Skip to main content

Haiti 2011: June Fifth

We attended church this morning. We expected it to be different, and it was. There were pews in front of a raised stage from which the leader spoke, and the activities they took part in were the same we experience in the U.S., but the way in which they took part in those activities differed from my own experience. Aside from being conducted in Creole, the service was divided into short phases of worship, scripture reading, prayer, and liturgy. After a leader led the children in a song, then led the congregation in another, a new leader approached to oversee the giving of small banners to women in the church, who would either hang them on the wall nearby or put them away. A young lady was then invited up to lead Scripture reading, and when she finished, the leader would approach to lead us in another song. Another handful of missionaries were invited up to lead us in their own worship song, this time in English, and then three children approached to lead yet another song. Prayer followed, a new person spoke for a minute, and after a time, our group was recognized and thanked for coming. After more music, now well into the service, the pastor approached to give a thirty-minute sermon. Though I understood little of what he said, he was obviously passionate about it, waving emphatic gesticulations with his hands. Whatever he was saying, I wanted to believe him.

After church, we eventually went to the beach. Set near the high, lush hills of Jacmel, the ocean was opaque and warm. Merchants solicited their fare nearby as we played beach soccer, observed from a short distance by a U.N. solder. This was also the first time I'd seen a vehicle with the Red Crescent symbol. Even amid the recreation, you're reminded by these things of the poverty, and by the medical and political needs of the country, which are less severely felt in Jacmel (it seems) than in Port-au-Price.

After the beach, we talked and ate and played games until bedtime. At this point, we didn't quite know the kids well enough to engage them as we would later in the week.

Our team also met for our first devotional study tonight. It started impersonal and platonic. We talked about Christian leadership, and as we did, people's body language spoke boredom; but when we transitioned to discussion about our experience so far in Haiti, members began to open up. We started to sympathize with one another and connect with what we were hearing. We walked away, most or all of us, encouraged.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Persuasion

At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...
Post a Comment
Read more

Comparison

Psychologists and others have studied ways in which we compare ourselves to each other. One man named Leon Festinger argued that we tend to compare ourselves to other people when we don’t know how good or bad we are at something (like football or playing the guitar). One way we do this is when we compare ourselves to those who are not as good as we are, to protect our self-esteem (called “downward social comparison;” example: we’re playing basketball and miss most of our shots, but we feel okay because a teammate wasn’t even given the ball). Another comparison we make is when we compare ourselves to others who are doing much better than we are (called “upward social comparison”). When we see others who appear to be doing better than we are, we can respond by trying to improve ourselves, or by trying to protect ourselves by telling ourselves it’s not that important. There was a study published in 1953 by Solomon Asch, who asked students to take part in a “vision test.” The par...
Post a Comment
Read more

Savior

This wasteland cold and dark runs free Its fearful creatures speak to me One fateful day one nudged my hand To set my eyes upon a tree He knew I could not understand For I was in his native land His signs became our common speech To lead me through the deadly sand Now stuck I saw him me beseech He could not lift me out to reach The firm foundation of a cave Outside the boundaries of this beach Withal, the beast became more brave To risk his own my life to save To carry me, its life it gave To carry me, its life it gave. This poem was inspired by Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." That poem, like this one, has four four-line stanzas of eight syllables per stanza. Its rhyme scheme is AABA BBCB CCDC DDDD.
Post a Comment
Read more