March, July, October, & December 2009
March 2009
Greetings from Haiti, in the name of Jesus!
Since our last newsletter, God opened doors and things moved unbelievably fast. In the last newsletter, we told you about the new Church building that the Lord provided through some generous supporters. The building components were delivered to Tulsa, Oklahoma in December and we loaded everything into a container and shipped it to Haiti. The container arrived at House of Compassion on January 6th. On January 8th, Zack Rash arrived from Oklahoma to oversee construction of the building. Zack and I put up the red iron that supports the walls and we were ready for the installation of the beams when a group of workers arrived from Indiana. During the week they were here, the group from Indiana assembled the building. The afternoon they left, another group from Oklahoma, Missouri and Illinois arrived to trim the building, do the electrical work, install the air conditioners, etc.
Over 220 people attended our first service on January 25th, as Brother Randy Perry from Amber, Oklahoma dedicated the new Church. I am amazed at the speed the building was erected and how beautiful this new facility is. We are especially blessed to have air conditioning in the new Church. To my knowledge we are the second Church in Haiti to have air conditioning! Every time I enter the building I am reminded that we serve an awesome God! On October 1st 2008, we didn’t even have property to put a Church building on and by the end of January 2009 we were worshipping in this beautiful new facility, praise the Lord! I strongly believe that the Lord brought things together so quickly because he is coming back very soon to take his children home!
Since the first service on January 25th, we have had 55 people come forward to receive salvation! The Haitians in this area are ready for a change of heart. It is so exciting to see the people coming forward to receive Jesus Christ as their personal Savior!
We have two services on Sundays, Kids service on Tuesday night, Wednesday night Bible study and Thursday night youth service. We have been averaging around 150 on Sunday.
We scheduled a Crusade/Revival for the last week of February, to coincide with Mardi gras. We knew there would be plenty of celebrations for satan, so we wanted to have a Crusade to give satan a black eye! I started the Crusade on Sunday February 22nd and preached through Thursday night. On Friday, Brother Darrell Meadow arrived from Claremore, Oklahoma to wrap up the Crusade. Brother Meadow preached Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning and Sunday night. Each service got better and better and the crowds grew larger at each service. We had almost 300 people in the final Sunday evening service. During the Crusade we had 36 people come forward to receive Salvation. Sunday night, the Lord really moved and many were touched by Him. Sunday night was the most powerful service we have ever been in here in Haiti, it was GREAT! I believe this is just the beginning of what God has in store for this area and for Haiti.
We are planning special Easter services so pray with us for these services. Please remember to pray for Missions in Haiti every day; God is doing a great work in Haiti!
We mentioned the need for pews in our last newsletter. We needed 40 to fill the church and we have already purchased 20. We need another 20 pews @ $360.00 each.
50 and counting! As you may recall from our last newsletter, we opened another home for boys last September. The urgent need for this home resulted from the hurricanes that devastated Haiti last year. We now have 14 boys in the new home and 36 children in our home—a total of 50 kids that we care for daily. Sometimes this responsibility is overwhelming and we are shocked when we look at our grocery bills, but when a catastrophic need like this arises, what are God’s people supposed to do? The new boys suffer from malnutrition as you can see on the enclosed photo page. Look at the photo of Jean-Baptiste and Samuel, Jean is 6 years old and Sam is 2 years old and they wear the same size clothes! With proper nutrition, Jean-Baptiste will begin to grow and make up for the years when his growth was stunted because of a lack of food.
Now with the Church complete, we would like to build a new school house next door to the Church, on that same property. We know the Lord will provide in his perfect time, but I would like to start the next school year in a new facility. We plan to erect a three story building with four classrooms on each floor. It will cost around $60,000.00 for the basic building and around $40,000.00 more to complete the project. Once it is “under roof” we can begin using the building as a school house. The building will also serve as classrooms for Sunday school and Children’s Church on Sunday morning. Please pray with us about this need.
Thank you for your continued support, this work could not go forward without your financial support and your prayer support. Please pray for us and for Haiti every day. Time is short, invite a neighbor to go to Church with you, witness to someone at work. There is a lot to be done at home as well as on the mission field. Jesus is coming soon!
May God richly bless you!
July 2009
Greetings from Haiti in the name of Jesus!
The weather here in Haiti is about the same October through May. Because of this it is easy to forget what time of year it is during those months. But when June arrives there isn’t any doubt, its summertime in Haiti! At 8:00 P.M. it is still around 90 degrees in our house and it doesn’t cool down much during the night.
We arrived stateside June 30th and we plan to spend the next six weeks travelling and telling everyone we can the good news about Missions in Haiti and how God is moving in Haiti. This summer we will be in Oklahoma, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Iowa and Texas. Please pray that God will grant us travelling mercy as we drive the many miles and pray that we will be able to raise operating funds needed for the coming year.
We wrapped up our school year June 12th for the 800 children who attend our three schools. All 800 kids are excited about summer vacation and they are glad that they don’t have to worry about school for the next couple months. We had a great school year and most of our 800 kids plan to return to school this fall. We have a large waiting list of kids who would love to attend Good Hope school. Word is out that Good Hope school is the school to attend if you want your children to receive a good Christian education. We are excited about the opportunity to share the Word of God with 800 children and to know that they are learning from the Bible everyday!
We spent the last couple weeks making preparations for next school year and I couldn’t help but think about the tremendous need for a school building here in the area where we live. We started our third school out in this area because there were a large number of children who were unable to attend school simply because their parents couldn’t afford to send them. We rented a three bedroom home and turned it into a school house. There are nine classrooms in the house, outside the house and in the yard. There isn’t a larger building available in this area and our school house is extremely crowded with 220 children! We have been forced to turn children away because we do not have room for them and turning kids away is extremely difficult for us to do, that is not why we are here!
On the property where we built the Church of Good Hope, there is an area large enough to accommodate a three-story, twelve room school building. A new school building will give us a lot more room and much better learning conditions for the kids. This expansion will provide us with the room we need in order to school all the kids in this area.
This is an urgent need, we have the property but we need funds to pay for the building. I would love to pour the foundation for the new Good Hope School building this coming August. We will need $20,000.00 for the foundation and then we can go up with the walls as the Lord provides! Please pray with us about this pressing need, it would mean so much to this area to have a new school building ready for the 2010-2011 school year. Since the building will be right next door to the Church, the classrooms will also serve as Sunday school rooms and an area for Children’s Church. I can assure you that the building will be fully utilized!
The Lord is moving in the new Church! Several people have accepted Christ as their personal Savior each month since the Good Hope Church opened. Recently, a supporter donated enough tile to completely floor the new Church building. The tile was laid in June and it really adds to the beauty of God’s house! We are excited about the ongoing improvements. I was truly blessed by our Church members in May. When we knew the tile was en route to Haiti, I asked our Church to help with the new flooring by bringing a special offering to pay for the cement and sand needed to install the tile. They responded by bringing a total of $1,200.00 Haitian dollars ($150.00 U.S.) on top of their tithes and offerings. This doesn’t sound like much, but keep in mind that the few who have jobs work for a couple of dollars a day! These people gave sacrificially and I know the Lord will bless them for their giving.
I want to thank all of our faithful supporters for your ongoing support. We realize from reading the news and talking with people back home, that things in the United States have become a little stressful due to the current economic climate. We thank you for your prayers and your sacrificial giving to Missions in Haiti. I want you to know that the 800 children in school, the 57 children who are in our care, the 60 Haitian employees who work for Missions in Haiti and Alicia and I truly appreciate all that you do for us and for Haiti. We are blessed by the e-mail letters that we get from people thanking us for what we do, but we couldn’t do what we do here in Haiti if it weren’t for you! Most of all Jesus appreciates what you do to help spread the gospel to a dying and lost world! Every day it becomes more obvious that Jesus is coming very soon! Thank you so much for your prayers and your financial support! May God richly bless you.
PS--Farm update, the Tilapia are growing and reproducing rapidly. All 57 children and our employees at the two homes eat Tilapia every Thursday. Sometimes they get a filet and sometimes they get a whole fish. Everyone here loves Tilapia.
PPS--We no longer have a mailing address in Florida. The only address for Missions in Haiti is the Claremore, Oklahoma address at the top of this letter. Please do not send anything to Florida, all correspondence must be sent to the Claremore, OK address or it will not reach Missions in Haiti. If you would like to send your child a Christmas gift, all gifts must be sent to Claremore and should arrive early December.
October 2009
Our 2009-2010 school year is underway, praise the Lord! The hard work paid off when all three schools opened on September 7th.
To all of you who sponsor students in our schools, a special “THANK YOU”! Without you it would be impossible for the 754 children in this program to go to school and get a good Christ-centered education. You are helping make a huge difference in the lives of these kids.
Missions in Haiti has grown a tremendous amount during the past two years and because of this growth, we failed to communicate with our school sponsors as well as we should have. We appreciate your patience with us! We are pleased to announce that Trish Adams has accepted the responsibility for reporting to our student sponsors. Trish will be sending out pictures and up-to-date information on the kids in the school sponsorship program. We are grateful for Trish, she has been with us two years in the role of Teacher at our ACE school here at House of Compassion. We appreciate her hard work and all that she has done.
We really appreciate the Bible Holiness print shop in Neosho, Missouri; they printed 36 cases of school material for us! We are excited as we use the new materials and the children are having fun with the “hands on” worksheets. It took a few years for us to fully understand the many weaknesses in the Haitian curriculum. The Haitian materials were developed many years ago and they have not been updated. Since Haiti is steeped in voodoo, the Haitian materials which are used in both secular and Christian schools are full of voodoo teachings and symbols. Over the years we weeded out many of the books filled with voodoo teachings. We also noticed that the Haitian materials offered no hands on activities or anything that required the children to think for themselves, nearly everything was memorization with no application to daily life. This past year, Alicia reworked the Haitian curriculum and included many of the things needed to help a child learn at his or her full capacity. Alicia took out all the voodoo teachings and replaced them with Biblical lessons. It has been a real treat watching the students and teachers learn from a whole new perspective!
Having said all that, I wanted to tell you that we have come to the realization that we need a printing press. Operating our own printing press would give us the capability to print school and Church material right here in Haiti and would provide some badly needed jobs for at least a few Haitian Christians.
There aren’t any printing shops here in Haiti that are cost effective for us to use and given the fact that we and many other missions organizations need a Christian print shop, we feel that it is God’s will for us to open one. We want to bring a small print shop back with us in our container this December. I received a quote of $15,000.00 from one company for a small but complete set-up. As fast as technology is changing in the United States, there is most likely a good, useable, but outdated printing shop that would serve our needs very well at a good price. Since we don’t know anything about printing, I am seeking good advice in this area. If you can offer suggestions please send your information via e-mail. Please join with us in prayer about this.
Regarding the construction of the new school building, we are just now in the process of breaking ground because funds for this project are coming in slowly. To date we received ½ or $10,000.00 of the $20,000.00 needed to pay for the foundation. I would like to have the foundation for the building completed by Christmas and then go up with the walls in January. Please pray with us about this urgent need! One of the toughest jobs I have ever had is turning away children that are hungry to learn-just because we don’t have the facilities for another class or room to expand the classes that we now have. The new school building will provide 11 additional classrooms which will allow many more Haitian children to attend a good Christian school.
Praise report! Due to the growth Missions in Haiti has experienced, we desperately needed another set of hands to help us with day to day operations. The Lord impressed Rachael Prihoda to come to Haiti and be that set of hands! Rachael is from Neosho, Missouri and her primary responsibility will be that of Teacher at the ACE school where Davy, Hannah and thirteen of our older Haitian children attend. During the two months that she has been here, Rachael has been a tremendous blessing not only in the classroom but also all around the House of Compassion! We appreciate the Lord for answering this prayer and providing for this need.
September 6th was the first anniversary of the Good Hope Church and we had a wonderful anniversary service. We looked back at all of the wonderful things that God has done for us in and through the Good Hope Church. We reflected upon our first worship services in a small house and how God provided a beautiful air-conditioned steel building for us to worship in! We thanked God for the 80 people who came forward for salvation during the first year! Two people who regularly attend Good Hope Church testified that God healed them! We also took a look forward at the things that we are asking God to do for us in the coming year. We are trusting and believing God for many more souls for His kingdom and we asked God to continue to bless Good Hope Church. We know God is always willing and able to do His part, but we must be willing to step-up and do our part! Beginning the first Monday in September, we started meeting at the Church Monday through Friday from 7:00 to 7:30 A.M.to pray for Haiti. At first it was mainly our staff and our older children, but God moved and now there are around 25 people meeting each morning to pray!
Thank you for your continued prayers and support for this work. As you may recall, many of our newsletters in the past said, “Haiti is the worst it has been during our time here”, but now as a result of prayer, Haiti is getting better and better, Praise the Lord! Crime rates are falling and the government is working on improving the infrastructure of the country. The political climate has stabilized. This is the direct result of God’s people praying and it feels real good to be able to report to you that Haiti is the best that it has been since we arrived here! Praise God!
May God richly bless and keep you! Thanks again for all you do for God’s work.
December 2009
If the old saying, “the more the merrier” is true, Christmas will be very merry here at the House of Compassion and at the Good Hope Boys Home! We now have a total of 59 children in our care, 39 here at House of Compassion and 17 boys in Good Hope Boys Home, plus our three. Alicia thinks we need to add one more child right away to make it an even 60! I told Alicia not to rush things, I’m certain #60 will come along soon enough!
Last month, one of our neighbors brought child number 59, Sebastien to us. Sebastien is a little two year boy who had three hernias, two of which needed immediate surgery. Sebastien’s mother abandoned him because he was sick and she couldn’t care for him. We were able to arrange for the hernia repair surgeries and now Sebastien is doing very well, he is making his presence known around the House of Compassion.
In our last newsletter I mentioned two areas of need and praise the Lord, both needs were met! We needed a printing press so that we could print many of the materials we use in our schools here in Haiti and Ozark Bible Institute in Neosho Missouri donated a printing press! Since the last newsletter, I have learned of ways to bring printing costs down considerably, so we went from a projected need of $15,000.00 to needing $4,000.00. The printing press and printing supplies will be shipped in a container that will ship out of Tulsa, Oklahoma next week. We should be able to have our printing operation up and running in January of 2010 and I am very excited about the potential this new venture offers. We still need a large quantity of printing paper and I am working on getting that together so that it can be shipped in the container.
The other area of need was for funds to get the new school building started. As soon as funds started coming in for the building we started construction! To date, the foundation, the first story walls, columns and beams are complete. The cost for this first phase of construction was $17,000.00 which was less than expected due to the fact that the price of steel has come down. The cost for the next two floors will be around $17,000.00 each. Please pray with us that the funds will continue to come in and we will be able to get this building project completed as soon as possible. This facility is badly needed and I assure you it will be put to good use. Alicia is already making plans for the next school year.
We are planning for a special week of services at Bon Espior Church, December 30th through January 3rd. The first of January is Haiti’s Independence Day and we are trusting God that many souls will be getting independence from satan during this revival! We are praying for and expecting great things.
We are currently stateside, gathering supplies to fill the container that will be shipped to Haiti next week. After the container leaves, we are looking forward to a spending a couple weeks with family and friends before we return to Haiti on December 25th.
Thank you for your prayers and for your financial support for Missions in Haiti. I know that 2009 has been a difficult year for many of you, but I am encouraged when I see the great things that have been accomplished for the Kingdom of Heaven during 2009! Your prayers, faithfulness and generosity have enabled us to continue to advance this work here in Haiti. There isn’t any way we could do what we do without you. May God richly bless you and your family. Have a very Merry Christmas and a great 2010!