2 Haiti 4 Him

The Heckman family serving the Lord in Haiti at Emmaus Biblical Seminary

Saturday, December 12, 2015

The Year Is Coming To A Close...

It's crazy how quickly November flew by for us in Haiti. I absolutely love the end of the school year here at Emmaus! We have a talent show, soccer tournaments, relay races, and a big Christmas party together with our students and staff....

As you probably remember me saying in my other blog (if you read it of course),
I love this seminary. I love our staff. And I love our students.

 I'm rejoicing because God has blessed me with such a great family. Not just Mom, Dad, Rosa and Ethan, but our fellow missionaries, and everyone who is here at the seminary.

 I recently went on a one day missions trip with Rosa and the students to an orphanage for handicapped children.
It was a humbling, heart-wrenching, but truly amazing experience. I'm not gonna go into specifics with you, but if you want to know more about our experience there, visit Stacey's blog:
http://mshaiti.blogspot.com/2015/12/dirty-is-why-we-are-here.html
Here's a few pictures anyway (they might be on her blog as well)

Now back to the end of the year at the seminary....

To start off the soccer tournaments we had our staff vs. student match! Usually, since our staff are all older than our students, they lose pretty much every year. But this year, we had Rosa join the team (which everyone wasn't too sure about at first since girls don't play soccer in Haiti), and she scored the winning goal for the staff! 

My momma's cousin Anna came for a week for a visit, which we all enjoyed so much! 

We had our lovely staff Christmas party that I look forward to every year! Everyone loved the games
(as you can tell from the picture!)...

We played limbo again this year, and I won! Woohoo!

Here's the group...

And of course with Christmas time comes Christmas cookies! Had a blast making these with Rosa and Mom!


I absolutely loved our talent show this year,
and so did the students (as you can tell)...

We had one of the most amazing Christmas services ever (haha, in my opinion)...
We had several students read scripture passages and we sang a bunch of English Christmas songs with them. They loved it, and we loved it.


Every year we get new first year students, and they have to get "baptized" into the seminary by their fellow students, which means being teased for an entire day. It's a Haitian tradition and it's apparently very necessary to do for them to be accepted into the family... 
It was hilarious to watch them get squirted with water and get flour thrown on them :)
The best part was that the first years loved it too!

Had such a great year and I'm so excited for next year...

Hope you enjoyed this blog, be looking for the next one!




Monday, December 7, 2015

Before and After...

We have been serving in Haiti for over 2 years now, (going on 3!) ... working each day at the EBS campus, living daily life and routine in our home... and lately we have been hit hard with a reality in our lives...

How often do we walk by things in our busyness, day after day, and not realize how much they are changing and growing? How often do we miss out on seeing God's blessings or thanking Him for His goodness to us because we get so busy that we don't take the time to stop, to take it in and to appreciate?
I am certain this happens to all of us to some extent, right? (Please tell me we're not the ONLY family   who does this... :)

Per the suggestion of my Momma's dear friend (thank you Janis!), this post is dedicated to the changes that have been happening here at Emmaus over the past 2 years.  I have been looking through old pictures of the seminary and I'm very excited to share these before and after pictures!

If we will just spend time each day noticing what is going on around us, thanking God for what He is doing, we will be continually reminded of His provision, His blessings and His faithfulness...  my family's prayer is that this post might help you to stop and take time today to notice and to praise Him for all that He has done for you!

These first few are from around our houses....

Here's our house...

And after....


 The garden...

And after...


This is the "Ti Kay" as we call it (which means little house in Creole)...

And after...

Here's the other side of the Ti Kay...

And after...

These next several pictures are of the seminary...

By the chapel...

And after... (This one's one of my favorites!)

And at the entrance of the seminary...

And after...
(probably the biggest transformation yet! This space is used for fellowship, prayer, Bible study, group pictures and more!)

In front of our cafeteria...

And after...

Dad has one more BIG project he is working on now... can't wait to show it to you very soon! (Its almost done!) 

Can you believe all that he has accomplished since coming here? 

Isn't it beautiful?


Thanks for reading this blog about how the seminary has been improving over the past two years!
Stayed tuned for another update!