Good morning. Happy MLK day in the states!
I don’t typically blog in the morning but I thought I’d give day 4 another try. Hopefully, with a bit more of the positives. 
We started yesterday (Sunday) by going to worship at Port-Au-Prince Fellowship. The church is English speaking and mostly European and American Christian aid workers and missionaries attend there. The place was packed and electric with energy. I have to tell you, it is so much fun worshipping with a room packed full of people seeking God. The people who attended are giving giving giving all week. They are dishing out emotionally and spiritually and they come into Sunday looking to be filled up and energized. As we sang the whole room was alive with fervor in the anticipation that God’s love and power is made aware to us as the community of Jesus gathers together. As I said yesterday Sunday was a roller coaster. We started at the top of the hill….but we would not stay there.
After PAP Fellowship we got in the truck and went on a driving tour of PAP. I didn’t mention yet but the truck we have traveled in this week is actually a cage on wheels. The truck is a box truck but the box is actually a wire cage. I know what a chicken feels like now Cage is a big wire mesh box fastened to the back of a European style diesel truck. There are two bench seats on each side of the cage-enough to seat 20 people. This is how we saw PAP…from the inside. Locked out from them or maybe the other way around..I don’t know. I just can’t imagine the psychological toll this city must take from its inhabitants. The two main symbols of Haitian pride were the National Cathedral and the Palace. Both were completely destroyed in the earthquake. Both are just concrete spires of rubble, just haunted looking shadows of a past glory (like the erie ruins of a European castle). Everywhere you go there are still piles of rubble reminders that time has not healed these wounds. In addition to the crumbling palace (imagine our White House cracked in two and laid bare for two years) and the endless tattered tent cities there is also a slum called Cite’ Solia (sp?). This slum was here before the earthquake and will be here for a long long time. It has 300 thousand people living in it, if you call that living. No sanitation. No clean anything. No running water. No sewers. Nothing but grime and stench. It was hell to look at. I mean it. Hell! It was hell to smell it. It was hell to drive past it. I can’t imagine what it must be like to no nothing else of life itself. How long? (see last night’s post).
After driving through the city we went back to the Good Sam Home for Girls. The boys joined us and we laughed and played water balloons. Ky Colestock brought some great beads and supplies to make bracelets. The girls loved it! My girls would have loved it too. I’m going to bring them here as soon as they are old enough! Get ready Karis and Addy. The Hempels brought cardboard cars for us to assemble with the boys. I helped Junior make his. You can see a picture on my FB. We had a blast! The contrast between PAP and the love and hope that exists in the orphanage is amazing. After that valley it was great to have a mountain to stand on for a few hours!
Ok. That’s the gist of yesterday. Today we go back to Canaan!
Peace
jon
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hi dad.i liked your blogging agan.ever since i read engage in haiti day 4 PAP take 1 i feel really really really really sad for haiti.i really miss you.i lost 2 teeth wile you were gone.i love you
love
karis