Day Three

Until now the trip has really felt more like a vacation than a real mission trip.  Today though we got to go to church with the Haitians. There weren't enough seats at either church so we split between them. We dressed up to go to church with them and I rode with Funky again in the Frontier and we re-entered Bohoc.  The church building was mostly open with weathered white wooden pews. They had a stage at the front and the band played fairly cheap guitars and basses. The drums were in the worst shape though.  They had no bottom heads, and their cymbals were cracked and had pieces missing out of them. One was even on the bottom part of a mic stand.  The service seemed to already have started when we got there but being that Haitians don't really value time in their culture no one acted like it was any big deal.  They led us down to the 2nd and 3rd rows and we sat down in the order we came in.  The service really started when we got there and got settled in.  Some lady from another church was led up to the pulpit and introduced the members from her church. Then Herc follows suit and we introduced ourselves.  After we said our names a young woman and man came and pinned these orange and white ribbons on our chests. I am sad to say that I lost mine though.  When that was over the same lady came up and assured us that we would know some songs that her church was going to play for the Haitians. None of us knew either one.  They were very very early attempts at contemporary Christian music.  So that was awkward.  Luckily they had the music for awesome God so we did that as well and that one worked much better.  The service lasted about two hours and I couldn't tell you what it was about but the music they played was sure cool.  

When the Coaster and truck came back to pick us up there was a ton of our people in the bed. Naturally I jumped in when they got out to get in the Coaster.  Sean Zach and I had the best ride of our lives, or at least I did, coming back to the house. I thought yesterday's footage was cool, the shots I got from the back of that truck were phenomenal.  I felt really out of place standing in the bed of a pickup wearing dress clothes leaning over the side getting shots.   We ate lunch when we got back, it was really good, and the Cajun food keeps getting better.

After lunch we were briefed that we needed to think up VBS style games and activities we could play with the children that we were going to be visiting at this Sunday school. We had like 15 mins to think of something and while I was getting my camera ready they all decided to do the creation story.  That was fine with me as I didn't really do anything there either except shoot.  Anyway we got this skit version of the creation story all worked out and I got to ride in the bed of the truck again o the way back to the church we stayed at where we would be putting on VBS.  They put on the skit thing there after we played hackey sac with a soccer ball and I got some okay footage of that.  I went around shooting video of other people interacting with the kids and kind of played with some myself, but I'm glad I got to document it.  A couple kids were pointing to me and laughing at what I was doing when they should have been paying attention to the skit but I really didn't know how.  I found that a lot of the kids seemed distracted though that made me wonder if they got it. I did meet an 18 year old Haitian who was better at math than I will ever be.  He had this trig packet that had such advanced math in it, it made me dizzy. It was part of his entrance exam or exit exam for university.  I would not survive if I had to go to school in Haiti.  When we had to leave we said goodbye and it was heart breaking not to be able to give the kids the balls. But it wouldn't be fair so we kept them.  Whether or not fair is right deserves another post so I'll leave it at that. 

We went to this missionary compound next and took a tour. It was a beautiful estate complete with FJ55 land cruisers and land rover defender 100s. It had a school, a farm, houses and a orchard on it and I was taught about grafting plants and how that works. The Bigstuf interns got to go to the top of the highest mountain in Haiti and I'm really jealous Because that thing is beautiful.  Jodi passed out due to heat and that was the end of that trip.  We went back, ate dinner, I found out I got hacked on facebook and here we are! Tomorrow is when we start doing manuel labor though so we will see what happens