Trip 16 – Other Highlights

The coolest thing about this week…it was kind of like bringing together all of our favorite Haiti friends, experiences, and memories all together under the same roof for a week – even though we never left Port-au-Prince, it literally felt like we had visited every one of our favorite places while we were here.

For context:  Tommy Carter, Frank Rogers and I were here for the 30^th anniversary homecoming celebration of the Delmas church, which featured:

• a preachers’ and church leaders’ conference from 9am to 4pm each day, attended by close to 200 men and women from Churches of Christ all over Haiti

• marriage classes taught by Tommy Carter each day from 4pm to 5pm for the Delmas members

• gospel meeting services from 5pm to 8pm each night, with all of the awesome-as-usual singing

• all culminating in a 3 hour Easter service Sunday morning, and another 3 hour service Sunday afternoon

A few highlights:

• 19 baptisms over the course of the week

• Easter Sunday at Delmas (photo at top) – more people than I’ve ever seen in there at one time, all of them dressed in their “how-in-the-world-do-they-get-their-clothes-so-clean” Sunday finest

• Final moments at Delmas last night – as many times and as many places as I’ve seen JT do this, I still get chills every time:  With several hundred people in attendance, JT does the Benediction Service that many of you have seen, where there’s the one special song and everyone comes to the front for prayer and for anointing with oil