Dear friends,

Yesterday was one of those days you would like to forget. We had a mass food distribution at our mission and to say it was not a successful would be putting it mildly.

We had given out tickets and over 300 families were to show up to get their food. What we didn't expect were over 800 to show up. Our guards only allowed the people with tickets to come into our mission.

This left us with over 500 people crowded at our gate. At some point in the morning it became very unruly. They began to chant "we want our food, we want our food". Well this ticked me off a bit because I didn't feel it was their food and had no right to chant this.

The morning went on and things only got worse. The crowd was so hostile and so unruly that we could not let the people leave, who we had given food to. We had to hoist them down by rope in the rear of the mission with their food, so they could sneak home.

Near noon rocks started to fly over the wall towards us. This upset some off our staff and with my blessing...we began to toss them back. We didn't intend to hurt anyone but some faces did get in the way and several injuries were reported in the crowd outside the wall.

Very troublesome were a group of ladies with babies chanting and throwing rocks. One of my staff thought it "cute" to begin to throw jars of baby food at them, since they wanted their food so badly. The women didn't like this and became even more upset.

The police finally showed up, tear gas was used and the crowd was dispersed. They even allowed me to fire the tear gas, kind of to show the people who was the boss.

We clearly won the day, and it was kind of a good feeling seeing the people limp home, hurt and bruised. We showed them they could not mess with us.

We only had about 40 injuries and only 6 of these were children. We don't believe any of the injuries will cause a loss of life.

After the melee we fired up the grill and had a really nice cookout. We then drove through the village eating our food chanting 'we're number one, we're number one!"

This proved to be a mistake as they bum rushed our caravan again, mostly by women and old people chanting "down with Tom, down with Tom!"

This time the swat team was called in. They began to fire their weapons and order was restored. The mayor then showed up and whipped out a piece of paper and began to read, he said "I declare this day APRIL FIRST to be April fool's day, a day to fool all Americans."



Okay, did I get you, tell the truth, at what point in the story did you realize this was a "fun email?". I apologize if I "got you" but this is a time honored tradition for me. The response I always get is biggest of the year and it is fun to see who I get and who I don't.

It began with my first one about 7 years ago, me telling how I met a 16 year old Dominican girl and got married. That was followed by Cuba invading Haiti with tanks.

Last year if you remember it was the donkey who came into our church, died and we had to chop it up with machete to carry out.

There are people, okay 2, that do not like my doing this and I respectfully apologize. We can disagree what a joke is. Know this, ONLY ON THIS DAY, APRIL FIRST WILL I EVER FOOL YOU OR SAY SOMETHING THAT IS NOT 100% TRUE. You never ever have to worry or think about this the other 364 days. Simply a joke.

So, you must email me and tell me:

A- I was ready for it, didn't fall for it

B- You had me until.............

C- I fell hook line and sinker you no good...........................

I will tell you, the one thing this annual email does is bring out the mean side in some of you. I have been called some pretty nasty names by those of you who claim to be my friend. I made this year a very mild, soft one, since so many hundred of you are new.

So, although I am told the calendar does not say April fool's day, I still celebrate. It does not say "Tom's birthday" on May 23rd but we still celebrate that. No I don't celebrate fools. I celebrate the sense of humor that God gave us and the fun we can have as Christians. Enjoy your day, only 12 more days until my vacation, and I am counting the hours, tominhaiti