2 Haiti 4 Him

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

Sunday, December 4, 2016

A Very Busy Fall

I thought I'd start this blog with some lovely pictures of this beautiful country...


So if you haven't heard already, we have had tons of rain. And I mean TONS.

Now this is quite strange for Haiti, usually we have warm, sunny days, and in the evening we will have a quiet, steady shower this time of year.

(I don't think the froggies mind the rain :)

But for the past month or so, we have been getting rain, all. day. long. Pounding on the tin roofs of all the little huts in northern Haiti, flooding the streets, soaking the ground. Fortunately, this past week it seems to be letting up, drizzling only occasionally.

Jumping back to my last blog, you might remember me mentioning a medical team that was coming from Canada. Well they came, and it was amazing. We worked at Empower Global's clinic "Jehovah Rapha" for the week, while also doing mobile medical clinics for the three days. After working all day as a translator for the team, it was comforting to know that so many people would be falling asleep that night with no pain. No pain because of the labor of this hardworking team. 

In the afternoons while the team was here, my Mom and a bunch of students did a VBS for the children in a nearby village.


They played games, sang songs, watched the Jesus film in Creole, and read from children's Haitian Bibles, and as you can see, had a blast!

Nora loves visitors :) 


After a long, quite successful week, we all sat around a campfire and enjoyed one another's company. We are so thankful for this team, and their effort to make Haiti a healthier place.

Thanksgiving with all of our OMS Haiti friends was a success (as always!). 
We all get together and each share something we are thankful for, and this year the topic was God. What are we thankful for about God? What part of His vast being do we love most? It was really cool to hear all of our fellow missionaries share.

After eating a delightful meal with everyone, we played volleyball on our basketball court, we talked and laughed. Together.


December already, huh? It's crazy how quickly this half of the school year has gone by. As you may already know from past blogs, at the end of the year, we always have soccer matches between classes.

My very favorite of our Emmaus games was this one, 
when our wonderful second-years made it into the finals!

As you can tell, they are all very excited :)

Also, we had our first ever basketball game between students and staff!


With December comes Christmas, decorating, 
and listening to music that never really gets old :)

Thank you for reading this blog, 
and have a splendid rest of December from our family to yours <3


Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Fall at Emmaus!

After finishing the first half of the semester at Emmaus, our family and the Ayars family traveled to spend our fall break in the Dominican Republic!

It was a perfect little trip, quiet and restful.

My lovely family...

Since not all of us were going to be present for Halloween this year, we did a little party a couple weeks before!

Its always a blast to see what everyone comes up with for costumes!

There is a new family moving a few minutes away from the seminary, and we are so excited to have them so close! The Hari family have been good friends, and we can't wait to see how God uses our friendship with them!


Dad has been using his creativity to help beautify the seminary since we moved here, and these are his latest projects! He bends the metal, and welds everything together to make these little masterpieces (that the students love)!


We have been getting non-stop rain. 
Everyday. 
In the past two and a half weeks I'm not sure that we have gone a day without it raining, which means we have to make a place for all that water to go, or else there is mud everywhere. Dad just started making this much-needed canal for the rain!

On a completely unrelated topic, Nora is adorable (as you already know). 
Pepper is now her best friend :)


We love visiting different churches every Sunday, and supporting our staff and students by attending their services!

It's such a wonderful experience to worship in another language, and to glorify God with our Haitian brothers and sisters. 

The Masters program has started again, bringing VP, Joyce, to come teach! Students are loving her class so far! We have over 20 students enrolled in the program!

I'm also excited to announce that Matt is officially a Dr!!!  We are so proud of him for this awesome accomplishment. 
Of course we are ready for him to begin diagnosing all of our medical problems :)


We are going to be partnering with Empower Global next week, an organization right down the street from EBS! They are bringing in a team of doctors and nurses from Canada and we are hosting them on our campus. They will be working in their clinic for the week and all next week we will do VBS for kids around the village!! We will also be doing a mobile medical clinic in Flavil, at Pastor Belony's church, next Saturday.

Please be praying for the team, that they would have safe travels, and that God would use them to bring hope and healing to the people of Haiti through the medical clinics. Also lift up us as well as our students as we work with the kids and share God's love with them!

Thanks for reading!



Monday, October 3, 2016

A Much Needed Update

Sorry I have neglected the blog recently... We have been busy this past month!

For the second round of VPs that came, Pastor Dave (from West Park Church... the church my mom grew up in and the one I attended for my first 7 years of life) came to teach! It was such a blessing to have him here with us, and to share our lives with him during the two weeks he was on campus!

He preached in chapel, which was extra special since we haven't heard him preach in years...

His object lessons really helped our students to engage, and they also loved seeing Matt like this :)

While he was here we had the chance to visit the church in Fev, and he preached there too!

{Nora's growing up too fast} 

I love that church, and I was really glad to share the experience there with him.

Thank you for coming Dave :)


The other day Mom and I went into town with some good friends to visit the market!

It was really special getting to walk down the streets of Cap,
 and see the hidden beauty of the city...

The ladies just set up shelves and stacked all their merchandise right by the road...

I love this wall

My favorite was the produce market. 
They just laid all the fruit and veggies on the sidewalk, and the fruit was de-lic-ious. 


Mom and I after chapel :) <3

We kicked off our fall season by celebrating Matt's birthday with his precious family. 
{Kinda looks like it's Lily's birthday here, huh?}


I'm sure most of you have heard about Hurricane Matthew... 
Please pray for the people in Haiti who are poor and have limited resources to protect them from the storm. We appreciate your love and support.

That's all for now... Thanks for reading!