to get permission but after 3 hours of waiting and many phonecalls back and forth we were denied.  We want to say a huge thank you to MFI who, I am sure felt under a lot of pressure and to the pilot who waited as long as he could.


We said goodbye to the rest of our team including the Ayars, who we have no idea when we will see again, and Nikki, the Emmaus intern who lives with us and had just gotten some awful news from home.. We left with Pam (who is from England and here for the semester) and headed back to the Emmuas campus.  Poor wee Joel was devastated and cried getting into the van, then again once we got home. It has been a very long day.

We are looking into the possibility of flying from Port au Prince to Paris and then home.  This was the route the British embassy suggested for us on our way home from the airport.  We should be able to confirm tomorrow.

Today we were completely overwhelmed with how many people who were praying for our situation.  I was getting messages all day and seeing my facebook post being shared by our friends and their friends, who have no idea who we are, are praying for us. so even though I am not too happy with the US today we have many many people from there praying for us right now.  It is really unbelievable how the body of Christ comes together.  It is one of the many things I love about being a christian, no matter where you go in the world you always have brothers and sisters in Christ.

So please continue to pray.  Pray for things to be worked out for us to travel through Paris and if not pray for God's peace to stay in Haiti during this time.

Pray for our families, they are concerned and would really prefer for us to not be in Haiti at this time.  Pray for peace for them.

We have much to pray for in these day, no matter where you are and we are humbled that so many would take time to pray for our family.

We will try to update you as we can but for now, I am going to bed.