Hi All,
I have missed my visits to the island during the past twelve months. Prior to the pandemic, my general pattern was to journey down every couple of months and I’m hopeful I’ll be able to resume my visits very soon.
In going, I always have a prioritized to-do list: projects to assess, schools to visit, and personal connections to make, which I regard as the most important of all my tasks. I work hard on this. We currently have sixty-five full-time staff, people whose families have food to eat because of the wages they earn as Starfysh employees. In our conversations I thank them and I encourage them. I assure them their work is important… because God is important, and He cares for them.
The things we do in Haiti are all good, but they are only of lasting value if they result in transformed, God-purposed lives. If we fail to connect those dots with those whose lives we improve, we fall short of fulfilling our mission.
Just this morning I received pictures of seven new family latrines that were built over the past few weeks. Simple. Crude even. But at least these seven families will no longer have to defecate in the open.
We must not forget, too, that to stop short and celebrate latrines would cause us to miss the main point: that in the past few weeks another seven families have moved just a bit closer to the health and dignity God created them to enjoy. And that this is what Starfysh is really all about.
Steve Edmondson
A latrine in the making.
Once pits are dug, we provide families the cement to build a pit cap and stool.
