"For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy "(Exodus 20:11) Today was our sabbath day. Everyone on this trip has been putting in all of their power, strength, mind, body, and spirit into pouring out God's love and word into the people of Haiti. Therefore, we decided that on the seventh day (today) that we would rest. As we all woke up this morning, Jon and Kara were already gone at the church that we soon were going to be heading to later in the morning. Jon was asked to go for Worship and Kara was going to see the Children's Ministries. As we arrived at Rendevous church, we were greeted by tons of smiling faces. The pews began to fill up fast so we had to disperse a little bit. The neat thing about this church is that we received head sets when we walked in. The headsets play audio of someone translating the message from Creole to English. As we all took our seats, we began to see some familiar faces, because the church that we were at is connected to Haiti Teen Challenge, the boys side, which we had been to previously in the week. When the service began to start, our very own Worship leader, Jon Russel, was on stage with Ruth (who once interned at Hosanna) and worship was the first part of the service. The beginning worship was mostly in Creole as was the message. The message was all about how we need to believe things will happen, instead of hoping for them to happen; "Believe before you receive". We need to believe that God will do this or that in our lives and then he will provide. Along with that comes trust, we need to trust the lord our God. God is GOOD. SO SO GOOD. We must not hope for change, we need to believe it and become apart of the change. The message was led by Pastor Julio who has been to Hosanna a few times and was just recently at Hosanna during our "Bold" series. The message today spoke to a lot of us and we are so grateful that we had these wonderful headsets so we could listen along with everyone else. They ended the service with some worship but this time it was led by our very own Jon Russel, who sang in English and all the Haitian people just followed along or some even sang the same words but in Creole. Worship is always so powerful and getting to do it with other people of different languages just is another reminder that love has no boundaries.
After the service we headed straight to the beach. The drive was the longest drive we have made this whole trip, but when you have a "family" like this, it goes by way faster. We went to Wahoo Bay for our day of rest. When we arrived the sun was shining, the water was crystal clear, and the music was playing. The beach was beautiful, it is surrounded by mountains. As we walked onto the beach, the sand felt so good between our toes but it wasn't long until we were all ready to jump in the water and cool off. We all ordered drinks and food, we swam a TON, we made great use of the ocean trampolines, and we took in the beauty of Haiti. Haiti is such a beautiful country with so much potential and it was very special getting to see that today. When it was time to go, even though it was our day of rest, we were all wiped out. The sun had taken it's toll on our energy as well as our skin. A few of us got a little too much color today, but HEY that's what aloe is for right? (; As always, when we arrived back to the guest house our wonderful Haitian ladies had already had the food ready for us and on the table. Therefore, we ate dinner right away before our showers. We had shepard's pie for dinner with the essentials, the coke and sprite. Which by the way is the best pop you've ever had because it's made with real cane sugar. As we shared the last dinner together as a team we also shared many laughs and jokes as well. Pit time is what followed our meal. For pit time we all went around and shared our word of the day, for majority of us our word had to do something with heading home tomorrow and how we feel or what that might look like. We are all so excited to come home and see families but we are also all very sad to have to leave the magnificently stunning country of Haiti and all it's loving souls that are apart of it. God is doing amazing things in Haiti and will continue to, even long after were gone. The entire night ended with more worship and prayer. As we all prepare to pack and head home, we couldn't be more excited to see all of our family and friends. We are so eager to share our incredible experiences with everyone back at home.
See you all soon!
Healing Haiti Family
