Sunday, September 2, 2007

Today I got up at 630 because Roland told me that we were going to go to church with Soni, out past St. Louis, and had to leave at 7. Well 650 rolls around and I find Roland still sleeping. Interestingly enough, apparently at some point last night Roland found out that due to other errands needed with the truck, we were not going to go to that church after all, which means I could have slept until 830 because the church we go to is right next door, no one told me about the change though so I had two hours to twiddle my thumbs. Fortunately I am a master of time passing (and there were children awake). Once I got to church I found out the real reason why we did not go to the other church. I feel that God wanted me to see what goes on with the children so I can make a change for the better. The first time I went to church there I was sitting with the adults and had to kids sleeping on me. This time, however since there were twice as many people in attendance, I decided to stand in the back for some and stay in the balcony with the children for some. While I in the balcony I came to realize the trouble that they go through with the children. The whole time I was there they were running around, fighting, talking, sleeping, etc. One poor guy gets the privilege of trying to keep them all quite. Roland said that last week, the children were so bad that they got yelled at from the pulpit. So I have decided to start a junior church program for the children and hold it during regular church so that the parents can enjoy the service and the kids can get something out of Sundays as well. Another reason that I think this will be a good idea is that I found out today that some of the kids do not attend church because they do not have any “nice” clothes and it is no allowed by Haitian culture. Roland is graciously going to translate for me during junior church and hopefully I can get some of the older kids to lead worship and possibly even teach down the road. I am going to be talking to Erin and some of the other translators about maybe coming once and a while and doing like special music or a special lesson or something. Please pray about this for me and if anyone knows of a good place online to get lesson plans, I would appreciate the help. Moving on, we were about half way through church when the plumber came over and told Roland and I that he cut the pipes in the area we thought my glasses were and found nothing, but thought he saw something further down in the pipe so he cut that piece too and still found nothing. Having wallowed in this defeat for about a minute we determined that they had to be in the mud right outside of the last pipe. Changing out of my church clothes, I geared up to go feeling around in elbow deep sewage. IT SMELLED TERRIFIC!! Well the good news is that I FOUND MY GLASSES, and even more exciting is that they are PERFECTLY IN TACT and I am wearing them right now, (after letting them soak in bleach water for about 3 hours). Once I decided that they were clean enough, I took some time to work on the popcorn machine that I brought back from St. Louis with me yesterday (along with lots of popcorn seed and oil and salt), can’t wait to make popcorn. This machine is so dirty and greasy and oily and filled with old popcorn kernels I can even take it. I took what parts off that I could and let them soak in soapy bleach water for a couple of hours as well. While they were soaking I spent some time outside with the children, talking, hanging out in the big truck, walking around to feed the dogs and just enjoying each other. We thought that we were going to go swimming today and came to find out that on Sundays Haitians go down to the beach after they get drunk and start fights, so NO swimming on Sundays. After that Tigens and I worked on some more English, and today the difficulty was the “H” sound in “hurt,” and the “O” sound in “comb.” It is funny to hear them pronounce every letter instead of letting some remain silent. Also, I often have to call on Roland to explain how to make sounds, because I just can’t do it using motions and body language. We worked for about 30 minutes and then Tigens had to go to a meeting. Roland and I took this chance to take a walk through Port-de-Paix to look for a gentleman that is going to be bringing his children to the Orphanage. Apparently, in the recent past the roof of his house fell in on him and his family and killed at least one of his kids and I think his wife. His other two children are in the hospital right now with injuries from the accident and are going to be seen by the next surgeon to come in and work with the mission. After walking around for about an hour and a half and asking a dozen people, who were very helpful, how to find where he lives, we come to find that he is not home. He and his family went to visit a relative, in Chalet. One of his neighbors is going to let him know that he needs to come to the Orphanage to talk with Roland or Wisley. When we got back to the Orphanage it was just more playing and hanging and cleaning for me. At about 7 we sat down with Wisley (who had been gone all day) and had some soup. We chatted about all the updates Wisley needed and I asked him what he thought about the junior church idea. He said he had been wanting to start that for quite some time but never had the time to get lessons around, so he was thrilled I wanted to do it. At about 8 I retired to my room to look for lessons plans and put some camp stuff online. Early morning tomorrow cause school starts. WOO-HOO. Peace.