Creole Service in Nashville

A couple months ago I found out that a Haitian congregation meets at Nashville First CON. It was just amazing to discover that although we are a thousand miles from home, brothers and sisters of the same "lang" (language) are meeting just an hour away. After several attempts to find out details about when and where services were being held, I spoke with a very nice church secretary a couple weeks ago who told me they have services on Sunday mornings at 9AM and Sunday evenings at 5PM.
By around 8:00 yesterday (Sunday) morning, the kids and I were on the road to Nashville. Knowing that in both Latin and Haitian churches (and probably many others) it is customary for guests to say a word to the congregation, the kids and I began thinking of maybe a chorus to sing in Creole. Memorized songs can actually be easier than impromptu greetings because you have all of the correct words memorized. :)
Sunday school actually started at 9:00, so the three of us joined the ladies' class....although since Kyle and Megan discovered that most of the kids speak English they might be tempted to the children's class next time. Of course it took a minute to remember some of the proper greetings.....Bon jou. Ki jan ou ye? Bondye bene ou..... The ladies were very kind, and pretty soon we found our Creole tongues again. :) The lesson was on Acts 1:1-14 and focused on our "Jerusalem"....ministering to the people who are around us...being content to wait in our Jerusalem even when the situation is difficult.
We moved on to church and ended up sitting next to one of the tambourine players. :) Of course the singing is one thing I miss most about our church in Haiti. This congregation projects the words of the songs they sing onto the wall, so we could sing along even though we did not have our Chants D' Esperance song book. The most meaningful thing was when four teen girls sang "Because He Lives" in English and Creole. That brought back memories of a sound byte Todd's cousin "accidentally" captured of displaced quake victims singing the same hymn on the Nazarene campus one night in February.
http://www.nazarenemedialibrary.org/MediaView.aspx?mediaId=3479e093-7de7-41af-af1c-6ea27362bcc9
The message was from John 5 about the crippled man at the Pool of Bethesda, especially focusing on Jesus' question, "Do you want to get well?"
What a special time of fellowship we had after the service, too. It was fun to see people sticking around to visit. Although the kids still do not know enough Creole to understand the whole service, people did take time to use a little English and talk to them about the things they do know.

The rest of the afternoon was spent with Todd's younger brother and family. We never seem to have pictures of those cousins playing together, and yesterday I figured out the reason!! They do not stand still long enough for us to get anything more than a blur. :) Megan has a great time dressing up with the youngest, Sally. Kyle, Brent and Zach are usually building forts out of blankets, chasing each other with plastic swords or chasing the squealy girls. Dale and Rose (the parents) are our all-time favorite game-playing friends (although the Whites in Haiti were becoming close rivals for that position before we left), and we can usually twist Samantha's arm to play with us. She is such a sweetie.....even though she officially became a teenager last year. Yikes! We are thankful for all of the family God has placed around us and allowed us to spend more time with recently.