One month

I can’t believe I have been living in Haiti for a month! School doesn’t start until October so it is still summer break here in Haiti. It has been good to watch and learn before being tossed into a busy schedule. A couple of the guys from the church have stating working with me on my Creole. They say I’m getting better. I can read and pronounce the words but it is still difficult for me to hear and understand when anyone is talking.

I am so thankful for the home that I am in. I am defiantly building the closest relationships with these ladies and kids. We teach each other English and Creole phrases as we cook, clean, and hang out during the day. My favorite times are playing games like hide and seek, London Bride falling down, and hand clapping games; I think because the language barrier disappears and we just laugh.

Every Saturday when the electricity comes on we iron our clothes for church in the next morning. Then on Sundays we leave for church around 7am. I join Carline in children’s church where we pray, sing, memorize verses and have a Bible lesson. There are probably 40-50 kids every Sunday. Then I attend the main service. Either I look over the shoulder of the person next to me or borrow Asmene’s song book to sing along. There is a full band (keyboard, bass, drums) and singers leading the worship. When Pastor Martin speaks I can usually figure out the passage we are in and read it for myself but afterwards he explains to me what he talked about. When church is over everyone shakes hands and says, “God bless you”. I usually get back home around noon to eat and prepare the next meal before youth group at 3.

The youth is college-aged people. I’ve enjoyed going and meeting more people my age. The youth group is in transition right now from one president to another. So we are splitting up into groups to plan different parts of the Sunday night service. Every 2^nd Sunday the youth leads. Agenor sits next to me and translates what is going on. The first Sunday that I went they asked me to speak so I talked about what the tattoo on my neck means. In Haitian culture if you are a Christian you don’t have tattoos so I wanted to share why I have some. The word on my neck is makrothumia. It means the spirit which never loses patience with, hope for, or belief in. I explained how in Acts 7 Stephen was being persecuted and stoned but he still shared the story of God. In his last words he doesn’t hate the people but prays God has mercy on them. I shared that I always want to have this spirit of patience hope and belief.

If we aren't Facebook friends I have made my photo album public so you can see more pictures!

Vision Week

This week we took a week “off.” We transformed the basement of CCH (where we usually have chairs set up to listen to Brad on Wednesday nights) into a place students could get out of their ordinary routines and encounter God. The building was open so that students could come anytime that worked with their schedule.

We hung sheets to separate the space into different stations. Each station had a different theme. Some were review about what we have been studying in David, while others were new, we had a station where students could give $1.20 and package 6 meals to be sent to Africa through Something To Eat.

This year there were several new things we added to vision week. Every night at midnight we had worship, some students fasted for one, two, or three days, and for the first 36 hours students were praying continually in the prayer room upstairs.

Thursday night we had our wrap-up. It was laid back with worship and some sharing of what God had revealed to us.

One of the coolest things for me was the Intro. It was based around John 13:1-17 when Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. At this station there were washable markers where you could sit down and write your sins on your foot and then step into a tub of water and the marker would disappear from your foot as a picture of Jesus making you clean. If you don’t know, I have a tattoo of a cross on my foot, so when I was writing sins on my foot I was writing them on the cross, and when the marker was washing off my foot it was an awesome picture of because Christ died on the cross is the reason my sins are being cleansed.