Graduation!

The year is officially over! Graduation just finished...two hours of special music groups, speeches, benedictions and commissioning. The church was packed out with well over 700 people by the time the service finished...for only 22 men, we hadn't expected such a crowd! All over again we remembered that graduation feeling...excitement about being finished, and yet such sadness to leave friends you have lived and prayed and studied with for four years. It was our great joy, as well, to meet everyone's parents, siblings, wives or girlfriends, children, cousins, aunts...

Being an official ceremony, almost everything was in French, which is a very different French from the French we learned in Canada. We quickly realized that we understood about as much as anyone else, including some of the speakers. Afterwards, we were able to mix with the students for a while, and we were both deeply touched by how quickly these strangers have turned into men dear to our hearts. It seems like just yesterday that we both walked in front of a room of a dozen men, struggling to learn their difficult names and trying to teach them as much as we could. Hours and hours of classes, church visits, family visits, months of chapel, and ministering alongside of them has turned these men into our brothers, and we are so thankful to feel that we KNOW them, that they KNOW us. We would never have expected that from 9 months. As we watched them all on stage, the Lord reminded us gently of His great faithfulness...reminded us of all of the promises He has fulfilled this year, all of the prayers He has answered. I don't know if you can tell just from the pictures, but Jesus lives dominantly in these men, and we cannot wait to continue to see what great things this accomplishes in Haiti.