Easter Contrasts

In the community of Saint-Louis du Nord, where the mission is located, Easter is arguably the largest religious holiday of the year. The mission holds a sunrise service at 5:30 am, followed by another church service later in the morning. I awoke at around 2am to the sounds of shouting and singing from the street below my window. Thousands of children and their parents were lined up at the mission gates, waiting to come in for the service.

Of course, there are other motives besides worship that bring many to the gates. Each Easter, the mission prepares thousands of peanut-butter sandwiches and cups of hot chocolate to give away to anyone who comes to the sunrise service. It is an opportunity for hungry people not enrolled in the mission’s feeding programs to come and eat.

It can also be chaotic. Well intentioned women slipping an extra sandwich to just one person can incite panic, as happened this morning. No one was in much danger, to be sure, but the melee was enough to make one or two visiting Americans cry – perhaps not so much at the clamor, but at the overwhelming neediness that drives desperate people to fight over a piece of bread.

When the confusion settled and I’d eaten a modest breakfast myself, I went to a beautiful morning church service, where a Haitian choir sang painstakingly rehearsed songs and someone preached a passionate message about life and death. And many of the very Haitians who were fighting for food just two hours earlier stood waving their hands in worship. It was an apt illustration of Haiti: A people who struggle every day just to survive, and when church starts, they find in it an opportunity to release all the weight and tension of that existence.

In Haiti, most people worship quite fervently at church. With some, it is genuine God worship. With others, it is an eagerly awaited chance to free themselves, if only temporarily. And yet, if you do find a Haitian who truly grasps the power of Easter, you will find someone who really knows that his or her circumstances on this Earth are not of much importance in the eyes of eternity.

I was blessed to be here for Easter. Tomorrow, I’m blessed that my brother, John, will be arriving here to spend a few days with me in what will be his first trip out of the United States. I’m looking forward to sharing some experiences with him and hearing his first impressions of the developing world.



Above: A crowd fights for bread at a feeding center in Saint-Louis du Nord, Haiti, on Easter morning. Andy Olsen photo