Church and Avocados

I have two new favorite things in Haiti…church and avocados. I’ll hit church first. When I was in Haiti in February our team experienced Haitian church and this time it wasn’t a lot different (with the exception of the service being in English instead of Creole). There is a church called Port-au-Prince Fellowship that meets each Sunday at our campus chapel. My bedroom looks out at the gate to our campus and I saw streams of people walking through the gate. Every once in a while a taptap would pull up and almost everyone inside would pile out and come through the gate. It was packed! Someone said they are considering splitting into two services. The service began with worship…about an hour of it. But it was so engaging that I didn’t even notice until we sat down what time it was. Haitians are very passionate about their worship and it is so refreshing and encouraging! I didn’t know several of the songs but the words were amazing, I wish I remembered them now. After worship the pastor spoke. He spoke on the importance of spending time with God and I admired his candor in opening up with this statement “I don’t think any of us, myself included, really know how much we need God.” It’s so true! He spoke in a very simple way about a very simple idea that I thing most of us (definitely myself included) don’t fully understand, despite its simplicity. How we need God each and every moment, big and small. From each and every heart beat to dealing with heart attacks. From starting the car to recuperating from a car accident. I know I find it way easier to trust God with the really big things in my life, but the small day-to-day tasks I think I can handle on my own. Wrong. Such a good reminder this morning.

After church I came back to the apartment and Miquette, Kellyanne, and I made a salad! It was so pretty and colorful and amazing! Making a salad here is a little more of an ordeal than back home. You have to wash and scrub everything in water with a little bleach. Then, anything with a skin (tomatoes, cucumbers) Miquette scrubbed with dish soap and then rinsed in drinking water. We rinsed the lettuce in the drinking water after the bleach water. Bah! I think all of this made me love the avocados even more because you don’t have to wash them! I mentioned avocados and Miquette eagerly ran outside the gate to buy some from a street vendor. 50 gourdes ($1.25) for 3 avocados…the biggest avocados I have ever seen! And they were so amazingly tasty.

Later, Kellyanne, Irene, and I walked to the other grocery store, “Eagle”, to get a few things we had forgotten. I went for a run this afternoon and it was amazing! I don’t feel comfortable running outside the school right now so for the near future I will be running along the wall that encircles the campus. 5 miles = 1 mile. It was great to move my legs!