I met two year old Molly Ueland in 1996 when I worked at
Cooperstown Bible Camp in North Dakota. I had the
honor of serving as the camp missionary that summer and the Ueland's family
farm was right across the river from the camp. This last summer, Sammy
attended that same Bible camp and was a camper in the same cabin as Molly's
little brother, Martin!
In school this year Molly's 3rd grade class read the book
Flat Stanley from Jeff Brown. One day we got an email from Molly asking if
she could send Flat Stanley to us in Haiti for a visit. I had bought the
book this summer at a garage sale too so Sammy and I were able to read it
here. We knew about the fictious story which was that boy named Stanley
Lambchop was a nice, average boy who lead a nice, ordinary life. Then one
day a bulletin board falls and him and suddenly Stanley is flat. Stanley
gets rolled up, mailed, and flown like a kite. When he wanted to go to
California to visit a friend, his parents decided that instead of purchasing
an airplane ticket for him they would send him in an envelope.
So, that's what Molly did too. She drew, colored, and cut out
a picture of Flat Stanley and mailed him to us. We enjoyed his short visit
in Haiti very much. The first day we took him to Sunday School with us and
took his photo with the class. That evening, he saw a crepe being made. I
think he favorite part though was walking to school on Monday where he got
his shoes shined at the same time as Sam. We also bought him a little fried
snack from a woman cooking on the street. He was the center of attention at
school as you can imagine. At lunch (as you can see by the photo) he made
friends with many nationalities of children (Haitian, American,
Canadian, Jamaican, Bahamian, Syrian, British, Dutch, Taiwanese,
Salvadoran). Eating always seemed to be on his mind. One photo shows him a
little bit scared while swinging with Sam. That night at home, he felt like
being alone a lot so I just took some photos of him around our house. He was
sad when he couldn't fit into the cage to play with the guniea pigs. Finally
after supper he went to sleep in Sam's bedroom. We developed the photos and
then sent him and the pictures back to Molly for her school project. We
decided to share the photos of his visit with you here. We thought you'd
enjoy seeing pictures of our home and life here.
Flat Stanley gets a shoe
shine
Flat Stanley watches
TV Flat
Stanley is too short for the monkey bars
Flat Stanley at the
Computer
Flat Stanley
Swings
Flat Stanley buys some fast food
Flat Stanley plays with guinea pigs
Flat
Stanley wants supper
Flat Stanley enjoys a hot dog
Flat Stanley goes to Sunday School
Flat Stanley goes to bed
Flat Stanley enjoys school lunch