Haiti Mission Trip: Day 2

Sunday:

We woke up around 5:30 to get ready for church. Once we were ready we ate fruit and toast while doing our daily devotionals. It was a special day because eighteen boys and girls and two men were being baptized in the ocean before church! We loaded up in trucks and made the short trip to the ocean.

 

There was some singing that we didn’t understand, and then the people were baptized three at a time in the ocean.

 After all of the baptisms the men stood in the water and prayed together.

 It was my first experience seeing so many people baptized at once and seeing people baptized in the ocean! It was a really neat experience, but sort of strange to have a baptism where people were enjoying the beach and bathing in the water not too far away!

 After the baptisms we headed on to the church. We were there about an hour before church started, so we sat and had time to talk until then. This time the service was in Creole, so we didn’t understand much of it.

 There were several different groups that sang and we knew a few of the songs. Even so, it was difficult to remember the words that I thought I knew so well when they were singing in a different language! 

 

 We were able to enjoy communion with the rest of the church with bread and real wine. The whole service lasted nearly three hours, and in our exhaustion most of us may have dozed a bit during some of the prayers- oops!

After church we went back to the compound for lunch. We had fried chicken, delicious Haitian slaw, and seriously the best French fries I've ever had!

Half of the kids left for camp, but we were able to go back to the ocean with the rest of the kids after lunch.

 The ocean was very calm and we swam and played. The kids really opened up to us at the beach and it was neat to see the walls fall down. They loved being pulled around in the water, being thrown, and chicken fighting.

 

After the beach we went back to the compound to clean up and play until dinner. Some of our girls got to help cook! Since there weren’t as many kids we were able to eat a yummy pasta at their tables with them. We played some more after dinner and were exhausted by bedtime from a long day!

 

 

(By the way, most of these beautiful photos were taken by Mrs. Tanya!)