Saturday, July 14, 2012

Haiti Mission Trip: Day 7

Friday morning we were awake early to the sounds of goats being herded. Yes, goats were squealing and hollering at 5am. ha! We were on the road by 6am and heading towards Maissade. Fortunately, the river waters had dropped and we were able to cross the rivers!

Traffic along the road from Hinche to Maissade: I was surprised that all along the road were people traveling to and from. We never went far without seeing people, despite how remote the area seemed.


Crossing the river!


Coming up on another river. Many people traveled by motorcycle in this area and stopped to wash their motorcycles there. Also, many were bathing and washing their clothes in the river.

A church in Maissade.

Basketball court, with goats!

Crossed a few more rivers....


And we made it to the village church!

This is the pastor of the village church. Pastor Accilien planted this church some time ago and now preaches at the church every 2nd Sunday of the month.


Children arriving for VBS! We were the first group to visit their church, so some of the kids looked a little scared at first. I loved it up in the mountains and wish we could have done at least 2 days of VBS. It took several hours for the kids to get warmed up to us, then it was time for us to go. :(



Jared found a guy who knew a little English and was trying to learn some Creole.

Kids started peeking out from all over the place! We ended up with about 160 people, mostly children. I have no idea where they came from, since all we could see from the hill the church was on was a couple of houses and lots of vegetation.


We quickly realized we needed to rearrange the benches and crowd them in. It was filling up fast!



We taught the Salvation Lesson from Wednesday in the city church and really worked on the ABCs of salvation.

Heading to recreation!

A man travelling along the road:






 The kids really got excited and into recreation. That's what broke the ice for us, I think.


This little boy just came up and grabbed a hold of my legs from behind and didn't want to let go. He kept saying something and smiling big.




I took this sweet lady's picture (after gesturing with the camera and her agreeing), then showed her the image on the screen. She giggled, then started chatting away. When she stopped, I said "I'm sorry, no Creole." She  laughed and hugged me, then spoke for another minute. I have no idea exactly what she said, but I'd guess she was saying how happy she was to have us there. A sweet moment for sure!

We wrapped up VBS just before noon and loaded up to head back to the city. We all rode together in the truck, so there were the pastors up front, us 3 girls in the back seat, and the 4 guys in the back of the truck with all our stuff. Poor guys! 

We were sweaty, dirty, and exhausted. A cold shower never felt so good as it did when we got back to the guest house!

A truck full of coal, bananas, and brooms heading towards the city.

We got back to the guest house in the late afternoon and said our good byes to Caleb and Jean Eldon, our friends and translators for the week and Pastor Accilien planned to pick us up at 9:30 the next morning to take us to the airport. 

We got cleaned up and packed up for our trip home! 

I guess since we were finished with all our planned activities, Friday is when I really started missing Arabelle and Bo was so ready to get home!




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