Baby Babbles: Haiti Mission Trip: Day 6

We were ready for a long day on Thursday. The plans included wrapping up VBS at Mission Baptist Church in Port au Prince and making a 5 hour trek up the mountains to Pastor Accilien's village church past Maissade, Haiti. We planned to attend evening worship service, spend the night, and do VBS for the children there Friday morning. Notice I said 'plans'. ;)

We finished up VBS in the city with 250 children! You haven't taught VBS until you've experienced having 90 children + the language barrier. Phew....it was quite the morning! We focused on connecting with OTHERS this day and discussed the story of the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4).

It's my prayer that among all the chaos of the kids, music, recreation, snacks, etc. that they heard and understood the Bible lessons and will come to know Christ!

Heading out of the city, a tent city and port-a-potties:

Pastor Accilien stopped before we got out of the city and took us to a restaurant! It was air conditioned and had white table cloths. A very nice restaurant!

We all ordered chicken in creole sauce. It came with chicken, creole sauce, fried plantains, rice, veggies, and a bean sauce. It was SO good and the equivalent of about five US dollars!

Heading to the mountains, Pastor Accilien had a friend drive us up along with him driving his truck. It gave the guys a chance to ride inside a vehicle (they had to ride back to the city on Friday in the back of the truck). Before we got out of the city, that vehicle had a flat tire, but it was quickly repaired and we were on our way!

We took National Hwy 3 from Port au Prince towards Hinche. The road was actually a really nice paved road. It was VERY windy and mountainous for a decent stretch.

We stopped at a little village near the town of Mirebalais. The pastor spends a portion if his week at this new project he is coordinating, Anatoth. A Canadian organization started this project in Sept. 2011. Their goal is to move families out of the tent cities in Port au Prince and set up a village and teach them to be self sufficient. They hope to have 8 families (including 25-30 kids) by Sept. 2013, when they move on to another project. Right now there are 4 families.

Below is their church and school.

The center of the village.

Inside the church/school, under construction.

This is a neat little plant called the Moringa Tree. It provides many nutrients through the leaves and is a tough, fast growing plant. You can eat the leaves right off the plant, use them in cooking, or make a powder out of the dried leaves. They had all kinds of vegetables and fruits planted....carrots, potatoes, eggplant, green beans, bananas, coconuts, mangoes, and more!

View of the village from the church/school. The goats and chickens were to the right.

We continued on National Hwy 3 toward Hinche and came to Lake Peligre. It was gorgeous! Haiti generates a large portion of their electricity here. Too bad, we couldn't get a dam picture for all the trees. ;)

It was looking like rain, so we pulled to the side of the road to cover our bags in the back of the truck with a tarp and took a few pictures at this scenic area.

Our team! Caleb (my favorite kid there and one of our translators) pointed out that everyone loves VBS except me. :) I was smart and changed out of my shirt after VBS Thur. morning, so it wouldn't be quite as smelly for Friday's VBS. I don't know that it helped much though...we all stunk by the time we got back to the city Friday evening!

Entering Hinche! This was our last town on the 'good' road. We turned west onto Hwy 306 in Hinche and headed toward Maissade.

Hwy 306 sounds like it'd be a decent road, but it was all rocks, pot holes, puddles, and rivers. Yes, rivers without bridges.

This is our other vehicle crossing a deep puddle. It had rained a good bit there earlier in the day. Fortunately, it never actually rained on us.

We were slowly making our way to the village church. It was nearly 5:30 and we had at least an hour to go. We asked the Pastor what time evening service started and he said 6 or 7......or whenever we get there. ha!

We rounded a curve and faced this. The river had risen from the rain and it was flowing pretty swiftly. People were carrying their motorcycles across, but no trucks could make it through safely.

We were tired and frustrated that we weren't going to make it to the church that night, but we went with it. We headed back to Hinche and Pastor Accilien took us to his nephew's house. His nephew is also a pastor of a Baptist church there in Hinche.

Folks, you haven't seen hospitality until you see someone take in 6 strangers, scramble to get a generator going for electricity, draw up water from their cisterne for baths, go out to find food, allow their guests to eat first, send them to rest while they clean up the dinner dishes, and give up their beds and sleep on the floor. This family went above and beyond to accommodate us. They treated us like family. Like Brothers and Sisters in Christ. What a reminder that we should always treat our Brothers and Sisters like that, no matter if we've met them before or not!

Strangely enough, they had a dog on their roof. ha! All the dogs in Haiti looked like this...medium sized and light brown.