Sunday June 8th,2008

We awoke on Sunday and had breakfast. Charlie then led a devotion for us. After devotion we got ready to leave for church. For church the guys wore long pants and collared shirts while the girls wore skirts and shirts. We went to a nearby village called Mare Chal where we would end up spending a lot of our time. It was about a 8 mile bus ride. The church was a large one room concrete building. It was hot and humid! There was not an empty seat to be found! Most people there were women and children. The service started with worship and then our group introduced ourselves and sang a couple of songs. We took communion while we were at service and gave an offering. The service was about two hours and as we quickly learned in Haiti we all sweat...A LOT! You sweat it out faster than you can take it in!

After church we went back for lunch. The food at the compound is amazing. There is a mixture of American and Haitian and these ladies know how to do some serious baking! We always had fresh homemade bread and all kinds of cookies and desserts!
After lunch we looked through our supplies and started counting and sorting what we had. We wanted to make sure that we could put together little bags to give away at the school during uniform cloth distribution and still have miscellaneous items to hand out during our village ministry. Needless to say we had plenty for both!

The village of Lasalle is just down the beach from the compound. So we all grabbed our water bottles and cameras and headed out for a village walk. As we got close to the village we saw the children, in return they saw us and they came running! They all just wanted to hold our hands and even though the language barrier was hard to overcome they didn't mind. We would just walk in silence every once in awhile we would try to exchange little conversation.

The houses in the Lasalle are very small. I would guess that the houses are no more that 10x10 and have no plumbing and no electricity. The average Haitian woman has 6 children. So that means most of these 10x10 homes have 8 people living in them. This was a common thing throughout the villages that we visited. The water in the nearby villages is from the same source as New Missions. Once New Missions found the artisan well the nearby villages, through the help of missionaries, tapped into the same water source. It's been a huge blessing since most children die from dysentery, which can be prevented in many cases by having clean drinking water.

This was our first experience in the villages and it was a great one. This was just the beginning of the great things God had in store for us. This was just the beginning of the week to come!