Sunday - Day of Rest.....jokes.

Another bright and early 6:30am morning. Had our first experiences with powdered milk at breakfast which was surprisingly tolerable. Sunday was all about understanding the MoH vision.



After breakfast we were given a tour of the MoH campus...I don't have pictures from it all, but here are a few places of interest.

Although MoH has a clinic on site, and a few "Clinics in a Can" (essentially a portable), they are now building a hospital. From the outside it looked like a typical cement building, but inside it was just this huge maze of interconnecting rooms and hallways. I would love to see what it looks like when its completed.



Part of what Mission of Hope does is a nutrition program. They provide 50 000 meals a day to the Haitian people. Some of this is in the form of rice being brought in bulk to communities, and some of this is hot meals for every student at the school (2500). What MoH has been realizing, is that the rice economy has been suffering since so many organizations are importing rice from the US to feed everyone. MoH just built this new warehouse where they plan to store rice that will be bought from Haitian farmers, thus pouring into the economy, and then given back to the Haitian people. With the warehouse, they hope to be able to more than double the amount of meals/day they are currently providing.



We also saw the prosthetics lab, and the 3 cords workshop. For more information of MoH initiatives, check out their website http://www.mohhaiti.org/

After our tour, we went to the Church of Hope. Amazing doesn't even begin to describe our experience there. With approximately 2500 people in the congregation each week we were overwhelmed by the heartfelt worship, and presence of the Spirit.



Because the message was in Creole, we opted to join the Sunday School, which equally great. We discovered 3 things about Haitian children. A) They really like cameras, B) they really like sunglasses, and C) They (especially the girls) really like braiding our hair.

After lunch we headed out to see the off-campus villages of MoH: Bercy and Leveque. Currently these campuses are being developed so they have most of what the main campus has, a school, and orphanage, sports facilities, food programs, housing, and medical care.

Our first stop was Bercy, as we arrived the children poured out from amongst the plantain trees to greet us. We all took a walk to the ocean, with a child on each hip. It was here I realized what an asset French was going to be as I struck up a conversation with Liza (Leeza? wearing red). Being able to communicate, even if its a little rough, was such a huge blessing to me. The older kids and adults especially seemed excited to discover when a "blanc" spoke French. Admittedly, I had to often tell them to speak slooooowly, and more often than not, they laughed to themselves about my horrible accent. But language barrier was broken, and that was cool.



As we piled back onto the bus, my first pair of Crossroads sunglasses went to a fairly aggressive young girl, who may or may not have also been responsible for taking Julia's hair clips and Ashley's bracelets. Ah well, I brought them to give away.

Our next stop was Leveque, which was more developed with MoH's 500 homes program. Until recently the amount of Samaritans Purse blue tarp houses had vastly outnumbered the permanent houses, but now the colourful MoH homes are beginning to take over. Little did we know we would be spending some more time here later in the week.



On our way back to the base we stopped for an authentic Haitian meal at Gwo Papa Poul which translates from Creole to Big Daddy Chicken.

That evening the girls took some down time on the roof of our guest house. Time to journal, read, pray, reflect, and take photos of the beautiful sunset over the ocean.