Journal Entry : Day 3
I slept much better last night. In fact I woke up to the breakfast bell at around 7:30. On a side note I must mention I did not bring a watch or any other time-telling device on this trip, hence the "about" and the "around" estimations. Actually I decided not to bring any electronic devices at all, mainly to avoid any distractions from what I was there for. Waking up so late made me feel a little bad since I wasn't dressed for the day but I knew I'd have time afterwards. Breakfast was good and the juice was good, it tasted like some concoction of pineapple, mango, and papaya juices.
Every morning after breakfast someone from the team leads the group in a short devotion and Pastor Milot comes by to share a short sermon. After that we loaded up in the "tap taps" where half the team would go do construction at Milot's church while the other half to Alexis' church to do VBS with the kids. The construction team consisted of Mike, Jerry, Lance, Jason, Stanley, and Ernie. They took with them Emmanuel and Williamson, they would be their translator and bodyguard for the week. The VBS team was Alison, Monique, Jennie, Bill, and myself. Our translator was Clifford along with Pucci as our bodyguard.
When we arrived at the church there was about 30 kids sitting on the benches anticipating our arrival. We unloaded our craft materials, water, snacks, and recreational stuff. Clifford helped us lead the kids in a series of songs. Most of them they knew already but it was fun hearing the excitement in their voices. Every now and then I would pick up the tune to a song I knew and just sing along in English with them. The title of this blog is in reference to a silly song they sang that I'm not even sure what it meant but they seemed to get excited about singing it. I think we taught them the song "deep and wide" in English in which they enjoyed quite a bit. As we were singing several kids began trickling in from the village and before we knew it we went from about 30 kids to about 75. So after singing songs for about 20 minutes or so we then started doing our craft with them. We did a craft to help learn their names and so they could learn ours. Basically we had these 5"X7" sheets of craft foam in which we had them write their names on. Attached to the foam was a string so they could wear it around their neck. Then we passed out a handful of sticker backed foam shapes and letters they could decorate their name tags. I think the kids got a kick out of it especially reading our names and such.
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| VBS going on at Pastor Alexis church |
After arts and crafts time, Pastor Bill told the kids the story of David and Goliath. He picked a few of them out to act out the story as it was told. Clifford did an a great job interpreting and as the week progressed we really appreciated his enthusiasm with the kids. When Pastor Bill finished telling the story of David and Goliath he sang the old kid's bible song and the kids thought it was totally awesome. It wouldn't be the last time he sand it either as it was requested many more times during the week. Then we passed out some snack crackers to the kids which became quite a difficult task. It became quite a challenge figuring out which kid got a snack and which didn't. Many would take their snack and put it in their pocket and ask for another. As much as we would liked to have given them all numerous amounts of snacks, we only had a limited supply to give out. It was sad knowing how hungry some of these kids may have been. But at the same time it was a little frustrating at their dishonesty. We also passed out bags of water to each kid and let them enjoy those for a the next several minutes.
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| Bagged water....who thought of that? |
As they enjoyed their snack we took out some bubbles and started blowing them for the kids. I started letting some kids blow the bubbles after each time I dipped the wand. Before I knew it there were about 10-12 kids surrounding me wanting to blow the bubbles. With these little guys there is no such thing as personal bubble. It didn't really bother me and their enthusiasm was quite contagious. Seeing their desire for attention really made me think of how much their desire to feel love and worth. In which I have no doubt Jesus can provide for them those two very things. We went out to this open field to set up for some recreation and took with us a couple of soccer balls and cones for goals. As we were out there playing and watching the kids play some soccer I had a little kid maybe two or so walk up to me. I grabbed onto my leg and just stood there. I put my hand down to see if he wanted to be held and he just put his hand in mine. I picked him up and held him in my left arm, he didn't say anything, he just lay his head on my shoulder just chilling. It was the first time I held a little kid in quite some time. On a side not I will say that some of the real little Haitian kids like his size are absolutely the most adorable. kids you will ever see. Not too long after it was time to go (12:00), I sat him down and waved goodbye.
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| Kids playing soccer |
We stopped back at the house to drop off our supplies and then we headed right back out to Pastor Milot's church to help the other team with some construction. When we arrived half of the construction team was working on repairing some stairs and the other half was repairing some school house benches. I decided to jump on board with the benches as more hands looked like they were needed there. The work was slow and a little tedious since we were quite limited with our resources. All we had to work with was a hand saw, one and a half hammers, a battery operated drill, and a couple of pliers and wrenches. I thoroughly enjoyed getting my hands dirty doing some work with the guys. It was a highlight of the day working mostly with Bill, Stanley, Lance, and Jerry. On another side not I must tell you about Jerry. He is 77 years old and been doing mission work for several years. He always has an intriguing story to tell; definitely one of the types of people you could spend a day with just to hear them talk. He was an inspiration to me all week, as all of the team members were, but he definitely blew my socks off in so many ways. We worked until close to 3:00 and headed back to the house.
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| Stanley and Lance working hard on a bench. |
Dinner was really good and the debrief time afterwards was quite enjoyable as well. Alison and I kicked the soccer ball around in the courtyard just killing time for a little while. Sometime close to 6:30 our core team sat around on the front porch with Doug hearing about his testimony. We continued to discuss several different thoughts and ideas as the evening grew late. It was a pleasureful time for sure to learn more on some of these individuals' hearts. We then went inside and went over the VBS agenda for tomorrow and figured out a slightly different plan for tomorrow. Just after 9:00 we decided to call it quits and hit the hay.
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| Debrief time, a few people aren't in this picture. From left to right : Jason, Alison, Lance, Doug, Stanley, Bill, Jerry, and Me |
Day 4 - tomorrow...
Freaking amazing.
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