And here's her July 14 Update

Hi everyone!
Well, another week has passed in Haiti! It's been a very fun, tiring, and a bit more eventful week. A few exciting things to start out...
On Wednesday, we had an exciting day. We went up the mountain a little ways to a town called Kenscoff. There is an orphanage there that GLA helps to support. It's called Les Enfants de Jesus Orphanage, and you can see some more about it at http://www.glahaiti.org/our_ministries/les_enfants_de_jesus/ . It is a very small orphanage, with only about 20 children that live there. They don't have much at all in their house. All of their walls were pretty dark and dirty, so it seemed like a very depressing place. 10 of us, the volunteers and the team who is here, went in with around 8 gallons of paint and gave it an enormous face lift! Instead of a dirty, dark purple for the walls, the living room and kitchen were a very bright yellow, and the bedrooms were a light blue and green. It was a lot of fun! We all were a mess, but it was a great day. It was interesting working with oil based paint because all of the paint wouldn't wash off our hands at the end of the day unless we used paint thinner. One of the girls got green paint splattered all over her face, and she still has a little bit of green on her eyelid, it's really cute! It was also nice because the actual quality of the painting didn't matter quite as much as it would have at home. If we dripped on the floor a little bit, it didn't matter much at all. They were very appreciative and loved the new look of their place. We also had the chance to hang around with the children there a little bit, when we needed to escape from the paint fumes in the house (they didn't have very good ventilation- we all started to feel a little bit high!) The children there were very sweet and friendly. They loved having their picture taken and having the chance to just sit by you. I think part of the reason that I enjoyed having the chance to go and paint was the opportunity to make a tangible difference. I know that the work with the children here is very important, and it makes a huge difference in the lives of the children, but often you can't see how much of a difference you have made in their lives. You have to just trust that God will take the love and energy you are pouring into these children and use it to touch them. This was an opportunity where we could take before and after pictures. We could see as soon as the paint went up on the walls how much of a difference this would make in the orphanage, and how much it would brighten up their home and lives. While both types of mission work are definitely needed, it was nice to have a chance to do the other kind and I definitely enjoyed it.
We also did a picture day on Thursday. Once a month, GLA takes pictures of all of the children that are currently here. These pictures are sent to all of the adoptive families, and for the children that don't yet have a family, they are kept in a file for when they go home, so that they will be able to have "baby pictures" of sorts. There just happens to be a professional photographer here with the current team from Edmonton, so he was put in charge of picture day at the baby house. The volunteers were in charge of bringing children up from the nursery, getting them cleaned and lotioned up, and then put in nice clothes from the picture day box. We helped get the kids that we brought up to smile/look, and then changed them back into the clothes they came up in and brought them back down. It's always a lot of work, but its kind of fun too. We got an amazing 65 kids done in 3 1/2 hours! The photographer was really good at getting the good shots pretty quickly. There were 6 kids that we needed to do on Friday because they were asleep when we tried to get them, but otherwise we were done at 2:15, which is amazing. There is a total of 96 kids at the main house that we needed to photograph. I think that we will be doing the Toddler House sometime in the coming week.
Saturday was a fun day around here. A couple of the girls went on a rice feeding. There were a lot of us who wanted to go along, but there shouldn't be more than four at a time so we don't totally overcrowd their truck, so I'll be going again next week, and taking two "newbies" along with me (people who have never gone on a feeding before). I wanted to go with them so that they won't be totally lost and confused with what's going on. It'll be a fun thing to do on my last saturday here (sob!). I hung around here for a little while this morning, doing nothing in particular, and then headed up with a bunch of people here to see the new land that GLA purchased and will be building on. Unfortunately I didn't know we were going to see the new land when I went down to the main house, so I didn't bring my camera with me, but it was still really neat to go see. I'm glad I had the opportunity to go up there. It's a gorgeous property. There will be so much room for everything that they will need, and because it's higher up the mountain, it's really comfortable! There was a slightly chilly wind up there, which is highly unusual for Haiti. They say in the winter months, it's almost cold! Crazy. They are currently working on building the wall, and it's coming along very well. It's up to 5 feet tall in some areas around the property. I'm so excited for the improvements that GLA will have when they are able to be up here, and I'll definitely have to be back again sometime to volunteer in the new building. There is also an incredible view of the city of Port-au-Prince from the land. It was pretty hazy today, but it was still really nice.
Once we were done checking out the land, we headed down to the Baptist Mission. I met Britt and Troy Livesay there and ate lunch with them, and then Britt and I went over some more math stuff while Troy went out and did some sight seeing. He went up to Fort Jacques, but said it was a pretty worthless trip. I think that Britt and I got through all of the first chapter now. She only has 3 more to do now :) I got some ice cream before I left, which tasted really good. Not as good as the stuff back home does, but for not having ice cream for so long, it still tasted really good. The Baptist Mission was really busy as there were many mission teams that came in, but it was fun. The rest of the day was pretty lazy and I just sat around and read. It was nice to have a break with nothing to do.
I'm planning on going to the kreyol church with the toddlers again tomorrow. It should be pretty good. We don't have anything else planned besides that yet.
A few prayer requests...
Please pray that the passports would be released very quickly so that more children would be able to go home to their forever families. We have 50 passports that we are waiting for. Thankfully, 3 more children were able to go home this week, but there are still way too many children here and they need to go home!
Please keep me in your prayers as I prepare to leave a week from Tuesday to go home. It's going to be very hard to leave all of the children here that I've grown to love so much, and all of the new friends that I've made. It's also going to be difficult adjusting to live in America again after living here for a longer time.
Thanks for all of your prayers! I appreciate you all!
Love from Haiti,
Kristin