We started the day early and went to the sunrise service at a neighborhood "tent" church. It's not really a tent anymore. It's actually made out of cement blocks. The pastor was enthusiatically speaking in Haitian Creole, so we didn't understand what he was saying. It wasn't like a church in America, because everyone was up and moving and praying. Some people were walking while they prayed. The pastor spoke a bit in English and told us to ask our neighbors for prayer requests and to pray with them. Everyone held their neighbors' hand and spoke to each other. There was a lot of singing - even some American songs that we recognized, like "Our God." The pastor moved with the music and jumped around with the people. His enthusiasm made us feel like we could understand him, even though much of the time we couldn't. He told us that "YOU ARE NOT GUILTY!" He repeated that a bunch of times. He also said "This house is full of joy. OH YEAH!" The people cheered often.
After church, we had breakfast back at the guesthouse and gathered all of our stuff for the beach. Many teams that come to Haiti take kids from the neighborhood or an orphanage swimming at the public beach. Unfortunately, it did not work out for our team to do that, so our team went to the beach by ourselves. We went to Wahoo Bay Resort. When we got there, there was a beautiful view of the ocean. Some of the team went snorkeling and we all enjoyed swimming. A couple of us got stung by jellyfish. Today we had fun and grew closer together as a team.
-- Elaina Gerst
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