DAY 7 (January 8, 2012)

This morning we attended Church at Pastor Luc’s home church.  Our group and Rachelle Hope’s group shared a few songs this morning during the service and we once again joined together and sang the song, “Come Now Is The Time To Worship”.  Allan then shared a message with the congregation through translation of Pastor Luc.  At the end of the service, Allan invited those in the church who had needs that they wished to be prayed over to come to the front and our team laid hands on them and prayed for them.  They were so thankful for the specific prayers that we said for each of them even though they couldn’t understand the language we were speaking.  After church we headed back to the hotel, had lunch there and had some time to rest and relax for a few hours.  Some of the guys and Jamaica decided to cool off in the pool that we were so lucky to have at our place.  I helped Sara for a little while put together bracelets that we are going to distribute to the children at the orphanage tomorrow.  We then headed to the festival grounds about the same time as we did last night to make sure we would miss the crazy rush hour.  We got there, set-up, and once again had a decent amount of time for each group to sound check.  The festival tonight was AMAZING!  I told Charlie last night that my hope for the final night of the festival (tonight), was for the entire field to be completely covered with people so that no dirt on the stadium grounds could be seen.  At first there were spots throughout the field and towards the back that were open, but by about half way through the evening the field was entirely covered with people.  It is estimated that about 8,000 people were present at the festival tonight, not including those on the streets that may have been listening and those in their homes on the mountains that overlooked the field.  GOD IS GOOD or as they say in Creole…Bonj Bon!  Tonight there was a large Haitian choir that started out the night, both of our bands shared, and minus a brief power outage during Rachelle’s set things went great.  Allan once again shared a message and Jon did several bike tricks.  Tonight as Jon first shared a few of his simple tricks with the audience, we quickly realized that the crowd was out of control and “crowd control” was not going to be possible.  Several of our team members were on the field trying to keep the crowds back so that Jon had room to build up speed and land safely, but eventually they were told to just head back up on to the stage as the people were not listening.  Josh told the people over and over again from that stage that as much as they would like to see Jon do his tricks and back flip on the ramp, he would not be performing tonight unless they MOVED BACK….all the way back behind the rope and moved from underneath the stage.  It took quite a while and a lot of convincing from Josh on stage and many translators to get some of the people to move back.  The people never moved completely back as we needed, but Jon was convinced that he was going to make it work.  Following the festival, some individuals hopped into the back of Pastor Luc’s truck that we had parked on the field, and they began to distribute or should I say “throw out” the “Books of Hope” that we had brought.  The Books of Hope are magazines in Creole that share the gospel through bible passages and short stories.  Immediately riots broke out and people were crazily grabbing for a book.  You could tell that these people were just desperate to receive anything.  We hope and pray that the people who did received one of these magazines that night took it  home and actually read through it and shared with others.  To be honest, tonight I was a little worried that the stage might collapse as there were a TON of people on the stage between the choir, our whole team, pastors of the city, and several others that hoped up to watch Jon as he performed his bike tricks.  Us ladies on the team were quickly escorted off the stage and the men tore down the sound systems and equipment as fast as they could-but the stage held out and actually felt pretty solid yet at the end of the night.  Also, before I left the festival tonight, the young man I met a couple days ago that I told you about-Stanley, gave me a letter and told me it was nice to meet me.  Our team then managed to escape the mobs of people and we headed to a local Domino's to pick up some pizza’s to take back to the hotel and eat while we had devotions and debriefed for the night.  Tonight was the only night I felt it sprinkle lightly as we sat outside the hotel for our debriefing.  I was pretty exhausted tonight after the festival and more than ready to hit the sack.