We are very excited to announced that you have helped us sponsor 24 children in Chauffard, Haiti. This sponsorship guarantees education and food for these wonderful children which, in turn, guarantees a more hopeful future.

For only $1 a day you can make a significant difference!

Sponsor a child today.

We just wanted to announce that we have had our 11th child sponsored!

Scherline Estime now has much needed worm medicine, a meal a day, and primary education for hope for a better tomorrow!

We still have yet to have our official launch party at Black & Brew on Saturday the 21st. Tell your friends and invite them to this awesome night.

Thank you all for partnering with us on behalf of Scherline, her family, and the wonderful community of Chauffard, Haiti.

Kenny and Grant

And all of The CPI Guys and Gals

As you can see from this picture, choosing to work in the remote village of Chauffard presents some challenges.  This is a picture of our team having just worked for hours to repair the road which had been washed out by a flash flood.

The road conditions and elevation in this picture are consistent with the 20 miles of road that lead out to Chauffard.  So, one of our consistent challenges has been securing transportation to get work teams, supplies, building materials and food out to our friends in this remote farming village.

That is why we are very excited to announce that we have purchased a truck with the funds we raised from the Hope for Haiti 5K and with the generous support of our newest partner, Bartow Ford. Denny Mullis and the Bartow Ford team were very generous in making this a reality.

It is an F-350, 4×4, with re-enforced suspension, all-terrain tires and an 11 foot truck bed. We have been looking for months and this truck met all of our criteria.  We are outfitting the vehicle and preparing to ship it in a few weeks.

The  last hurdle we need to overcome to get the vehicle down to Haiti and put it to good use is raising the additional funds needed for shipping and customs.  We need to raise $5,000 to complete the process.

If you are willing to help us get the truck to Haiti…

1. Mail check payable to “CPI” to:

530 Bonnie Drive
Lakeland, FL
33803,..  OR

2. Donate securely online by clicking on the “Donate” tab above

The Many Uses of the CPI-Truck:

• Transporting food & farm supplies
• Transporting building materials
• Transporting work/mission teams
• A transporting business for our Haitian team members

Spring Break & Summer Trips

Hello, everyone! We are super excited to announce the awesome trips we have going this summer (and this spring break, meaning in a week!)

We have a team of 18 (11 from Lakeland and 7 from The Crossing Church) heading down March 13-18.

There will be 2 CPI-Lakeland trips this summer along with a CPI-Clermont trip.

Trip 1, CPI-First Presbyterian: July 3-10
Trip 2, CPI General: July 9-16
Trip 3, CPI-Clermont: July 16-23

We will be limiting the teams to 15.
The cost of the trips is $1,200.

We will be having a meeting on March 6th after the morning service in the youth hall for people interested in the FPC trip. FPC is a church partner with CPI and therefore we devote at least 1 trip each year to FPC attenders. We’ll know after the meeting on the 6th how many spots on Trip 1 will be available to non-FPC attenders.

Please let me know ASAP which trip you would be most interested in.

• Call: Kenny – 863-698-4352/ Grant: 561-247-2686
• E-mail: ellis.kenny@gmail.com/ grant.nieddu@gmail.com
• Connect form.

The projects for each trip will be determined by how much $$ we can raise between now and then and the assessment of greatest need as we come back from the Spring Break trip.

Ok, so tell your friends, family, and the pets you like most to get ready for an awesome transformational trip this summer.

Gratefully,

The CPI Haiti Team

Kenny Ellis
Grant R. Nieddu
And the AWESOME CPI Team Family

We just wanted to let you know that we now have a “Title Sponsor” for the Hope for Haiti 5K:

This comes by way of Caylyn and Lisa Gilbert being willing to do the “ask” and following up. Way to go!

We know everyone is busy out there putting up flyers, talking it up on Facebook, spreading the word and hopefully talking to event sponsors. We have heard the buzz and been encouraged by how many people know what we are up to already. Keep it up!

If you have not approached a potential event sponsor yet…now is the time. We are thrilled with the news about Mid-Florida, but for us to reach our goal we have to have an additional 40 sponsors coming in at the $250 level (or some equivalent at other levels). December will be here and gone before we know it – so let’s do the “ask” and see what God does.

Have you been to the 5K page on our site? Check it out: http://cpihaiti.org/hope-5k/

Also coming up in the next 10 days:
Donate Your Christmas Campaign
Heroes of Hope Web Tools

Kudos again to Lisa and Caylyn! Go team! Have a great Thanksgiving!

So, there is a classroom full of kids here in the USA that are excited about establishing school to school relationships  with a classroom full of kids in Haiti. Cheryl Pace (a teacher at Philip O’Brien Elementary) has started a school to school relationship with the children of Chauffard, Haiti.

On a recent trip in October, leader Kenny Ellis took a packet of letters from Cheryl’s students written to the students in Chauffar.  He  also had questions to ask the children to bring back answers to Cheryl’s students.  After the trip Kenny touched base with Cheryl and gave her the answers to the questions that her students asked of the students in Chauffard, Haiti. From there, Cheryl asked her class to write a report from what they had learned and sent us the email below telling us about a report that one of her students had turned in for the writing assignment:

Written by Alandria Gilkey:

A lot of you have suffered from something.  But everybody in the eastern hemisphere suffers 24/7.  Some people think about those people but most just laugh at them. Because some people don’t have what we have, sometimes it’s hard for them to understand all the tough times Haiti has been through.  Every day someone dies from sadness, starvation, and hunger.  My class has sent letters to most of the children of Haiti.  We had a lot of fun and everybody answered back.  Most families can’t go to school because they don’t have any lunch to send with their child.  Most people think, “How can I help Haiti?”, and, “How can I help save millions of lives?”  You don’t have to ask…..just do it!

I am with Alandria , “you don’t have to ask…. just do it!”

All-Hands-On-Deck Meeting Summary

First of all, thanks for making last night a priority. I know our schedules are crazy and there are plenty of other things clamoring for your attention, but you will never regret an ounce of energy, time or resources invested in serving others for the reputation of Christ.

So, way to go for making room in your lives for our friends in Chauffard who are largely unknown or overlooked by most of the world. I would love to see their faces if they could see a picture of us, here in the U.S. meeting and planning on their behalf. Good stuff!

Second, last night was the beginning of something great! We all made mutual commitments to give some of our best focus and energy towards making our vision a reality. Here is a summary of the commitments that we made last night:

Commitment – #
Event Sponsors - 35
Host Dessert Social - 4
Race-Day Volunteers - 13
Speaking Opportunity - 2
Enlist Runners/Walkers - 107
Donate Your Christmas - 65

Third, keep in mind that our team is larger than those who attended the meeting last night. I know of several other people who will make similar commitments in the next week or so as we communicate the vision and the opportunities.

Fourth, we will be finalizing the Donate Your Christmas process in the coming weeks and will keep you posted once it is ready to go.

Here are some suggestions as we move forward together:

1. Take a few minutes and get very specific as to how you are going to follow through on your commitments. Get your calendar out and set the days and times that you will make that call, send the email, stop by the business, have the conversation, hand out the flyer, put up the poster, etc. As someone once said, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.”

2. As a general rule, don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. I would suggest we look at the time leading up to Thanksgiving as our prime window of opportunity for securing the Hope for Haiti 5K event sponsor commitments. Remember that our event sponsors can commit now and pay in January if necessary, but we would like to secure the commitment now if possible. Don’t forget that Grant and I are more than excited to come with you to talk with a potential event sponsor.

3. With the holidays fast approaching, those of you who committed to hosting a Dessert-Social will need to act now and get your event scheduled. If you don’t think you can pull it off prior to the holidays, you can always shoot for January.

I think that is all for now…let the fun begin!

Kenny Ellis
CPI-Haiti, www.cpihaiti.org

“Men anpil, chay pa lou.”
Many hands make the load lighter

How compassionate are you?

Most of us subconsciously feel that we should be a bit more caring and sensitive, but at times it is hard to show concern or sympathy in certain life situation at best. However, we know that God is constantly showering His compassion on us.

The Lord is gracious and compassionate… and rich in love. ~Psalm 145:8

The dictionary defines compassion as “a deep awareness of and sympathy for another’s suffering”. Nevertheless, the meaning we will look at and seems to be closer to the context of demonstrating care and sensitivity in word and action, has to do with first being sensitive or rather ‘sense’ the feelings of others. This is done by picking up vibes from others by observing their behavior or body language. The things they say and the things they don’t. All these seemingly little things are picked up and used to develop a “sense” of the other person.

This leads us to being in tune with someone’s emotions/feelings and acting accordingly. In other words, we are taking the extra effort to say and do things which also take the other person’s views into consideration. All throughout the Bible we see God’s compassion woven through individual’s lives and if God is a God of great compassion than why aren’t we following in His footsteps.

Having and displaying a character of compassion is about being an extension of God here on earth towards others. Surely God’s love is infinite, and surely, He longs to use us as vessels that display his love through compassion.

God desires our involvement in others lives and we, as Christian believers, are the body of Christ in the world, working to do His will, which a part of that is showing compassion. For example, in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice a story of an upper-middle-class Englishwoman named Lizzy Bennet who is pursued by Mr. Darcy, a brooding and complex man of great wealth. Lizzy’s first impression of Mr. Darcy was that he was arrogant, introverted, and self-serving. So when he declares his love for her, she rejects him. Later, when she learns of his many secret acts of kindness (compassion) for others, Lizzy admits that she had been wrong about Mr. Darcy and agrees to marry him. We, as Christians, are far too often like Lizzy. We too often use our worldly eyes to focus on pettiness rather than seeing others with the eyes of God and showing compassion.

Compassion looks beyond our needs and seeks God’s heart, letting go of our own petty concerns and learning just to be vessels of true compassion-and that is what we seek to do here through CPI.

Kenny and Willie

What is trust?

The word “trust” means something slightly different to each of us.

Depending on the life experiences we have had and the beliefs we hold, trust can relate to a variety of qualities. Despite these variations, however, we know trust to be vitally important characteristic to have.

In the English language we have but one word for trust, which is “trust” and it leaves alot to be desired.

But, in the Hebrew language there are many versions to this one word trust.

In the Hebrew language there are several different meanings to trust and here are three of them:

1. Batah

2. Hasah

3. Aman

All three take on their own reality of trust, the one we will look at is Hasah.

In the New Testament the word for trust is to believe or have faith. It’s not just a religious term, it’s an action based upon believing in something to be true and trustworthy.

“In the Lord I put my (Hasah) trust.”  ~Psalm 11:1a

Try writing the word “trust” at the top of a piece of paper and then freely write down whatever words pop into your head associated with “trust.” Take a look at your list and highlight or circle the words that resonate the strongest, such as, truthfulness and honesty.

Trust is the belief and confidence in the integrity, reliability and fairness of a person; an essential human value that quantifies and defines our interdependance in relationships with others as well. Trust is a choice we make toward someone when we are inspired that they have either earned our confidence or are by some other means worthy of it.

Trust is difficult to acquire, and when fractured even harder to redeem, so perhaps the lessons of trust are not how to earn it, but what it takes to keep it. And perhaps the greatest value of trust is not the accomplishments we make with it, but rather what trust accomplishes in us on our quest to become people who are worthy of receiving it.

Do we in our actions and words show we have a character of trust?

Trust is something that is being cultivated between us and the people in Haiti, in the little village of Chauffard, and it is encouraging to see trust grow and to be apart of that as well!



The rock path

Everything in life is a choice—are you choosing the best?

There are many choices for every situation or issue that we face daily, and some days it seems everything goes well; people help us, the details of events/projects fall into place, outcomes and rewards are visible. However, there are days though, when everything seems to be up hill or full of under-currents.

Even so, we need to recognize that we do have choices to make whether our day is going according to our plan or we find that we are faced with unexpected happenings. It is vital that we learn to be truly in our unique flow regardless of what is taking place around us or even how far off basis our plans have become.

We have to continue to be ourselves and moving forward in a productive manner; no matter what the given situation and be flexible with our plans in order to still be effective and make choices that are suitable.

Recently a team of 23 of us went to Chauffard, Haiti to build and repair houses (among other things) that had been destroyed or damaged from the earthquakes. While there we ran into a few setbacks which did not allow the building team to accomplish the big project they went to do-rebuild 3 houses. All of the supplies that  we had shipped to Haiti before we were to arrive were stuck in customs and we were unable to “free” them (so to speak) without a certain receipt that was in the hands of a man in Miami, FL.

A few points to keep in mind that will aid us in such situations or issues in our daily living or when we are serving others are described as being:

• Consistent

• Contemplative

• Decisive

• Determined

• Focused

• Introspective

• Organized

• Persistent

There is strength in these characteristics as we make choices and when we fail to take ownership of our choice we generally berate ourselves over past deeds, perceived mistakes and experiences, and that stops the flow of creativity and forward movement in our lives.

It was great to see the team take the initiative and find other projects that they could put their hands to with the few supplies that we were able to get in Port-au-Prince. And even to the point of gathering rocks to create a more suitable path to walk on with all the mud we encountered from the rain while we were there.

If we would like to live in the ebb and flow of our lives, we have to learn to live in the moment and make choices that are the best for that particular situation, knowing that other influences will be going on all around us, but it doesn’t mean that they will dictate how, when, and if we respond.

Many people are afraid to take ownership of their choices because they feel that their choices are not credible, important, or in the end will be wrong. The opposite is true and our choices in life do count each and every moment of the day. Thanks team for making positive and proactive choices even when things didn’t go according to what was planned!

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for He is your life…

Deuteronomy 30:19-20a