16 August 2011

paint and mountains and thunderstorms and joy.

those are the highlights of today. :) We've spent the last two days painting the inside of the new church building up at the St. Etienne site of MOHI. it's similar to the tin roof/pavilion structure of the church in Grand Goave, except it has plywood walls with high screen windows all around. and let me tell you, this team is awesome - they are all such hard workers and just went to town. Now that we finished that project, tomorrow will be working on Renee's new office at the church/school property. right now, it's just a basic frame with plywood walls and cutouts for two windows and a door. not sure exactly what the vision is for it yet, but we'll find out tomorrow, since that's our project for the next day or two at least. we're also planning to finish painting the walls of the depot building [which the may team started our last few days here].

unexpected great experience of the day: walking to the office to get picked up for church, no vehicle there, so we decided to just walk to the school quickly before it started to rain. we got just past the hardware store [about two blocks] before the downpour started. but hey, this is haiti, so what else are you going to do besides keep walking? so we walked the rest of the way to the church [about another ten minutes or so], and find all the kids there, super excited to see all of us, drenched as we were from the walk in the rain. so in lieu of a church service [since no one comes to church when it's raining], we all just hung out. there was guitar playing and hair braiding and hand-slap-game playing and general chaos, but it was chaos exploding with joy, as only Haiti can do. one of my favorite parts of the evening was braiding Brittany's hair with a woman named Jodi, who helps take care of the kids at the orphanage. It was the first time that my Creole has been good enough to actually carry on a conversation more than "Hi, how are you?". granted it was slow and involved lots of patience on Jodi's part, but it was the first time I've actually felt like I could communicate well with someone here who knows very little English. A glimpse of a future of more conversations in Creole, which I am beyond excited about. :)

tomorrow will be spent working on Renee's office, painting the depot, and playing with the kids some more, i'm sure. also going to drive Travis' truck up to the school, since he has so many useful tools and such for us to use. easier than making ten trips back to the beach to get things and ending up with half the truck tools at the school anyway. haha :)

love you all! thanks for all your prayers for this trip and this team. it's been a great week so far, with more great experiences to come, i'm sure.

to Him be the Glory!