All that land.

When my dad was here last fall, he spent a day "working traffic" with a good friend of ours. That means he spent a day on a crowded--3 adults to a seat and people standing in the aisle--school bus in the middle of the overpopulated city of Port-au-Prince (population 4 million-ish). The bus made its route back and forth from downtown to a northern suburb on the streets filled with vehicles and so many people going about their day. At the end of that day, my dad could just not get over how many people he had seen. Every once and a while, he would shake his head and say, "I just can't believe all the people." Even when he tells this story, he still shakes his head in wonder. 

Every day many people leave the states and land in this cement city full of people. Many people don't get out of it before heading back to the airport to see more of Haiti. They see all the people and rarely here what I did when Al got back from a day trip to a "farm". He shook his head in wonder and said, "all that land..."

Outside of Port-au-Prince there is a while different side of Haiti that so few people get to see or experience. Mountainous beauty, calm lakes and rivers, and fields of fertile ground waiting to produce a crop. Al saw all of this yesterday but what astounded him the most was the sheer vast amount of land that was rich for farming but was not being farmed.

One of our partnership communities owns a lot of land and the leadership has a vision: to farm. Farming and agriculture has been a staple for the economy of Haiti for a very long time, but it is dying and creating this great contrast of the mass of people in the major cities and the mass of land sitting there needing to be worked. 

Our partners want to see this land worked but are unsure how to do it effectively and efficiently. We are praying about how to best encourage them in this great endeavor that would provide jobs and a local food source for the community. Be praying for them. Be praying for us as we continue to encounter different opportunities and pray through how to best proceed. 

There is so much going on in Haiti both in the bustling city with so many people and in the countryside with all that land.