Today was our first full day in Haiti. We were fortunate to have several options for church this morning. Some of us went to the Haitian speaking service and remarked how amazing it was to see all the native Haitian people worship in their language. Brent, Jack and I went to the service held at the local private school. This service was in English, but was attend by both Haitian and non-Haitian too. Many of the attendees where from all over the world including their new pastor from Australia. Some of them were on short missions like ours, others were there on a longer term basis. The service was packed and everyone was VERY welcoming. We were also fortunate to witness a baby dedication who's parents were Haitian and the God parents were white (from New York).
After church were took a long ride in the back of the World Relief truck up to the home of Carla who has been in Haiti for 27 years and has been a major activist of all things Haiti.
After meeting with her and many of the Haitians she works with, we were treated to an authentic language lesson and the importance of not only the words, but also their meaning and culture implication (i.e. "Bon Jou" is not just simply "hello" to them). Pictured below is Yaya, who was our teacher for the evening.
Carla also talked much about their self-sustaining resource efforts like the brickets pictured below. These are made from old cardboard and paper soaked in water, cased in tube, dried and sliced in usable pieces to replace coal.
It is now 9:30 at night and we are all tired from a long day, but oddly, we are looking forward to getting up in about 6 hours to go to visit and work at a World Relief agricultural site in Leogane where we will be working in planting mangoes. God bless these people.
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