On Preaching and Pork

Barry has been encouraged with some of the progress that seems to be showing with some of the regular Bible-study groups. Interestingly, it seems as though the ones with sincere people who listen intently and ask lots of questions are groups of young people. It's been over 13 months since we arrived in Haiti, and the list continues to grow with churches desiring to have him come preach and teach. Seeing fruit from the efforts helps to give courage to continue doing the Lord's work, despite what obstacles may come along the way. Abram also loves going along to Bible studies with his daddy, and eagerly hands out tracts if he gets a chance to go street preaching.

In other news, the time finally came to butcher the hog that Barry's been feeding for several months. With much help from Brother John Lengacher and his family, as well as Katie and her sister who were all here, we are very thankful to have a good supply of homegrown pork in our freezer. Since I'm not very experienced with rendering lard, we offered the extra fat trimmings to the nearby neighbors, knowing they're accustomed to doing a lot of things the old-fashioned way. Well, it wasn't just the fat they wanted. They took the skin, the head, the intestines, the kidneys, and would have taken the feet if a random dog hadn't snuck away with it.

 The whole village was excited about the donation. They were all having a really good time, laughing and chatting as they prepared their feast. The big, heavy skin was hauled out of our backyard by three women, then scalded and the hair scraped off. The whole thing was then chopped into smaller pieces to be boiled or fried, depending what each household had on hand.  I boiled the bones and made broth, and we had pulled pork for supper. Piker was then glad to take the bones home to his mom for her to make more broth. When they were done with that, they would break open the bones and consume the marrow as well. I'm not sure if they all thought we were wasteful for handing out all those "extras," but I do know they were a little bit surprised that Americans would do their own butchering in the first place.   It was a good day building stronger relationships with the neighbors and learning a little more about the frugal ways they know how to do things.

Using dead banana leaves to make a quick fire to scald the pig skin

Showing off the skinned pig head.