C'est Pour Vous!

Today was the Fete Des Familles - a party for the families of prisoners - hosted by the Global Ministries mission partner here in Guadeloupe. My daughter Bethany has been serving here as a missionary  for two years and she came up with the idea for this party.  Many people worked very hard to make this day a success, to create a day of joy for these families who live with a lot of stress.  And it was a huge success!  Over 120 people came and enjoyed food, drinks, music, games, a bounce house and a clown.  So many people expressed profound appreciation for this event.  Some of them were even tearful.  The title for this post came from my favorite moment of the day.  A woman who had come to the prison to visit her son looked around at the festivities - balloons, food, games - and she timidly asked one of the volunteers, "What is happening here today?  Who is this for?"  The volunteer, Katy, smiled and threw her arms open wide. "C'est pour vous!" (It's for you!)

I'll post some of my favorite photos with descriptions.  However, to protect the privacy of the families, I wasn't able to take photos of all the smiles and all the beautiful faces we saw today.  The faces you see in the photos belong mainly to volunteers and their families. 

The day began at 8 am when the volunteers arrived to set up tents, the bounce house, the DJ table and the food and drinks table.  I was in charge of blowing up balloons so please take a moment to admire them.  Saturday is a busy day with many families coming to the prison to visit loved ones so we set up the event in the space behind the family visitor center.

Men a Lespwa is the organization that sponsored this event.  They are somehow connected with and not connected at all with the Reformed Church in France (The Global Ministries partner).  It's too complicated for me to figure out how they're separate so I'll just say this: except for Bethany's two friends, this event was staffed with volunteers from her local congregation.  Above is the schedule for the day.

The food! The drinks!  So good and so French!  There were pastries and quiches and a cake (with no frosting).  They also served candy and cookies and sausage (yep, sausage).  And olives. And pickles. And peanuts. And watermelon.  It was the strangest party assortment I've ever seen but people loved it.  The drinks were all donated by a local business so I got to try licorice-flavored pop.  It tastes exactly as you imagine.

In Guadeloupe, clowns are a serious business.  I mean, they make good money.  Better-than-ministry money.  So they're very good.  This clown performed inside the family center.  Notice the beautiful mural painted on the wall featuring scenes from historic Guadeloupe.  (I discovered today that a fear of clowns is apparently universal because one crying child refused to go in and watch the show.)

There were silly outdoor games like velcro tag and two games involving silly dancing.  In the first one, the partners had to dance with an orange between them (that's a mother-son team in the photo).  In the other game, teams danced on an open newspaper but each time the music stopped,  they had to fold the paper in half and have one less foot touching down.  The photo above shows how they got creative after two folds and losing two feet per team.  The last photo is just regular old dancing - you know, the Whip and Nae Nae and the other dances the young people are doing these days.

This is what the day was all about.  Families had an opportunity to write messages to their loved ones in prison.  Children drew pictures of themselves.  Grandmothers told their grandchildren that they are praying for them.  The messages were written to parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, children and grandchildren.

We have families like these living all around us, too.  Their suffering is invisible but just as real.  How wonderful to spend a day telling them, "We see you.  We know your struggle.  Let us treat you to a special day."  It was a tough, sweaty day of ministry but the Church was here doing what the Church does best - loving people with the outrageous, abundant, inclusive love of Jesus.  So glad I got to be a part of it!