Haiti - Day 4 (Spencer Karges)

So in the middle of writing this blog for the first time, I kinda sorta spilled 7-up all over Eddie’s Mac. If there was ever a moment in my life when I felt completely like garbage, that was it. Which is really kinda funny, because two nights ago I had been telling the group at devotions about how I really struggle with pride. I’ve heard people tell me that God uses crap to clean you up, but that statement became very real just now. I wasn’t planning on blogging about this at all but I’m thinking God was reminding me about a little something, plus it really brings me to what I had set out to write about.

At devotions that same night I really got to know the other people in our group. A lot of people showed sides of themselves that I had never seen or even thought I would see. I had been worrying about whether or not our group would come together and what I could do to contribute to that because I’m just that holy. God kind of shut me up by reminding me He’s sovereign.

So now on to what Eddie asked me to write about—Day 4! Definitely the best day so far, which says a lot because this whole trip has blown my mind. The expectations I had were blown out of the water, but in addition to being Day 4, it was also Day 2 of VBS. I can speak for everyone that we have never had this much fun goofin’ off with a bunch of Haitians. We’ve all had a blast because even though we feel out of place, the people of Haiti have done everything possible to make us feel otherwise.

For VBS, I was in the Games group, where we tried to (through Nego, our translator) explain some fairly simple, but crazy fun group games. To American kids who are hooked to XBOX and PS3, these games would’ve seemed below them, but to these kids the games were a treasure, and they definitely ransacked it. Their laughter and smiles were contagious and made all of us white people have just as much fun. Speaking of fun, we learned later that night that there is no Creole word for fun. It really makes you wonder what kind of history these people have had. It’s heartbreaking.

But just because there’s no word for fun doesn’t mean they don’t know how to have it. Last night was spontaneity at its best. After dinner we all started singing and dancing and playing games: just a spur of the moment kind of thing. We started on the balcony and them migrated to the porch downstairs where Travis, Patrick (a HCH kid), Brad and I started playing some music with an old guitar and some makeshift drums. Danny and Eddie, our fearless leaders, lead us in a song of worship: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song. It was awesome. After the crazy dance party, Leanne decided to splash us all from the reservoir next to the porch. As you can probably guess, this escalated very quickly. I hate to admit it but soon after I foresaw the water war, I, along with Eddie and Travis and some other pansies ran inside to stay dry. The problem is Danny is very perseverant. He didn’t stop until everyone was thrown in the water… including me.

But after we all got crazy, we broke out the guitar again (which was missing a very important D string) and we sang some worship songs in English because us white people were too incompetent to sing in Creole. I stumbled through playing guitar, but I’m sure God heard it all and smiled.
Well I’m off to change all the strings on Danny’s guitar. I can’t wait to talk to you all when we get back.

-Spencer

P.S. Eddie’s computer is still broken so be praying we can fix it. So no pictures for now they were on the Mac.