September 4, 2011

Hello again,

The team had another good day. Mike said when the team gathered tonight they all shared their high points of the trip so far, and they all said they had no low points :) There has been team unity, openness, a lot of good discussions and thought processing going on.

This morning Nathan, Matt and Jeremy went to the Good Shepherd church in Gonaives. Nathan and Jeremy preached. They had one salvation and many others asked for prayer for sickness or healing. The rest of the team went to our Good Shepherd church in Marose, where Mike spoke. In Haiti they have a marching band play as they walk to the river for baptisms. The band met at the Marose church, but because the baptisms were in Gonaives, Nathan knew the children would be disappointed that they would not be able to be part of the procession to the river. So he had the band play for the children as they walked a couple of miles up the road and back. Mike said the children had a blast. Then the band and the team left for Gonaives. Nathan and Pastor Praviel (our Gonaives pastor) said that since we leased the new building in July, the neighborhood has really come together and is building a community. Mike said there were about 100 people to watch and support the baptism. Usually as the band walks along playing, many others join the procession, so there are more people when they arrive at the river then when they started. The river in Gonaives is only about 3 blocks from the church. Haiti is not a GRAY place spiritually, it is very obviously BLACK AND WHITE. Mike said that 2 of the girls being baptized broke out of a type of singing group called death bands. He was told that the band members are very vulgar and do obscene things to entice people, kind of like a very wild party, which takes place during the night and then they murder them. These two former band members have become Christians, taken classes on baptism and were baptized today. God is soooooo Merciful. They had another God story today while they were baptizing in the river. A boy about 12 years old who was swimming in the river was watching the baptizing. After a while he asked if he could be baptised, so they talked to him and made sure he understood what they were doing and why. They asked him about himself and he said his father was a witch doctor, and he did not want to do what his father was doing. So they baptized him also. God is sooooo amazing.

Later on in the day the team put up more screening on the windows to keep bugs, especially mosquito's out. They also built up some of the cement walls for separations in the showers and to allow shower curtains to be hung, instead of plastic. In the evening they went to the last night of children's church. This has been going for 8 nights. Mike said each night they had a child (usually around 10 to 12 years old) preach. Mike said 3 different nights boys from our orphanage shared, the other 5 nights children from the community shared. Mike said one of our orphans named Sandy Love shared one night. He said that Sandy Love was an amazing preacher. He hardly even looked at his notes. Mike said that the children understand the spiritual part. The children led worship and chose all the songs, they planned everything. Mike said every night the church was packed and that the services were dynamic and powerful.

Tomorrow the Pastors association will meet. The pastors association is a group of pastors that Nathan and Mike have gathered together. They have agreed to put aside doctrinal issues and join together to reach the lost and hurting. Our 4 Good Shepherd pastors are part of the association. They are a great group. They will meet at 9:00 am in the morning, break for lunch and then have a round table type talk at 1:00 pm. Each team member will be sharing with the association for a few minutes, so please pray for boldness and wisdom as they share. Please pray for Mike as he teaches the pastors. Also please pray for pastor Charles, the head pastor of the association, he is very sick. The team and other pastors may go to his home to pray for him tomorrow.

As I have shared in past e-mails, each team we take to Haiti brings some kind of food to share that the children have never tried. So tomorrow the team will be making peanut butter cookies. They are using one of my favorite recipes, which is very easy. I encourage you to try them.

My Peanut Butter Cookies
1 cup of peanut butter (any kind, creamy, crunchy, healthy or not)
1 egg
1 cup of sugar

Mix, drop by spoonfuls on to a cookie sheet. If you like chocolate you can put a few chocolate chips on top. Bake at approximately 350 degrees for about 10 mins. As a bonus they are even gluten free :)

And no I did not make a mistake, there is NO flour in the cookies, and therefore they are very moist. Enjoy
Blessings,
Chris