Ravine Trompette Part 2

OK. After a short rest we pile into the truck with the Pastor and family and head over to the church. We park by the road and walk up a short path to the church. How the Haitian ladies walk this with their high heel shoes is a mystery to me.

Anna fell on the way up-she walks fast and doesn't watch her feet. But she bounced right up before many saw her.

The church is looking into a project for building a school. Here is what they have started so far.

Pastor told me that they have 125 students but since the storms last fall no one has any money for school. I don't know if they are currently having school or not-not much time for questions as we had already made the Pastor late.

We were ushered into the front row [no thanks to sitting on the platform]. The Sunday school time was quickly finished up but we did arrive in time to have our Bibles counted. Don't know if we were included in the visitor count or not. The worst part of sitting up front is the proximity to the loud speakers-and unlike some of our visitors we cannot turn off our hearing aids.

Harvest Festival means having to welcome lots of visitors. John Pierre, Cory and I had our chance to give greetings. Then you have 4-5 special groups sing 1-2 songs for special music. Normal offering and then the special offering.

Two new members who were baptised the day before were presented to the church. And they had baby dedication. This is why [besides the Harvest celebration] the Pastor's little girl was all dressed up in the white dress.

We are now close to 2 hours into the service. The visiting pastor cut his sermon down a bit as the time was short and the special offering had already been received. He talked about many things but the main point was that the Battle is the Lord's, be faithful to him, praise and sing even before the battle is won as our Lord is faithful.

After the sermon the special music groups were given an opportunity for a final song. The gals in the blue and orange shirts are the new members bringing the total up to 115.

Now it is after 1 o'clock and we say our good-byes at the church. Back to the truck to see how many we can fit in for the short ride to the parsonage. We started out with 24 people-one was a 7 month old baby and 2 kids other than ours. But still it was a bit much for the truck so a few had to get out for the last bumpy part of the trip over lots of rocks.

Lunch was served at the parsonage: rice and beans with sauce, fried goat or chicken drumsticks, salad as for breakfast, fried cooking bananas. To drink Coke, Team or a fruit punch pop. A few rain drops hurried us along with the memory of the river crossings.

We did stop in to the Pilate church for a quick look around. The kids and I were in the truck mostly and had the heart racing experience of watching a big school buss at high speed heading right toward us---only after we braced ourselves did the driver swerve to avoid our truck.

Steep gardens in this part of Haiti.

Home at 5:15 pm. John Pierre tells us we have 7 churches left to visit in the Northern District. One he has never been to as it is only accessible by horse up a steep mountain. This is the one that Anna especially wants to visit. Will see. Right now we only have a tentative visit to Pilate in August. We're glad that our church is in walking distance.