I left the Hope House movie early, and spend the rest of the evening confined in my sweltering apartment planning for the weeks ahead... Not my most ideal way to kick off the weekend to say the least, but before you start giving me pity, keep reading.
It's been said that if there's no pain, there's no gain.
The reason for my unfortunate evening of overtime weekend hours was only to make the following day possible, and thus begins my awesome Saturday:
The morning began with french toast sizzling in my frying pan and friends from Mesaye (a village past Cabaret) climbing the mission hill with their twelve adorable orphan boys to spend the morning on the playground. Since the earthquake, we have lost touch with other missionary friends around the island... A lot of them were led to evacuate and there haven't been many social outings over the past few months if you know what I mean. 3 good friends of Rachel and I who are the American directors of their mission organization flew back about 2 weeks ago, so it was great to see them and catch up, as well as hang out with their adorable kids.
Following the morning playtime, I hopped in Rachel's hot new truck (okay, it's not really new, but she took the back cap off a few weeks ago transforming it from a simple 'work truck' to a seriously sharp ride). Rachel took me along to go shopping with her for a gift for Patris' birthday which is tomorrow. We rode in style all the way to Cabaret market and spent the next hour and a half meandering through the tarps in search of a few pairs of 'unblinged' jeans (which surprisingly can be a challenge), while consistently being caught up in our own shopping lists. ;)
The trip was a success and we headed back towards the mission shortly after lunch when I got dropped off at Gwopapapou to meet up with Sadrac and Wicky. We enjoyed our rice and beans and then proceeded to their house - which was just been repaired with cement and paint this week. As is tradition, we broke out the guitar and jammed... Missed you cheri!
The next thing on the agenda was to get palm leaves for the big story at kids church in the morning. As you know, tomorrow is the big 'Palm Sunday' and I was determined this year to take advantage of the local horticulture. Last year was pure embarrassment as I remembered a little too late that it was Palm Sunday and ended up scrounging some bush branches to illustrate the action. But this year I was SERIOUS about palm leaves!!! Shortly before we took off, Leeann and Michelle popped over and joined us on our expedition out into the Haitian farm fields. Sadrac and Wicky were pretty confident about where we would find top notch branches so we trekked beyond the residential area of Sourcematelas, machete in hand. Sure enough, we found what we were looking for and thanks to some monkey-like interpreters with skill to climb the trunks, we headed back to the mission with some giant, and I mean giant palm leaves. I know for certain I'm going to have to select some pretty buff kids to be the 'crowd'!
Upon our return, I took a quick shower to rinse off the Haiti heat and dust, and prepped for girls night which is happening in the here and now. We've got Walk to Remember on the big screen (not literally, but in Haiti, anything bigger than a portable DVD player counts) and the girls are soaking it in like sponges... We just had to rewind the proposal so that nobody missed it. We've got 3 fans blowing on high, but it's not doing much for the nail polish fumes nor the 100 degree weather. Oh well... It's been a great day from start to finish.
I think you can probably gather from my post tonight that I'm willing to pay in another Friday night for another day like today... Hope you enjoyed my evening schpeal, and I appreciate your prayers for the kids church story tomorrow!
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