March 12, 2010
Posted by Willi Kornelsen

Tonight we joined together and worshiped with the Haitians in a wonderful church service. I actually thought that we were going to miss the service because we were so busy building a shelter in the Tent City. But as fate (or God) would have it, we were able to attend it and I am, to say the least, speechless. It was very different than anything I am used to but I found the experience quite worthwhile and would attend it again in a second. The whole church was fired up; we sang and worshiped and praised like there was no tomorrow.

Allan-one of our team members- was unexpectedly asked to come up front and sing a song - in Creole! Don’t worry - he was prepared, but I wasn’t. My plan was to film this moment and I had twelve minutes left on my cassette. No problem- I figured it was enough to last until the end of the song. As I was filming him - the race for Allen to finish the song vs. the end of my tape was drawing nearer and nearer. One would think the song was near its end and that I would not miss much; on the contrary, Allan was only halfway through the song when the tape ended. I had to dodge a crowd of dancing people, find my seat and frantically pull out my spare tape so I could film the rest of Allan’s spiel. It was an adventure all on its own. As I discovered tonight, the Haitians love to sing and thus one song can last 20 minutes, but it was worth it to hear the joy in the singing.

Today we also went to see the Presidential palace. We drove through the city where disaster and ruin were as common as fallen leaves in autumn. Everything smelled of dead bodies and litter clothed the sidewalks. We saw many houses where no attempts had yet been made at digging out decayed corpses. The same smell was present throughout the day while we were building the shelter at the Tent City- perhaps it was because of the heat and the direction of the wind.

Despite the somber reminders of what is going on around us, it was a successful day.

Above Posted by Willi Kornelsen

Note from Drs. Richard and Brenda: It WAS a successful day for the Lord. One thing we want to add is about the servants’ hearts of the Haitian people we are working with – here’s an example. Although the mission house where we are camped out has bathrooms, there has been no water for the past couple of days. We have been going outside to get buckets of water from a tank and carry the buckets up about 3 flights of stairs (which isn’t so bad – we all need the exercise :) Today Pastor Jean Claude and his team came up the stairs with a big barrel that they subsequently filled with water for us. He told us not to worry – that from now on, we wouldn’t have to carry water up the stairs – they wanted to do this for us. He explained that they want to show their gratitude to us and their love for Jesus by serving. They are simply awesome models for us to follow and it’s a joy to work with them.

Tomorrow we are going to check on Micaela, the young girl with the badly infected club foot who was admitted to the mobile University of Miami hospital set up at the airport here. Please pray for her.

Thanks and love from all of us here in Haiti and thank you for being a part of the team!