Dear Everybody:

I had a good vacation, and returned to Haiti September 9. The high point of my visit was the week I spent in Bella Coola B.C. visiting my sister Clair along with my brother Ben. She owns land up in the middle of nowhere but still right on the Bella Coola river. During the week we saw two grizzly bears and caught salmon in the river and hiked up into the hills and looked at ancient Indian petroglyphs. Later in my vacation I drove through B.C. and saw my cousins and visited the folks at the Vernon Christian Alliance church, some of whom came here with an outreach group in July. The interior of B.C. had a big problem with forest fires last sommer, and I saw much evidence of that. 

I was bitten by a spider part way through my visit and my leg swelled up and I couldnt walk on it and I even had a fever for a while. It is strange that I got bitten by something nasty while on vacation and not here in Haiti. 

My 91 year old grandfather took a nasty fall shortly before I returned. I am grateful I was not here in Haiti and I had the chance to see him and spend time with my family when he died.

My vacationwas also a fundraising trip, and it was my first time fundraising for Clean Water for Haiti. I would have liked to have seen more money raised but for a first attempt it went fairly well. It gave me some much needed practice speaking before groups. There are still various committees that need to meet before I will know how much money was raised. We are still quite short of money so I would like to ask if anyone would be willing to do some fund raising in my absence. Even a coin drive at a childrens school would be a good idea. My church in Bellingham, WA recently hosted an open mike night which managed to raise a little bit of money. 

Back in Haiti now I am once again running the mission in Tals absence. It is a huge challenge for me and I have a lot to learn about leadership. It is also stretching my organizational abilities. For the first time in my life I am using a day planner. Something to interfere with my plans is MALARIA which I have AGAIN. I have had quite a bit of experience with malaria now, so it is not as bad as it was on the previous 5 occasions I had it. I think my body may be starting to develop some sort of immunity. Also, I got tested fairly early into the illness this time so with the medication I am taking I should make a speedy recovery. 

The biggest event we have had going on is a filter technician training class which took place last week. The class went very well. It is our goal to train enough technicians to make biosand filters available all over Haiti. We have now trained about 35 filter technicians. 

I wrote previously about an invention called the hydraulic briquette press, which is a device for making cooking fuel briquettes out of waste paper and cardboard. The idea is that Haitis near total deforestation will never be reduced until the local residents find an alternative to charcoal (made from local trees) for cooking fuel. At the request of World Vision, I improved upon the design of the briquette presses and now we have begun production of them. We have started on a production run of 100 presses that will be finished sometime in November. World Vision is footing the bill for the briquette presses, so it is an opportunity to keep our workers doing something productive while our own account is near empty. Also, it will be the first time such a project has been promoted on a large scale and with such a good machine. I hope that the briquette machines become so popular that paper briquettes start to turn up at the market. 

There is more political turmoil than usual right now because a certain man was assassinated. Various demonstrations with burning barricades have been going on and people have been demanding the resignation of President Aristide.

I have been asked to include more pictures of people then I send attachments. Unfortunately, I dont have any new pictures right now, but I will send a picture of a woman with a fish on her head. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers.

Sincerely, 

Chris Rolling