Monday, November 11, 2019

Central Church - Sabbath Day, End of Week Reflections

Good Monday everyone.  We haven't blogged in a couple days...we have been really busy.

Thursday morning started with Church on the Rock for a 6am service.  It was powerful.  Church on the Rock is an large open air structure when Haitians come seven days a week to worship for their needs that day.  With so much going on in Haiti, faith is essential to daily survival,  The worship was phenomenal and we were recognized by the Pastor. We spent our morning serving the Tap Tap and cleaning it up and organizing supplies.

We went to Papillon for shopping, lunch, and a tour.  Papillon is an organization supported by Healing Haiti that has created up to 400 jobs for Haitians that use their creative skills to make jewelry, pottery, fabric items, and metal work that is sold locally and in the states.  The tour was informative and appreciated.

Saturday was a long day with over 3 hours on the tap tap traveling to and from the "Mountain". In our pioneer spirit, we visited two communities that Healing Haiti is working to establish new relationships with.  The first was Kenskoff. There we played with a group of children, provided them with lunch, and visited and prayed with six elders.  Our word of the day reflected the contrast we experienced between a mountain village and Port-au-Prince.  That contrast being the "calmness and peace" we felt with the children and adults.  We then ventured further up the mountain to Furcy, a community of over 17,000 that sustain themselves primarily on agriculture and livestock farming,  We met with a group of community leaders who represented education, health, agriculture and livestock.  They are very interested in partnering with support from America to learn and share.  We also had the opportunity of visit a locals home & farm where coffee is grown.  We were able to witness the roasting process over a wood fire, the manual grinding process with a large wooden mortar and pestle and taste the final product.  Many team members bought coffee from the woman to bring home.  Truly it was a flavorful experience  W all around.

Sunday was our sabbath day.  We had the unique experience to triple facetime with the serving teams in China and August this morning during our devo time.  We all sang Mountains in unison.  It was pretty cool.  Church was at Rendezvous Christ in Delmas.  It is associated with Haiti Teen Challenge.  The worship was powerful and much like Central.   Music was fantastic, the crowd large and much bilingual.  Moving testimony by several "graduates" of the program was experienced as they shared their historical struggles and how Christ has saved their lives.  We spent the remainder of our day relaxing, swimming, journaling, (blogging...), packing, and beginning our journey into our reentry travel day today. We had the pleasure of having the founder of Healing Haiti join us for part of our evening devotion.  He was in town to meet with some of his team.  His story was powerful and provided us insight into the origins of his journey of serving the broken people of Haiti.  Simply put he went from seeking success to seeking significance.  Significance in serving the Lord.   He left us with some important things to think about as we return home. 

What does God want for our journey with Him? We all have some homework. 

We are currently sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting for our trip to Portland.  Leaving 90 degrees in Port-au-Prince for maybe 20 degrees in Maine....Nonetheless, we are anxious to get home.  Thank you everyone for your support and interest in our mission.  It has been an extraordinary life changing experience.  We all look forward to sharing our stories in person to those we love and the church we call family. 

Blessings from all the Central Church Haiti Missions Team, November 2019.