Monday, July 26th, 2010

Hilary's b-day today. Eggs and passion fruit juice for breakfast. The girls and Dorene spent awhile planning crafts for today. After Wesley and Davenel got back from soccer practice they took Marty, Logan and some of the other boys to climb Mt. Pignon. I really wanted to go, but none of the other girls wanted to. And we were here to spend time with the orphans, so I stayed with work with the girls. We took blocks of foam and I wrote Jezu renmen (Creole for Jesus loves) in fancy fonts on them. Then we brought groups of five girls at a time into the house and Hannah and Bethany and I helped them add their names and then color or decorate the foam with beads and stickers. Each piece had a string attached to it so the girls could hang them on their beds. Hilary and Dorene played with the girls outside and then played with foam letters. When I was done helping I went to the girls' house to play with some of the little girls there. Galeen, Galaan, Rosie, Dauline, David, Lisi, and others were out there. I started out singing to them, then with them...and then the Haitian workers joined in. It was so cool! It was beautiful. A lot of the kids and workers act shy, and won't usually sing if you just ask, but if you sing for them then they will. The ladies brought out a Haitian hymnal and I pulled out the words for our devotion time songs. We sang back and forth. And then they would hum or sing in Creole and if I recognized it I would sing along in English. One of the younger workers brought me paper and pen and asked me to write down some of the songs! We sang Amazing Grace, Come Thou Fount, Open the Eyes of My Heart Lord, My Jesus My Comfort, Lord I Lift Your Name On High, Here I Am to Worship, This Is the Air I Breathe, Open Our Eyes Lord, Worthy, etc. I really, really enjoyed that time. There were three separate times through the day that I specifically got to go sing with them for awhile. The third time I sang Mercy Is Falling, Father Abraham (w/ motions, they laughed at that one!!), and I'm In the Lord's Army. The kids thought those were pretty funny. Even the boys hung around the edges listening...except Otenel who came to beside me. Bethany, Hannah and I tried to play the Dead Fish game with some of the girls, but it didn't work too well. Jodi and Mia worked on teaching the kids Double Dutch. I helped too when I learned how to swing the ropes! I must say that was the only jump rope I've seen them try that they couldn't do. But some of them were getting the hang of it after fifteen or twenty minutes. Then Otenel decided he wanted to run on the path around to the rock pile, as fast as we could! Jimmy joined us. So I'd hold their hands and take off running as fast as I could. They had to run pretty fast too to keep up with me, but it didn't seem to phase them a bit...I was worn out! After lunch we brought all the older kids into the house w/ Pastor Clebert and showed them the movie, Pilgrim's Progress. We'd watch for awhile and then stop to answer any questions or explain confusing parts. Unfortunately the film wasn't in Creole so that made some of it tricky. I think that was a really good way to share the gospel with them though, and I think they really understood it pretty well. For dinner that night we had leftover soup, pasta, sandwiches, etc. It made for a lot of dishes, but I didn't mind because I'm used to lots of dishes!