Church time in Haiti

Dr. Bernard taking his place up front.

One of my favorite pictures: One of my best friends, Ange, sitting next to one of her daughters with her head bowed in prayer before the cross. She is such a strong woman of prayer and faith that I think this captures her so well. BTW- No I was not taking pictures during prayer time. I didn't feel comfortable taking pictures during church but my kids had no problem with it so lets just say I didn't stop them and I'm grateful to have these memories.

Our team had just been introduced and it was time to SING!

Left to right: I'm in the red dress, my friend Debbie next to me, Bryn, Karla, and Julie with the microphone fearlessly leading us in worship.

It is so hard to believe that it has been 2 weeks now since this day. It seems as if it just happened! Let me tell you a little parable about a wise man. This wise man's name is Dr. Bernard (sound familiar?). He was bringing to church with him many guest this Sunday, including 12 women and many children (can you imagine getting us there on time?). As he arrived at the church and gathered together his American guests he decided now was the time to inform them that we would be expected to be involved in some way during the service. We could introduce ourselves to everyone, have one person from our team go forward and sing a song, or go forward as a team and sing to the church. The wise man just gave a split second for us to make a decision and as a team we decided to subject the unknowing victims inside to our singing. Now we had to quickly pick a song to sing with no time for practising. The day before we had all just met in the Tap Tap and I suggested we sing worship songs. We sang one song together and then it just kind of dropped as we all soaked in the adventure. I totally can not remember what song it was though, can anyone help me out? Was it Our God is An Awsome God? Since that was the only song we knew all our team members knew we decided it would be the song we would sing. With our brave song leader Julie leading us all we struggled through a couple verses and then ended the misery of the congregation. It was actually kind of fun! We had hoped it would be a song others would be familiar with and sing along in Creole or French but I don't think that happened. This wise man knew if he told us before when we had time to think about it we would chicken out.

The service: It was the longest service I've ever attended clocking in at 3 hours which I had expected since I had been told about it from someone who knew. It was a beautiful service with lots of beautiful singing, lots of prayer, a message, communion, and and more singing. They were kind enough to even give a short overview of what the message was about in English. If I remember right it was about 3 ways to forgive. There were other American visitors there as well. They went before our singing and just had one person stand up and say all their names real quick and then sit down. Most of us were secretly kicking ourselves thinking "why didn't we choose that?". The communion was just like we have here and was beautiful. What was amusing about it though was that they use real wine for communion. This took at least one of our friends who does not drink any alcohol by surprise. Later another friend told me about her brother who came to church with them in Haiti and had never touched a drop of alcohol until he downed his communion much to his surprise. ;) Welcome to Haiti, where you have to be prepared for anything---even in church! It was a really great experience.