a Sunday in the life...

For those of you who haven't been around the blog forever, I wanted to share what Sunday looks like for the Ayars in Haiti.

And today was just an awesome one.  

Every Sunday we go to the church of one of our staff, students or alumni.  We go to encourage, we go to worship with the people of our people, we go to hear them preach or for Matt to help them with preaching if they want. We go to see and better know the many mission fields, to see and better know how to be praying for our staff and students and the people they are ministering to. 

That means we go ALL over the place. Sometimes we've been there before. Sometimes, we're hiking, sometimes we're in town, and sometimes, the church takes forever to find. Sometimes other missionaries or staff or visitors go with us, and sometimes not.

Most services are incredibly long, and it is also so incredibly hot that most start early.  Some, like at 6 am. Like, packed to the seams and people sitting on the stairs by 6:15. This morning, we were blessed by an 8:15.

Many people wait all week for Sunday, and are in NO rush to get in and out of church so as to get on with their days.  Church IS their day...the worship, the fellowship, the preaching, the prayer.  It's the encouragement and nourishment and Christian fellowship they've been waiting all week for, especially for many people who live in incredibly hard and difficult communities.  It's sweet for the soul, church is, and that mindset has shaped our family's church culture, too. (When church services in the States finished this summer, the girls kept asking, "Now what happens? Is this the break before the service starts again? What? It's OVER??")

Today we headed to Lucner's church, which is only five miles down the road, but took almost 30 minutes with the roads in the condition they are in. 

The service is a long combination of Scripture reading, some alternative readings, several different prayer times, special music, welcoming of visitors and people who haven't been there for a while, many of whom will say a few words or sing a song, followed by singing groups, announcements about new converts, couples getting married this week, church activities for the week, babies born or dedicated, deaths in the community, and announcements of people who are sick or need extra prayer, times of corporate worship, giving of tithes, sometimes a few times for different projects, pastoral prayers, a sermon (or sometimes two :), and more music and a benediction.

The Vaudreil Church is bigger than most, and has been around for YEARS.  It's full of a huge range of people from small children to faithful old ladies, and they are one of the few churches that have children's church, held in a smaller building across the yard. 

 

Several of the girls' school friends go there, as well as some of their friends from Vaudreil, the community where we lived our first three years in Haiti.  The kids' service is also three hours, with lots of singing, dancing and devotional type messages.  

Today Gertha's choir sang and Lucner preached a fantastic sermon on whether the Bible supports slavery, and we also have five staff members and several students and alumni who are members there, so worshiping there is worshipping with family. 

Today we took Rick and Carol (here for 2-5 weeks helping with maintenance projects and in the finance office) and Bryan (here for one week and helping us get the new year started!), and Ben and Nora rotate between mom and dad, a coloring pad, a baby book on trucks, fruit snacks and playing every silent game you can possibly think of with hiding things in our hands, clapping, fingers and thumbs, flipping pages, drawing stick figures, the keys, the water bottle, the hymnal, buttons on shirts.  They both LOVE all the music and there is lots of standing up and sitting down, and that helps so much! 

Sometimes, God meets us through the message or the worship or the prayer time or the community or the Scripture reading or through a person...and sometimes He just meets us with His grace in the heat with babies.

Pray for the church in Haiti. 

 

After the service there was catching up with Edlin, MaCodo, Junel, Gertha, Wislin, Lucner and Luna,  Viatka, MaArnold, Benjamin, Eliab, Erica, Rob and Melissa...

And whoever this guy is :)

By the time we are done at 11:45, we are filled and blessed and...wiped.

Gertha, our grace, has loved Lily, Sofie, Nora and Ben their entire lives, and she'll always have my heart.

Then more of this...and then we're off through town, where two different accidents added to Ben's nap time :)

In town are three different hotels that have pools, and when it is THIS hot all week, by Sunday...YES.

Today we took our visiting God-sent help to the Mont Jolie, beautiful mountain, where we ate fish and plantain and the kids swam and swam and swam. The water was warm--it couldn't possibly be anything but in August in Haiti--but it was wet and all four kids LOVE it.  Once or twice a month it is such a grace to not cook and not clean and to swim with all our happy fish!

By the time we're home...whew!  

Sunday evenings our missionary team potlucks together at Kay Ayars, the Ayars' house, so Carol and I made salad and cleaned up from Sunday morning (you KNOW what Sunday morning is like, mamas!) and drank some coffee and got everyone bathed.  

Tonight's team was 12 and 7 kiddos, and after soup and salad and bread and brownies, the adults meet and talk through the week ahead, how to pray, how to plan, how to help, and the kiddos all crash on the floor with a mountain of stuffed animals in their pajamas to watch Small Foot.

And by the time the stories have been read and the teeth brushed and the floor swept and dishes done and the babies sleeping and the week planned...

Mama's thankful in lots of ways for lots of things, most for the Body of Christ.