Saturday: After 5 years of having church on Saturday, I am thrilled to have my Saturdays free again.

This past Saturday, I took 6 of the boys to pick up 6 new pews for church. We delivered and set them up for church on Sunday. It was fun trying to figure out how to set up the 30 pews we now have, plus some school benches we use along with chairs.
It took about an hour to get it perfect and ready for church. As we headed home, we stopped at our favorite Haitian restaurant and had, you guessed it, Chicken and rice, along with a cold Coke.
After a great meal, we went home and later that night had our Saturday family grill out, burgers and hotdogs. A very peaceful, restful, fun day.

Sunday: We left our house at 8am. We only had one truck since the other was involved in an accident. We arrived at church and I was shocked when I saw that over 100 people were already at church, 90 minutes early. I reasonsed this meant a huge crowd to follow.

I was not wrong as they came and came and came. Pastor Joel Trimble who showed a movie Friday night, came back to preach. I had time to chat with Joel before our staff prayer time. Then it was church. The church was packed, every seat was taken and I had to ask the men to be gentlemen and give up their seats for the ladies.

Final count for church, 505 people. Wow and wow! While sitting there I calculated we can get 7 more benches in the tent and that is it. We don't want to squeeze people in to the seats. The 7 additional benches will give us room to move around.

With the additional benches we will be able to get over 600 people in our tent, and that is it. We know this will happen and are already talking about how to have a 2nd service. One problem in Haiti is these wonderful people don't want to miss anything and they will come to both services, which will not solve our problem.

Okay, that is all bells and whistles, let me get to the good stuff, the stuff that counts. Pastor Joel Trimble, director of the Haiti for Christ mission was our speaker. What a great job he did and once again, many responded to the call of the Gospel. Our pastor Roger got all their names and we are ready for round two, discipleship.

All in all, we had around 60 people come forward on Friday night and Sunday morning to accept Christ or re-dedicate their lives. How exciting is that?

I have to admit I don't know why the people are coming like they are, but I know this, I feel a special blessing over that tent, and I feel God working in a mighty way.

Our visiting Pastor Joel who has been in Haiti for years made these comments to me, after church:

"Tom, you have a special group of people here, you have a special staff and, they have a special leader."

"Don't think small when it comes to building that new church, your plans are for a church for 800, don't build one that can hold less than 2000, this is a special place."

"You could not do what you are doing if you did not have this well trained staff."

I thank Pastor Joel for his encouraging words and for his willingness to help however they can. Praise God for Godly servants like the Trimbles.

As usual after church I was depleted of all my energy. We haven't figured out what to do for Sunday meals yet so are winging it each week. This week I gave the older boys each 5 dollars and Manel drove them to a nearby restaurant for, surprise, chicken and rice.

I fixed a sandwich and spaghetti for the little ones. I don't think I left the couch for 5 hours. I was beat.

Thank you for your prayers. I know you may be sick of hearing about our tent and church and all that but, this is the moment we are in. This is what God has placed on our plate...................for such a time as this. And we are responding. We are still shinning the light at all the points of light but Victory Bible church finally is becoming the center light of our ministry, like it should be. tominhaiti