making music with Mendelt and Zekijah

GREAT to see you M and Z

telling stories to great uncle Jerry and greatest aunt Henny in downtown Grimsby

Oma and G

fun times at Evergreen Terrace, Grimsby, May 25, 2008

first impressions of Canada 1....SAFETY FIRST

Eily....LOOK OUT! It's Gabu the Affectionate

Gabu meets Kaia

cousins

bizou for Gabriela
from Eily

ON THE WAY TO CANADA!!!

Esther and Gabriela are on the way to Canada!!!!!

Esther got the visa at the Canadian embassy this morning at about 9:30, rushed to the airport and got on standby. It wasn't until the very last minute that they got a ticket - she said she was the LAST person to get a ticket on the standby list. She then rushed through immigration, security and almost straight on to the plane! Then I quickly bought a ticket for them online for the Montreal to Toronto portion. Gabriela will touch Canadian soil for the first time around 6:20 tonight, then in Toronto around 11. Our cousin Dan is picking them up and bringing them to Amaryah's house in KW.

I can honestly say that these have been three of the craziest and most stressful days of our lives. Last night was nice because we had some friends over to relax a bit, but I feel like I haven't slept in a week. It's a miracle that we got everything done, a real, genuine miracle. Thanks so much to all of your for your notes, thoughts and prayers. It all made a difference for us.

For those of you who will be seeing Gabriela for the first time, enjoy!!!!! I miss them already, but we'll be together in July, probably in Vancouver.

Love,

Matt (and Esther and Gabriela who are somewhere over the Caribbean right now!)

Gabriela's Visa!!!

Just got news from Esther that she has the Canadian visa for Gabriela! Late yesterday the embassy asked her to come back this morning because "they had a few questions." We weren't sure what that meant, but our guess was that they just wanted to make sure Gabriela was coming back to Haiti - because she is going on a "tourist" visa and not an immigrant visa, like most adopted kids. Since we plan on staying in Haiti, that wasn't a problem and they gave her a multiple entry visa for the next 18 months, which is plenty of time for us to work out her Canadian citizenship and get her on a Canadian passport. And she can travel freely back and forth to Canada.

Now . . . Esther is at the airport trying to get a ticket. Air Canada flies Tuesdays and Air Transat Wednesdays, both direct to Canada thus avoiding travel through the states (which is another visa). She is on the standby list for Air Transat today and we should know by noonish if they are going to get on. Gabriela is home with Martha (her nanny) and we have a ride arranged for Gabriela to get to the airport.

We are very hopeful and thankful that this is all falling into place. I will feel much better when I get the call saying they have a ticket . . . and I'll let you know when I know!

M

PASSPORT!!!

here's the news from here:
We have the passport!

We have a meeting tomorrow morning at the Canadian Embassy- they know our case (they looked at it today) but they want to meet with me tomorrow...we don't know exactly why but they may want to make sure we're not going to stay in Canada on a visitors VISA. So that's not a problem b/c we're coming back home to this sunshine! Keep the prayers rising...we're getting on a plane tomorrow!

in between cultures

We're coming to Canada TOMORROW si Bondye vle (if God wills it), or maybe Friday but soon anyway-- one two all three of us (eventually) for an extended visit! . . . here’s what we’re looking forward to and what we’re going to miss too, in random order!

just before those, here's what Wikipedia says about our trip. . .
!!!!! Reverse Culture Shock - Returning to one's home culture after growing accustomed to a new one characterized by anxiety and feelings of surprise, disorientation, confusion, etc. felt when people trying to operate within an entirely different cultural or social environment. These feelings are often combined with strong feelings (moral or aesthetical) about certain aspects of the old culture. The term was introduced for the first time in 1954 by Kalervo Oberg.

Esther- YAAY for blueberries , not being the centre of attention, library, bicycling, seeing many of you, and meeting my many nephews and Isabel

Gabriela- WOO HOO for travelling (so far she loves it), meeting the people that Mama and Papa have been showing me in the photos, ? ? ? ?

Matt (who staying in Haiti May-June but coming to visit in July!)- YIPPEE for getting more sleep, pursuing some hobbies (maybe woodworking, maybe Spanish) meeting Esther & Gabriela in Vancouver

and here’s what we’re going to be sad about:

Esther- MISSING rice & beans , sun, heat, Creole and making jokes in Creole, Matt and being a double parent, Martha (Gabriela’s nanny and a good friend), negative images about Haiti (once when we were visiting Canada someone said "boy the water must really dirty there in Haiti". We had at that point already spent two years drinking out of a mountain rock- YES it's hard to have positive images of Haiti and it's not intentional but not knowing what to say is real for us and probably you too).

Gabriela- MISSING Papa, rice & beans, playing with water, Martha , SO many friends, ? ? ?

Matt- MISSING seeing Gabou grow, sharing my bed w/ two warm bodies, coming home to someone

now more from Wikipedia (no actually, University of the Pacific)...Tips for those who stayed at home when encountering expatriates like us:
1. Support the preparation of the returnees for coming home. This can be done even from far away.
2. Be prepared that a new person – somebody you don’t know – will come home.
3. Mark the reentry clearly for the returnees and for those who stayed at home.
4. Avoid criticism and mockery for seemingly strange patterns of behavior and new attitudes.
5. Be attentive towards your own expectations. Avoid to push the returnee into old roles.
6. Create opportunities for the returnees to report on their experiences. Listen carefully and try to understand their significance for them.
7. Acknowledge that the returnees have lost something: friends, a stimulating environment, the feeling of being special, responsibilities, privileges...
8. Encourage contacts to friends and institutions in the former host country.
9. Encourage contacts to people who have successfully gone through the experience of returning home.
10. Accept critical comparisons of culture and lifestyle – you might be able to learn something...
source: (Dr. Bruce La Brack, School of International Studies, University of the Pacific, Stockton, California (unpublished). Adapted by Peter Stadler, Dr. phil., Goldgasse 8, CH-4500 Solothurn.) www.larissa-becker.de/reverse_culture_shock.html

Update May 12th!

Matt spent his workday in the Haitian Ministry of the Interior with colleagues Toma and Guylene and G's lawyer where both of the important people signed the papers. Just 8 hours for 2 signatures! and including a frantic call to me asking me to e-mail some passport looking photos of the three of us for our file. Our file must be getting really big.

I went to the Canadian Embassy to start the VISA process which you can't start w/o the passport and we don't have the passport yet. . .
but Haiti is full of tomorrows and we have a meeting at 8:30 with THE DIRECTOR. If we can get to the Canadian Embassy by 9:55AM with the new passport in hand then we might get a VISA by tomorrow afternoon.

If not we'll have to get a US transit VISA as well as the Cdn VISA and fly whenever we get both of those.

At this point we are praying for deep breaths and God's will if not a time change around 10 tomorrow morning.

While it's true that THIS has taken forever, forever has flown by and Haiti has/is in this process giving us a living piece of her that, if things continue as they've started, promise endless adventure and discovery.



hope all is good with everyone, love G E M

ps photo is G and one month old Robenski. Isn't he sweet!?

TOUR DATES

G E M's on tour...
(We're so excited to see you all but we want to take it kind of chill because we're not used to the weather not to mention Canada, white people, and lunch that isn't rice and bean sauce and my driver's license is expired- if you want to see us, PLEASE let us know: greatspirit@fastmail.fm and we'll love to make a plan with you! )

May 14- G&E arrive in K-W

19-June 20- Esther: YTT (Yoga Teacher Training) 200 hour intensive.
Gabriela: hanging out with Eily, Matthew, Kaia, their parents other friends in K-W
Saturday May 24-visit great OMA (deLange) at Evergreen Terrace- if there are others in the area who want to meet us here, we are thinking about renting a room for the day, or just finding a park in Grimsby, let us know.

late June- travel to Winnipeg to spend Canada Day and Gabriela's birthday (July 2nd) with Jennifer, Zavi, and Will etc.

early July- meet Matt (finally) in Vancouver to meet Ronin, Audrey, and Charlotte, and spend time with them and their parents

mid-July- travel to a small town in Colorado to visit our friend Tanya Black (who was in our wedding) and her family Paul, Saffire, and Krimzin

later July- travel to Sarnia to Oma and Opa, the beach, bikerides

b/f mid-August- St. Catherines, Fonthill (to meet Isabel), Toronto

later August- back home to Haiti

NEWS BRIEFS from Haiti chèri

PAP (Port au Prince)

- this morning Guylene (our friend, MCC colleague and Gabriela's god-mother) picked up the paper signed by the important person in ARCHIVES

- she spent a few hours at IMMIGRATION to start the passport process

- the file needs to go over to the Ministry of the Interior to be signed by 3 different people

- Friday morning, she will try to get that done in collaboration with a few high level people in the Ministry that Matt has been able to make contact with thanks to help from some other friends with friends

- we are and hoping and praying that the file will be signed in the morning on Friday so Guylene can go back to Immigration to get the passport done. She has friends there who can get the passport done quickly for us. If we get the passport today or first thing Monday morning, we should be all set for the Wednesday departure!

Dezam
-G and I are catching up with old friends and colleagues and loving the SUNSHINE and living outside and sleeping under the stars
-this morning Gabriela said "Brian" (her uncle here) and "benyen" (which means to bathe, her favourite hobby)

keep praying! we're getting somewhere : ) GEM

Saving Gabriela !

It’s official! Gabriela's adoption papers passed through the Haitian courts late February (we didn’t actually know it ourselves until April!). Looking back we can’t imagine how we ever lived without her. Looking further back we can’t believe that we’ve lived here in the Caribbean for nearly 4 years. I vividly remember arriving in Dezam and not being able to imagine how we would live there for 3 years in the heat, in Creole, without Chapters, or mixed field greens but that was a few days before the community showed up at our door l i t e r a l l y to welcome us with Haitian hospitality and curiousity and before we tried pikliz (spicy cabbage salad) and watercress not to mention mangoes, loquats, and Haitian lemonade. . . Now it’s hard to imagine not being here.

Every so often people (Haitians and foreigners) meet us, all three of us, and they compliment us for "saving Gabriela". Every time I hear this the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. So when it happened most recently, I waited until my neck hair when down again and I said to Matt, let's make a list of what we are "saving" Gabriela" from. Here's what we came up with...and we wanted to share it with you.

we saved her from:
• not being able to find books and websites in her first language
• corporal punishment in school
• not having health insurance
• having to work b/c her parents can’t afford to send her to school
• having to stay inside if the protests on the streets get violent
• wearing American hand me downs
• Giardia
• not knowing how to set her alarm on her phone or wake up with anything but the sun or the roosters, or early choir practice
• not ever going tobogganing
• thinking white is better

and we saved her from:
• living with her grandmother
• going to church on Sunday with nearly everyone else
• germs
• trusting in God to meet her in daily needs
• harvesting sugar cane from her garden, loading it on a horse, and riding the horse to the market
• knowing where her food comes from
• shopping in an outdoor market
• having only 1 choice of cereal
• seeing babies being born
• being vulnerable
• seeing sick people and old people die
• knowing how to chill out
• having too few possessions
• riding public transportation
• patience
• mangoes
• fresh juice
• taking her goats out to pasture at dawn
• 363 days of sunshine a year
• rice out of a husk and beans out of a pod
• doing laundry in the sunshine with her feet in the river while chatting with her neighbours (weight machines can’t compete with this muscle toning action)
• having a reasonable ecological footprint
• watching a tarantula spin its legs up effortlessly in marvellous self defence
• knowing how to make rope
• knowing how to make her own soccer ball or kite out of a plastic bag(s)
• knowing how to fix a fuel line with a rock
• pounding her own coffee and not drinking it double, tall, nor with skim or soy
• valuing every drop of water that it takes to fill her jug at the public tap
• looking physical poverty in the eyes every day
• being valued just for showing up

oh, there’s more! we are also saving Gabriela from
• not having the chance to play with toy guns
• not having the chance to watch 4 hours of television per day
• not having the chance to be self conscious about her weight
• not ever finding out what a transfat is
• never going to Walmart
• never having the opportunity to be overwhelmed by opportunities
• not getting to work overtime
• not having the choice to eat local
• not ever having the chance to see 8 lanes of traffic, or even 4
• not having to read a map to get there
• being Afrocentric, or whatever the opposite of Eurocentric

I've noticed that when I pray with Haitians, they say thank you for this food. When I pray with North Americans here in Haiti and beyond, we say thank you for this food and thank you that we are so blessed. What does this blessed mean? Looking at the biblical “blessed”, God blesses everyone, everyone who wants it, everyone who admits they need it.
Specifically...
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5: 3-12

I don’t see blessed are those who work overtime, manage their money well, have a free education, are born in Canada, drink bottled water, drive a hybrid car, or have the biggest wood lot. The possessions we have are not going to bless us or save us. What we achieve by worldly standards is not going to get us anywhere but here (on earth) either (unless the worldly standards start to resemble God’s). These things are manifestations of the state of our hearts that can help us or block us from God’s blessings.

We didn’t save Gabriela. I know without a doubt that by adopting Gabriela and introducing her to a “GWO PEYI” (big country, as Haitians appropriately refer to “developed” countries) she will miss out on the blessings God gives the physically poor. If you have ever visited a peasant in their home, you’ll know what I’m talking about. God chose the poor in the world to be rich with faith and to received the kingdom God promised to those who love him James 2:5 (see also: Mark 12:43).

Also, if we didn’t adopt Gabriela there’s a really good chance she would have gone to Holland (her orphanage was a Dutch NGO). She might have become tulip engineer and she might have even liked dropjies. If no one ever adopted her and she stayed here in Haiti she might have become a role model to younger orphans or a human rights activist right here in Port au Prince or even a banana seller. If Gabriela goes to Canada, she might become the governor general (she’s already mastered the wave), or a secretary, the prime minister, a dancer, or a factory worker. And it won’t really matter what she chooses or what chooses her because God works through everyone. In fact, for those of us who are in the habit of feeling “blessed” because water comes out of our taps or when we buy two and get one free, God might even be working overtime, particularly on the days we are feeling like we’re “blessed” because we’ve earned it and we start preaching the gospel of “do it like us” from our car windows. What would the world look like if we were all “blessed” like North Americans. Would we still call ourselves “blessed”? Does our blessed-ness depend on others not meeting OUR “definition” of blessed? I’m asking.

Haiti has blessed us richly. Three plus years later, I can ride a taptap one-handed, carry bananas on my head, walk by half-moonlight, bathe in the river with my neighbours, and live without lettuce and while these might be guides on the road to “blessed”, these are not the true blessings (although the river bathing gets close).

Three plus years and a Haitian baby later I can let the market women rip me off,
spend 15 minutes greeting people at my office, listen to my colleagues, drink juice with an unreasonable amount of sugar just because someone made it for me, and smile at the guys making cat calls at me (this one was a LONG time coming!) Gabriela has been busy chipping away at my hyper-productivity and to everyone’s honour, I’ve been scheduling time to “pa fè anyen” (do nothing). Soon I just might be able to laugh a nice big laugh when things don’t go as planned.

The hair on the back of my neck is sticking up again, for the guard’s 12 year-old son and Gabriela who are chasing each other in the front yard as I type, for the way the human heart gets more generous the less we have, for Haiti who’s fighting whether at home or on the streets for the right to have enough to eat, and for the opportunity to be meek.

Blessed be.

Us all.

Well, it's official. . .

. . . Gabriela's adoption papers passed through the Haitian courts making us all officially adopted late February 2008. We have a few more steps and we need your prayers BIGTIME for this next week before we come on tour!!!

Here are the steps to adopting Gabriela
(when you see one of these: - that's where we are right now)

• Gabriela comes home (July 20, 2006)
• we find and meet our lawyer, Jean-Baptist MEME
• vaccinations
• complete our dossier
• Matt’s fingerprints for some reason had to take several trips to Canada and back
• social services
• Parquet
• letter proving OUR sterility (well actually, MINE, b/c the Haitian government is confident
that no man would ever be sterile)
• Tribunal
• Etat Civil
• decide on Gabriela’s new last name ; )
• Parquet
• Archives
• submit citizenship application with Canadian Embassy
- Haitian Immigration
- Interior
- Immigration again
- Haitian Passport
- Visitor’s Visa to Canada

thank you for your prayers...tour dates coming next!
G E M

The Healing Ceremony

Lots of you have asked about my healing ceremony so I wanted to share a little. The ceremony was held at Janey Wynne’s place, a cottage up above Port au Prince. It was a dark and stormy night until the clouds lifted the reveal the stars and Coleen and Dja wiped down the chairs so we could sit cozy under the open gazebo. Before we sat, the space was prepared with incense (earth and air), water, a candle (fire). And, we all gently sang Gabriela to sleep in Matt’s lap.

To the ceremony we invited all that and who is part of us, past and present.
I lit candles from the centre candle and named each with one of my fears.
Volunteers held the candles and we all prayed for the release of the fears. Then I released the fears one by one extinguishing their light and replacing them with my commitments to walk among others, be authentic in relationships, wholeness, and to trust that my gifts will be transformed in the process.
We prayed.
Drumming brought us back.
Then as we sat in a round, we sewed together a medicine bag, representing my re-member-ing and remembering who i am with out the eating disorder. Into the medicine bag, I put symbols to remind me of my wholeness as part of the whole universe.

The candles were re-lit and my commitments sent into the heavens.
Then we went inside and Amy served us the best chai tea ever.

I am the kind of person who likes to try different things. (duh!) It wasn't until after I graduated from university and had returned to university that i realized if you just do exactly what the teacher says, you will get an A (and that's because that's exactly what the prof. said) I was always trying to do it like that with a creative twist. My creative spirit has brought me into many adventures-- lots of bike trips and skinny dipping, Senegal and chimp tracking etc., not to mention marriage, AND also the 9 year adventure of an eating disorder. The Kikuyu of Kenya say "Coming out of your house is learning." But maybe i would add that you often have to come back home to realize that you've learned something while out and also that how much you learn is proportional to how freaked out you get on the way. In many ways the healing ceremony was my homecoming.

I’m going to do a little advocacy here too regarding eating disorders after having one. 1. do what you love – I like this quote by Audre Lorde (an activist of Caribbean decent): “When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid". It’s true. 2. don’t comment on people’s weight, good or bad. it’s really a non-issue like height. but it’s also a marketing strategy and it’s making millions by making us think we can change something that we can’t. (that’s why an eating disorder which is about control NOT about food or weight manifests itself in food and weight). we can change how we think about ourselves though, by not by ourselves.

thanks for joining with me in this fight please support the women in your life with confidence and positive role models

Esther STAR child of God