Blogging doesn't come naturally for me, but for the next week I have a reason to do so. Andrea and I are in Haiti with an organisation called Compassion who are showing us around some of the projects they have set up in partnership with local churches. It is our first time into one of the poorest countries in the world. Each day I will give a brief idea of what we've been up to.

Today was surprising. We met Pastor Ivan (I don't know how his name is spelt!) who leads a church in an area called Delmas in Port-au-Prince. An amazing pioneer who has grown a huge church that is seeking to radically transform its community through child sponsorship. They work with 500 children as part of their child development program all chosen from the poorest families in their area. Their main building was intact after the earthquake but some of the others they had collapsed. They have temporary 'buildings' (walls with tarpaulin sheets for the roof) that double as classrooms during the week and a worship space on sunday.

Every sunday they have three services, at each service they have some people meeting for worship on the ground floor, some on the second and others on the third floor. Each service is three hours long. the pastor said his church loves to worship! All together there are 8000 people in his church. At every service they will see 50-70 people come to Jesus and the church has grown by 3000 since the earthquake. Pastor Ivan said that when the earthquake came people thought it was jesus coming back and that has made them reconsider what they think about Jesus. This humble, visionary Pastor is looking to raise $3million to build a worship space for 25,000 people and he has already bought some of the land around his current church to enable growth to happen.

Today was surprising because I thought I would be talking about kids and poverty and despair. Instead I'm talking about hope and vision. Amidst the rubble and dire poverty God is moving powerfully. That really shouldn't be a surpise should it!