Haiti - Day 6

Days 4 and 5 were a whole lot of "lets wait and see"....and it was long and boring.   We entered Day 6 with a plan.   We slept in until 8am or so, then had another breakfast of scorching hot eggs and Haitian bread.  We were out of Nutella at this point, but we had peanut butter and jelly, so all was well.

After breakfast we had another time of praise and worship and a devotional.    Then we moved into several rousing rounds of bingo!  Yes, bingo.  We'd brought it to play with the younger kids at one of the orphanages, so why not put it to use, right?

After bingo (shoot me now), everyone spent time swimming and preparing for out variety show!   The swimming was of course fun, but really started getting old when you had no other choice, so we wanted to spice it up.   We scheduled the variety show for 6pm and invited the other team and staff to be part of the audience and to think of their own act if they were so inclined.

Dinner was around 5pm, again we had beans and rice and this time it was served with goat, spicy but really good.  Again our interpreter and the staff did a great job of finding food and bottled water for all of us.   Because of these great folks, and God's blessings, most people probably never realized there was a risk of doing without either.

The variety show was an outright scream!   We didn't want to call it a talent show, because not everyone has a "talent", but everyone has the ability to do something unique.   One guy did some old school break dancing, there were card tricks, really bad jokes, some VeggieTales songs, ballet moves (Olivia), yoga poses, ear wiggling (me), tricks, cartwheels and a crazy song about a dead skunk in the middle of the road.    The absolute best was a mock "strong woman" performance.   The gal broke a "log" (twig), ripped a ream of paper (maybe 3 sheets) and tore a fresh mango in half (she'd already sliced it).   The humor being that her husband really is one of those guys who can roll a frying pan and break bricks....it was just the funniest thing.  

Here comes God's handiwork again.   The young lady who was our "announcer" for the variety show went to get prizes from our stash of supplies, and while she was gone we announced to everyone that the next day was her birthday, and she'd resolved herself to not having a cake this year, but we asked for everyone to sing to her when she got back.   After the singing was over and everyone was doing their own thing, one of the guys from the other team comes over and whispers to me "Um....this is the craziest thing, but.....I have cake mix, and frosting in my suitcase."   WHAT??   How awesome is it, that God in advance had someone we'd never met, bring cake mix and frosting on a missions trip to Haiti??

We began to formulate a plan and just like that the two teams meshed, because everyone had a part to play in pulling off  operation "Surprise Birthday Cake".  

We also saw, for the first time, planes leaving the airport.   These were flying in the opposite directions than usual, taking off away from the city instead of heading over the city, but we were still encouraged to see a few planes taking off.