Ten years ago, Tom and I had just met the year before. We began spending significant time together late in the year 2013. By January 2014, we had two trips planned to Haiti together in about as many months. We were going to Tom's friend Pastor Pierre's mission, La Croix New Testament Mission on the northern peninsula of the country. On the second trip we decided to meet up with a Haitian friend of mine that I'd met a few years earlier and who had stayed in touch with me through Facebook messenger while I worked in Thomazeau. I had been too involved in that work to even entertain making the trip to Samuel's village. Now that I had Tom as an adventurous partner in travel, we decided to find our way to Petit Goave, which is out on the western side of the lower peninsula. We connected with another friend in Port au Prince and met Samuel in Petit Goave. Samuel was asking us to visit because his village needed a doctor (Tom is a doctor). This was further supported by Samuel himself having a very bad spring cold at the moment. I could tell he felt terrible but he was meeting with us anyway. We all piled into a low riding car, four or five of us, and began the hour long drive - which was probably no more than 15 - 20 miles (look up mileage). We went a few miles out of the city of Petit Goave on Route 2 (one of two major highways in the country) and then turned right onto a road that quickly angled up. Like a 45 degree angle. The mountain itself was lush and green and peppered with small enclaves of communities. A convenience store here and there, schools and churches too. We drove past all that and kept going up. Every now and then there would be a break in the trees and you could see out across the hills and chart your progress up. It became literally breathtaking. Finally we pulled off the ever narrowing road (describe the road) into a grassy area where we parked the car. The mountain kept going and the road turned into a steep rocky pathway on which we began to walk. About an hour later (time?) we are on the last couple of turns that are even steeper. A couple teenagers appear out of huts and run past us, barefoot and smiling, to beat us to our destination. I'm going slowly because I'm taking pictures every step of the way. Finally we level out and there's a building before us. Samuel tells us that's his school. As we draw closer, breathless from the hike, we realize the roof of the school is basically in the floor of the school. Samuel was conducting classes in a quarter of the building where they had a little shelter from the sun and wind but probably not from the rain. I think Tom's first words were, "they don't need a doctor, they need an engineer!" and indeed that was the case. If you know anything about Tom Tigar, you know he was thrilled. 

The only latrine next to the school was also damaged to the point of inoperability. It had collapsed into the ground and was leaning. "Leaning latrine of Piton". So before anything else, we raised money to replace that latrine and ended up building two. Then we recruited a team of men from Tennessee to travel down and rebuild that school roof. It was so much fun and turned out to be a beautiful roof which stands to this day. Once the roof was repaired, Tom and I began traveling to Haiti to work with the community of Piton every quarter. 

Then we repaired the wooden doors to the school and the little school kitchen. A doctoral student of nursing worked with us for her capstone project and also raised money to improve their water collection system and to purchase household filters for surrounding families. This led to several more repairs and improvements to the water collection system. We replaced the PVC around the roof(s) of school buildings that feed into the two cisterns on school grounds. This system provides water for the entire community. In 2017 (**check date*** Dr. Tigar purchased a military grade solar panel/generator/pumping system that provides power to pump the water to the cisterns and also provided electricity to the school building. This was the first time they had ever had lights up on the mountain other than flashlights and cell phones or fire. 

The first major program we started was the lunch program in 2015, which continues to this day. It's still our most important program because the benefits are so apparent. It's beneficial in so many ways. The most important, obviously, is the health of the students. When we first began becoming acquainted with the students, they were small, their hair was a reddish color (rather than the typical black) which indicated malnutrition, and they were lethargic, with dull eyes and countenances. This is a generalization, of course. Once the lunch program was established