Please Pray With Us

So, it has been a while. As most of you know, we are in Pineville, Kentucky right now. We have been here for three weeks. We have been busy with getting acclimated back to the U.S.

Kevin has his resume out with two churches. We are praying and seeking the Lord for the direction He wants us to go. We are excited to see what the Lord has in store for our family in ministry. Please pray with us.

Susan has applied to Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing. She has been to the school and toured the facility as well as met with the staff. We continue to pray for direction in this. She has also applied for a job at Jellico Community Hospital. We don't know if this is where the Lord would have her minister, so we pray. Susan has an appointment there on Friday morning. Please pray with us.

The children, Skyla, Kali, Jessi, and Josiah, have been busy with school. They should all be done with this school year at the end of May. We have been asked many times what we will be doing next school year with the children. We don't know at this point. We don't even know where we will be living. So, please pray with us.

Kevin and Josiah went to Lexington, Kentucky today to visit Kevin's sister and then fly to Denver, Colorado on Wednesday. Susan, the girls, and their dog, will be driving out to Wyoming on Saturday and Sunday. We will be visiting family, churches, and friends while we are in the Wyoming/Colorado area. Please pray with us.

It is our desire to fully follow the will of God. The Word says, "So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." Luke 11:9. And "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?" Luke 11:13. So, if we ask, seek, and knock, the Word says that He will give us the Holy Spirit. In John 14:26, it says that the Holy Spirit is our teacher. We are all in need of a teacher from the Most High. I thank God that He has sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and teach us on this path He has set before us. I pray we are good students.


Please pray with us.


We will be doing our best to visit all who have poured into our lives as we prepared to go to Haiti, as we served in Haiti, and as we are returning from Haiti. We desire to do this over the summer months set before us. Please contact us if you have a better time you would like for us to try and visit your area. We hope to begin making some calls and setting the calendar up soon.

Leaving Miami

A new day is dawning. Yesterday, we received our household goods from our container we shipped here from Haiti. We backed up a Penske truck to the back of the container and moved all of our things to the moving truck in one hour. Everything seemed to be in good condition. We praise the Lord for that.

Today we are headed north. We will overnight in Jacksonville, Forida. Wednesday, we will enjoy the day at the beach with the children and on Thursday, we will head on to Kentucky.

As much as I am trying to enjoy this adventure, I am tired of living out of a suitcase. But, I wouldn't trade it for anything. If this is what the Lord has for us, then I am going to do my best to enjoy it. We have been blessed to stay with friends while in Miami and although they have continued to extend their home to us, I am sure they will be glad when the six of us are not sleeping in their living room.

Thanks Robert, Nancy, Courtney, and Cory!

Anyway, keep us in your prayers as we travel, pray, and discern the Lord's direction for our family.

Many blessings to each of you.

In Miami, Florida

So, we are now in Miami, Florida. Let me try to recap the last few weeks...

We decided about eight weeks ago to return to the United States (see last post if you haven't already.) We looked into shipping our household items back to the US. We made a few phone calls and sent a few emails. Then we called our broker in Port-au-Prince, Haiti to check on our paperwork. This was on March 18th at about 1:30 p.m. To our surprise, she said our container to pack our items in would be in TiTanyen on Saturday morning, March 19th. Now at this point, all we had packed were books. Granted there were 20 boxes of books, but none the less, that was all that was packed.

We began to pack. Mme Lesrome was at our house and she began to empty things in the kitchen and wash them. We packed till late that evening and then began again the next morning. Our container did not arrive till around 3 p.m. (or maybe it was a bit earlier), but we needed the extra time. Once it was situated, we began to pack the container.

Now, we had a friend visiting us from France. He, Romain, had been with us in Haiti for about a week. He is the packing king. We took boxes to him and he strategically placed each item. We got our whole household stuffed into a 20 foot container. Praise the Lord! Thanks Romain. The shipping company picked up the container Tuesday morning. One more small feat accomplished.

So, when would our stuff leave Haiti? We were thinking several weeks. Why? Well, we were thinking they would need to wait for enough stuff/containers, then they would ship them all. Nope. It was scheduled to leave the next Saturday or the following Tuesday. That put it leaving Haiti on March 26th or 28th. After that, three days of ocean travel until it arrives in Miami, FL. Wow, we're not waiting time here.

Thoughts that ran through our heads: Are we ready for the next step in ministry? Are we ready to leave Haiti? Are we ready for the newness of different ministry opportunities? Are we ready to leave the friends that we have come to love dearly and venture out to make new ones and see old ones? Sometimes the answers were yes, sometimes they we no, and still other times they were maybe. But, regardless of our emotions at the time, we knew we were/are still in the will of God. That peace that is upon us is definitely from the Lord. So we hang on to that.

With our belongings in route to Miami, we found out we need to be there to receive our stuff and work it through customs on the US side. So, we bought tickets. We flew to Fort Lauderdale, FL on April 1st. One husband, one wife, four children, one dog, eight checked pieces of luggage, and six carry on pieces of luggage - and we are off. Mr. David driving this motley crew to the airport. Everything went wonderfully. We couldn't have asked for a smoother transition.

The Global Outreach Haiti team was wonderful during this transition time. They encouraged us, prayed for us, prayed with us, and assisted whenever needed.We thank you for your support and friendships - you are all a blessing to us.

We are currently staying with friends in Miami. We should have our household items on Monday. It should all be loaded in a moving truck and ready for the next destination. We don't know the final destination on this side of Heaven, but we are headed to the Pineville, Kentucky area, for now.

We are planning to make a tour around the U.S. to thank everyone on our walk in ministering in Haiti. We would like to encourage all in their walk and encourage the support of Global missions. We will keep you posted as to the area we will be and what the Lord is doing in our lives. We look forward to seeing you all soon.

Please keep praying for our family and for the ministry the Lord has for us to join Him in. We are excited.

Leaving Haiti

This is a letter that we just mailed out to all we have a correct address for. Please feel free to pass it along.

To all of our family and friends,

Haiti has been a wonderful experience for us. We have learned so much in the last 20 months. We have made some wonderful friends. We have learned what can be done and what can not be done in Haiti (or a least scratched the surface of that one). We have continued to work on learning the language Creole. We have enjoyed Haiti and the ministry in whom the Lord has had us partake while we were here.

There have also been tough times. We have learned that there are some to whom you can minister without greater expectations and some that will always expect more. We have made mistakes along the way, but we pray we have learned from those mistakes. We have experienced things that we never would have experienced in our lives, had we not come to Haiti. We have learned ways to minister, and we have watched God open some doors, as well as close other doors.

God has been and will continue to be faithful through it all. We have watched God provide in ways that we never thought possible. We have watched God use each of you to minister to us in our time of need. We have seen people come to the Lord. We have seen people grow in the Lord, and we have seen people wait on the Lord. We are excited about what the Lord is doing in Haiti and in our lives.

We have been praying and seeking the Lord for the direction He would have us go in ministry. We have and are watching to see where God is opening doors for ministry. This is what we have observed.

• God moved us to Haiti. He opened the door for us to work in Arcahaie and we have continued to work with the children's program and Thursday afternoon Bible Study. Both of these experiences have been good.

• God moved us to Haiti. We have been learning the ministries here with Global Outreach Haiti in TiTanyen. We have learned more than we could imagine or repay. It has been a tremendous blessing. From well-drilling/repair, clinic, construction, bookkeeping, managing teams and projects, general maintenance (like generator operations and water collection), receiving and distributing supplies, building relationships, and ministering with the local schools and churches; all of these ministries are a blessing here in Haiti and we have enjoyed being a part of them.

• God moved us to Haiti and now we believe He wants us to return to the States. We would like to further our education and ministries. We don't know if we will ever live full-time in Haiti again, but if it is His will, we would love to return often to minister on a short- term basis. We believe that Kevin is being led in the pastoral direction. Susan is feeling led to return to school to receive training in becoming a Nurse Practitioner in the area of Family Nursing and Midwifery. We believe that both of these moves would enhance the ministry the Lord has for our family here in Haiti and around the world.

The next step.

We were planning on returning to the States at the end of April 2011 for our annual trip back on furlough. We desire to stay that same course, but instead of returning to Haiti we would stay Stateside. We would like to ship our household goods back to the United States. We will wait on the Lord for direction on a place to pastor and Susan would apply and enroll in school for Fall 2011.

We need your help.

1. As always, we need your prayers. 
2. We need financial donations that would help us transition back to the States. This would include shipping costs, airline costs, transportation costs for the first month back, and other unforeseen expenses that arise while moving a family from one country to the next. 
3. We are asking that you continue to send in your monthly financial donations, at least through the end of June. This will prevent us from being stranded in Haiti. If you desire to continue after that-we are planning future trips back to Haiti as the Lord allows.

We love you and thank you for your support. Please stay in touch. We will continue our blog for a bit and we would like to continue to update each of you through quarterly or semi-annual newsletters from our family. If you desire to be removed from our mailing list, please contact us.

In Christ we serve, 

Kevin, Susan, Skyla, Kali, Jessica, and Josiah Bruns

Pics of Jensky

Jensky - our little, burned, malnourished baby. He is doing great and look at his little fat belly. I am praising the Lord for his healing. Pictured below: Jensky and his momma.

Thanks to Joshua Brumley for his great photography!