Haiti Mission Trip, Day 3

Monday morning started Vacation Bible School at the church in Port au Prince!

Our lesson on Monday was focused on FAITH. I had trouble planning a lesson and activities for such a large group of kids and the fact that few of them get to go to school. In Haiti, if the family can't afford the child's education, they don't get an education. :( It was easy to tell which ones did go to school....the could speak a bit of English and they seemed to go with the flow of the morning better than those who didn't go to school.

I had the 6-11 year old age group, which turned out to be the largest group each day! On Monday, we had around 150 kids! I had around 55-60 in my group that day.

The ones who did know English loved to practice it! There were a couple of boys who each day would say "Good morning Katie! How are you?" in their cute little accents. :)

Jared planned the recreation each day for the kids. He taught them Rock, Paper, Scissors on Monday. :)

The older girls always enjoyed jumping rope.

Music was their FAVORITE part!

This is Caleb. He was my interpreter for Tue-Fri. He was 13 yrs old and going to 8th grade. He was SO smart and sweet! 


He also really kept the kids in line during class. One thing I was impressed with was the children's ability to memorize the Bible Verses. Apparently they do a lot of repetition in the schools because Caleb had them repeat probably 10 times, then most of them could recite it back!

I wanted to bring him back home with us. :)

The 0-5 yr olds during recreation.

The church there is one big room, so it was a bit difficult to coordinate Bible study time, music, recreation, snack, and craft, but we learned a lot on Monday! The rest of the week it went a little more smoothly.

Teaching on Monday:

We were all worn out by noon! Pastor Accilien's wife prepared another great lunch for us, then we went back to the guest house to rest and prep for Tuesday!

One good thing was we went to bed early each night. I don't think we stayed up past 9:30 any of the nights. One night we went to bed at 8:15! ;)