Friday

Awoke this morning at 5am to watch the sun rise and the town awake, again. It is great to see a 40 minute span of darkness-to-light and quiet to all different noises of the town at work. Just read the following quote:

"God doesn't comfort us to make us comfortable. He comforts us to make us comforters"

^Read that a couple times over...it is deeper than it's 1-sentence-structure suggests^

We mustn't focus on a selfish ambition of comfort. Yet it is important that we are capable, willing & practicing in being comforters to others - using God's comfort for us and our lifestyles as an assignment to be comforters to others and not as simply an award to grant us comfort.

Went to the coast line for 1 hour to have 4 members in our group baptized. It was a good experience.

Along the coast you can really see the effects of the earthquake in the forms of long, deep cracks along the sidewalks and docs.

There are fishermen on row boats casting nets to capture fish and boys standing along the broken concrete deck with long fishing wire wrapped around plastic bottles - casting out their lines with hopes of catching fish. Didn't seem like they were getting any bites - though, 1 boy did catch an eel which seemed to get quite a rise out of the group. Also saw a teenage boy in a wet-suit and scuba equipment. He was hunting fish with a makeshift spear projectile which basically consisted of a long rusty spear rod inside of a long silver cylinder rod that he had rigged up with rubber bands (the type you see in a gym) to act as the force of the shooting spear. It was actually very impressive. He had his ankle tied to his little canoe, which held his captured fish (which, unfortunately, wasn't much).

After the baptisms, we took a cab - known as a "tap tap" - back to the house. A 'tap-tap' is basically a pick-up truck that has bench seating built along the sides of the bed and metal walls & roof to protect from the weather, with windows. Think: small school bus with bench seating. Very hot. Very stuffy. They decorate them nicely though. :-)

When we returned and ate lunch, our group leaders (Megan and Carrie) asked us to do one last "listening prayer" to plan the rest of the day. I suggested that I was feeling moved to NOT relax and spend out last day in rest - instead: to sprint to the finish and dedicate ourselves to either trash or rubble clean up. (Both of which are highly necessary). The group seemed to be in agreemnet but we wanted to make sure that a group of "blancs" walking around the neighborhood picking up trash would not be an insult to the people...as we didn't want to send the wrong message of looking down our noses at the people of Haiti. Fortunately it was confirmed through some of the translators that it would be no problem at all. We assembled a group, gloved up, and grabbed a bunch of trash bags. We cleaned trash and litter in the streets around the house and along our 5 minute walk to the church - then picking up around the surrounding streets of the church. We got occasional laughs from people, wondering what the heck we were waisting our time for. But soon enough there were groups of neighbors helping us pick up. And, in fact, I began seeing down some streets we didn't go down that people were starting to do the same. We started a ripple effect on Friday and I hope it lasts long after we are gone. I think just as it is important for us to help our fellow brothers & sisters spiritually, it is also important for them to see us putting our faith into action and helping them physically. We didn't come to Haiti with much on the ability to help them financially or to solve all of their problems - however what we can provide in abundance is: our prayer, our compassion, our empathy, and out blood/sweat/tears!