Day 9 - Pastor Balland's Orphinage

This morning started out with the 8:00am church service.  This one was especially enjoyable because Pastor Guy Thomas (left) was translating the sermon preached by John Booker (not shown).  We actually understood what was going on!  Yay.  Pastor John preached up a storm against the Hatian attitude that fears Voodoo more than they fear the devil.  Guess what?!?  They're the same thing, and Jesus has already won that battle.

Pastor Guy in this photo was acknowledging the hard work of Aaron (our group's co-leader) who will soon be returning home.  Aaron (and Mike for that matter) are both from Hawaii, and have chosen to spend 6 and 3 months respectively down here in Haiti.  Aaron has learned a lot of the language and customs; and while he's not sure how he'll be able to pay for it, desires to return to Haiti soon.  He's a big guy with an even bigger heart.  The short term missionaries like Aaron and Mike pay to work here; some of which is sponsored by their home churches.


I bet you didn't know that Don King had a long-lost grand-daughter here in Haiti, but I think we found her...

This little sweetheart was sitting with her older brother in front of us, but wanted to come back and visit with Jana instead.

I had a nice visit with Geraldo, who has sort of adopted Jana and I as his Canadian parents.  He must have called Jana 20 or 30 times at home after she was here in March.  He's a nice kid who wants to be a pastor some day.

After lunch we packed-up some goodies to take to Pastor Belland's orphinage.  He's a very nice man who lost his parents at a very young age to voodoo practitioners here.  They blew a "magic" powder at them and the poison eventually killed them both.  A christian couple took him in and raised him as their own and tought him about Christ.  When the earthquake struck, he began talking to people in the local area and has found 13 orphans who lost either both parents or one parent who hadn't the means to cope with the loss of their spouse and everything they owned.

He currently rents the house he's in, but Foursquare has helped him get a property closer to his church and one where they are working at building a facility where he can have up to 25 kids eventually.  By the way, these 13 kids are all 7 years of age and under.  Talk about a nut-house.  They're very well behaved, but when Foursquare brings people out there, they know play-time and gifts are coming.  As you can see we had a blast!

En route home, we drove up a winding, bumpy (are there any other kind in Haiti?) road to a look-out where you can see all of Port Au Prince.  It was pretty awesome; although there's often a haze that settles over the city from burning garbage and diesel fumes, so the view isn't very clear.  This shot is one of three that pans the whole city and I did a lot of tweeking to get the resolution you see..  The Foursquare church and mission base-camp is about the center of this photo.

For a special treat today, we went out for dinner.  Aside from the "Belle Zanmi" diner en route to and from Les Cayes, this is the only dinner we've had outside of those supplied at the Big-House and by the pastor's wife in Les Cayes.  This is one very well preserved and maintained property.  It's a sugar plantation museum and restaurant, and it was very nice.  If you've never had Kabrit en Sauce, this is the place to have it.  Goat tastes similar to lamb, and this one was braised to perfection. Unless you wanted a massive 24oz. fish on your plate, nothing we had was over 600 gouds (about $14). If you've been following the blog you'll recognize Mike and Aaron (our team coordinators) and you won't recognize Pastor John's wife Debby who just returned from Louisiana.  Pastor Rosinal on the right shared his story of how the earthquake changed his neighborhood.  Through it the voodoo "temple" next door to his home has been abandon and christianity is spreading; as Jesus offers hope and a future.