Savannah and Parkside Day 6…

SAVANNAH:

What up people, Allison here. Well, the day is coming to a close and we are definitely feeling it. It is really cool to be a part of what God is doing here in the Mole. So much of what we are seeing and hearing is breaking our hearts. Our outreach to single moms has become the talk of the town. It reminds me of how Jesus was treated when he went into cities and hung out with the tax collectors. He was exactly where He was supposed to be yet the people around the city didn’t understand. It’s made

us even more passionate about pouring value into these beautiful ladies.

This morning as we walked up to the army tent turned church, all we could hear was angry, loud shouting between the women. In my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined what was waiting for us in that tent. I wish I could show you what these 40 women shouting and pushing each other looked like but it was overwhelming and it was frustrating. They were upset about something that had happened the day before that had nothing to do with us, and this was their opportunity to have it out. It was frustrating because we KNEW it was satan trying to distract us and these women from what Jesus was trying to do. So i stood in a corner alone and prayed for a second and then jumped up on stage and asked for everyone’s attention. I told these ladies what satan was up to and that we were not going to let that happen. That the power of Jesus was greater and there was no way we were going to let satan win. So they had a choice, to sit there and be distracted or to focus in and hear what God had for them today. After that things calmed down and we were able to continue with our conference. I started out by answering their questions from yesterday. The first one being to address sex before marriage. One of the issues is men coming into these ladies lives and offering to feed and clothe their kids in exchange for sex and these moms, desperate to feed their children, agree. It’s heartbreaking. Waiting to have sex until you’re married is hard enough without the added pressure of needing to provide for your kids. After teaching I asked the ladies to bow their heads and close their eyes and if they were currently having sex outside of marriage and wanted to repent to raise their hand. Nearly every hand went up. After we prayed for those ladies Lesha did an awesome job sharing her testimony about her experience as a single mom. It really helped to show these ladies that even in america being a single mom is a struggle and it comes with a lot of heartache. I hope you will join us in praying that those ladies wont be distracted by their conflict and that they will come back tomorrow.

We finished the day planting trees and shooting some videos for our student ministries summer camp coming up. Now i’m sitting here next to a sweaty, basketball playing, army ranger named Garrett eating mashed potatoes covered in vegetables. Pray that we would stay present here in haiti. The longer we are here the more we miss home, our own beds, and our families…pray that we will finish our time strong and making good use of every second to lift the name of Jesus high. We love you guys! See you soon!!

Min Min….your momma says hey and she loves you 🙂

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PARKSIDE

Today was an early day for Austin, Jessica Flora, Blaire, Matt , Dave and I. We all woke up at around 4 30 in order to sail on early morning calmer water since we had a 2 hour boat ride to Serapel, a fishing village. The main reason for going to Serapel was to set up a relationship with the village so that NWHCM could support and return to the village. It was really awesome to be the first Americans visit the village and help pray with them and it was a great turnout because they begged for us to come back and build a good relationship. When we arrived back at the Mole our VBS was in full swing! The smiles on every childs face were so contagious and to see how much they loved hearing about the good Samaritan and how they were really understand gods message. After we had lunch we went down to the soccer field and ran a sports camp for all the children, they were really good, almost as if they should have been teaching us not the other way around. We tried to be as encouraging as we could and all the kids looked like they had a blast. After that we took all the kids back to the church and split up the teens and the younger children. With the children we played many fun games and sang many songs with them and all their faces were lit up the whole time. Today we had another teen session and it was FAR more fruitful than yesterday. We were able to really open up with the teens and we had a very deep conversation about forgiving and forgetting. We tried very hard to send them home with applicable knowledge on how to live a life full of forgiveness without giving others the opportunity to take advantage of them. ~ Michael, Austin, Denver (In order)