Church

The last group was in mentioned in their devotions and debriefs at the end of the day…at home there is no way we would come to a church service that lasted more than an hour. Okay, maybe and hour and fifteen minutes but really many of us would be very squirmy by then. Here the services last2.5 hours easily and everyone is there. Present, not just attending (ok that is a generalization and probably not true of everyone). And there is participation. The hymns are sung with force, to be heard. The prayers are not passive—the congregation adds their voice to the leader (who prays into the microphone) and prays out loud until they are finished…to our ears it sounds like a classroom of children all talking at the same time—and it is! We are God’s children but he can hear all of us whereas we only hear the chaos. Arms are raised and waving, or people are on their knees with their heads bowed on the pew, or facing the wall with head inclined to speak up to God. Often the prayers start with a verse of a psalm said together such as Psalm 121:1-2

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—

    where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord,

    the Maker of heaven and earth 

It was also pointed out that at home we are often late for church, rushing breakfast, running out the door, to barely make it in on time. Here we are on Haitian time (things run late) but people have been preparing for Sunday at least since Saturday. Yes they might be late but it is not because they didn’t get out of bed on time or found something else to do. Often the sun hadn’t come up yet and they didn’t feel it was safe to leave yet (a reason for these walls of the community center). On Saturdays women do their hair and their daughter’s hair. (Haitian hair doesn’t get washed every day as the texture is different and takes more time to do.) Clothes are ironed and pulled out the day before. When they get to church they will be there for a full morning—church service and Sunday school. There are separate churches for adults and children and so many Sunday school classes—there aren’t enough classrooms to hold all of the different classes so that many of the adult classes take place in the sanctuary—each class gets about 5 pews with the teacher standing backwards to teach his/her pews and 2 behind them is the next class. I don’t know how they learn anything with all the noise from all over but they seem to.

It is a different feel to go to church. The praise seems real in a way that is so different from home. The desire to be at church, to worship, to not confine God to just this space and time. But it is a mindset that anyone can have (to be in the moment, to praise the Maker of Creation, to revel in the beauty and community that surrounds us), we just have to work on it where ever we are.