The Holy Spirit as our guide by Jo & Coryn

Two weeks ago we heard about a family who just had triplet babies and were at the hospital nearby. Our friend Amanda asked if our family wanted to go see them. Mom, Coryn, Mallory, and Gloria walked with Amanda to the hospital. Jo stayed back with Daniel, and Dad was out in town with our friend Reynold. 

When we talked with the nurse, she said one of their needs was baby formula, so we were walking down to get some when we met up with Dad. He drove us the rest of the way to the pharmacy. The babies had been born at home, and they had thought that they would be twins. We bought two cans of baby formula, and drove back to the hospital. After giving the parents the formula, we prayed with them, and the father wrote down their address and phone number so that we could visit them.

 He said they lived about 30 minutes from L’asile. The father’s name was Cereste, the mother’s name was Michelline, and the babies were Rosemiline, Rosemilaine, and Roselaire. Two girls and one boy.

We visited a few other people at the hospital that day and just as we leaving the hospital, the family with the triplets was departing back to their house on two motorcycles! With newborn babies!!  They put two babies in a kivet, which is a plastic tub, covered with lots of blankets, with the dad, on one motorcycle. Then the mother held the other one in her arms on another motorcycle. As they left, we asked angels to make safe the way for them.

 Last week, Gloria kept asking when we would visit the triplets at their home. We asked our friend Amanda, who had brought us to the hospital, what she thought about visiting them soon. She said that she had never heard of the village they said they were from, so we would have to ask our Haitian friends to help us find them. 

To make a long story short, on Wednesday, we all loaded up into the Land Cruiser with Amanda and Marvins, a seven-year-old boy who wanted to come along. 
All we had to guide us was a hand-drawn map given to us by our friend Tatch, showing us various places we would pass if we were going the right way. Only that, and the Holy Spirit. The map couldn’t give us any street names, because there are no streets around the area of Roche-Platte, where the family lives. So we said a prayer to the Holy Spirit to guide us, and set off on an adventure. 

We drove past our friend Reynold’s house, then crossed a river, where we found Reynold and his two children filling up water containers. After driving for another twenty minutes, none of us had any idea where we were. We passed a chapel, and decided to ask for directions.

No one knew the family with the triplets, but they directed us in the direction of Roche-Platte. Every so often, probably every 10 to 15 minutes, we would stop and ask for directions along the way. 

Every time, only one or two people would know where Roche-Platte was, or who the Gaspard family were. After almost an hour we saw Cereste standing on the side of the road, waiting for us. He got into the car and directed us to a little cutoff in the cacti fence bordering the sides of the road.

 From there we walked, on skinny dirt paths on the high sides of mountains, nearly tumbling into the river below. It was a beautiful view! There were many animals drinking from and grazing alongside the river. The water was clear.

 After walking on for 10 minutes, we came to a little clearing, where there was a path through the cacti bordering people’s land. We were walking into a small neighborhood, made up of mostly fields. When we got to their house, it was a little stone and mud hut, with the roof made out of dried palm branches. Their whole living space indoors was only two bedrooms, one for the grandfather of the triplets, who lived with them and had built the house, and one room for the parents, triplets, and a little boy. (Another child that the parents of the triplets had.) The triplets Rosemiline and Rosemilaine were their first girls. They had two older boys besides the triplets, including the one who lived with them. The other one lived with his aunt, Cereste’s sister. The triplets were only a tiny bit bigger than they were when we had seen them the first time, when they were just a few days old! But they were now old enough that we could hold them! 😊

We had brought with us a big can of formula, and they had already finished the two small ones! We stayed for about an hour and a half, talking and taking pictures of the babies while we held them. The babies’ fingers were soo tiny! 

We got to hold Rosemiline and Rosemilaine. The aunt of the triplets came by, too. Inside their house, they had a rooster tied by its foot to a perch. It was really loud! It crowed a couple times while we were in their house, mostly because Daniel lifted up the tablecloth to take a peek at it. We prayed with them again, for strength, and health. We fetched Marvins from outside, where he was trying to catch a baby chick, and then we left. It was a bit easier on the way back, but still quite an adventure! How amazing that God led us to this family!