In the past few weeks, Haiti has been impacted by a severe tropical storm, a cholera outbreak, and a 4.9 earthquake that has left the country–and its people–in shambles.
Charis Family,
Joy and I want to say hello as we pray that you all are healthy and that your families are doing well. My family and I are doing well as we just watched our youngest daughter, Tiara, graduate from Valparaiso University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. To fulfill the 1,000 hours of patient contact work as required before applying to Physician Assistant (PA) school, Tiara is now enrolling in classes to become certified to work as a nursing assistant. Our oldest daughter, Destinee, is working as a registered nurse (RN) at University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville in their Level 1 Trauma Center Emergency Room. She loves it and knows that she has found the profession that God wants for her. Our two sons, Ciaran and Kanye, completed their first year of college and will continue next year in their pursuits of becoming a missionary and a veterinarian respectively.
Joy and I feel blessed as our family is healthy and doing well. As another beautiful summer approaches, I pray that your families are also experiencing health, happiness, and grace from our Lord and Savior! While we all celebrate the successes of our children/grandchildren, the love in our families, and the periods of rest and vacation that the summer offers us, we unfortunately cannot celebrate in a mutual fashion with our brothers and sisters in Haiti. As I write this sitting at a coffee shop in Chicago, part of my heart soars with thankfulness and appreciation as I consider the comforts and freedom of our lives here, but the other part of my heart that resides in Haiti is saturated with a deep sadness and concern that I cannot ignore. This perturbs my mind to the point that I cannot experience peace because despite the goodness, satisfaction, comfort, and safety of our own lives, the Haitians who we deeply love, serve, and minister to are suffering greatly.
The need continues to grow
Joy and I are receiving countless daily messages from Haiti that are honestly becoming too great in scope and content to bear alone. In terms of specifics, there is honestly nothing you haven’t heard before as the same problems exist but continue to greatly intensify. Hunger is probably the biggest issue we are daily dealing with. The food that is available for purchase in the markets has become so expensive that buying it is outside the realm of possibility for many individuals and families. What many people will do is go and purchase a literal cup of rice and try to make it last as long as possible.
When we first moved to Haiti, we had a family who lived next door to us, and they became dear friends of ours. The father of that family died several years ago and now the mother (named Amid), and her children live together in a very small home. One of the daughters is nicknamed Ti-mama, and Ti-mama has a baby. We received a desperate call from them earlier this week begging us for help as they hadn’t eaten for two days, and that included the baby. This is just one of countless calls we get that contain the same heart-breaking requests that represent the reality of Haitian life right now.
Medical concerns
We also are receiving many calls concerning sickness. Per the last newsletter you all know that we have built and established a medical clinic in one of our poorest communities. The calls we are receiving are from the poorest brothers and sisters who are in urgent need of medicine. This is resulting in us having to purchase large quantities of medication just to keep up with the need. In February we had to send more than $1,500 to restock medications that had been distributed freely to those patients who, due to their extreme poverty, could not receive help from anywhere else. Then in May another $2,700 in medications were used and are now needing to be restocked. We are also dealing with many single mother families who are being threatened with homelessness due to their inability to pay the rent. This situation is overly prevalent at this time due to the large fire that destroyed the biggest outdoor market in our area last month. Many of our single mothers worked in that market selling their goods, and on that tragic morning they woke up ready to go to work for the day only to find their inventory destroyed along with their hopes to feed their families that day. There are many additional stories to tell, but I don’t want to depress and distress you anymore.
This desperate situation in Haiti is leading many to attempt to flee to find work and food in other countries. The problem with this is that the trips are incredibly dangerous as the small wooden boats used to flee are overcrowded, overweight, and are entering waters that are monitored heavily by coast guards and other military groups who will intercept the boats. Many Haitians have died trying to leave Haiti like this. If they do make it to the destination country, they are far from being met with open arms as many can’t find the work they hoped to find. They end up starving just like before, or in the worst-case scenarios, find themselves as victims of abuse, discrimination, and working under conditions and wages that could accurately be described as modern-day slavery.
God uses us to answer Haitian prayers
At this point I had a whole paragraph of verses and passages from the Bible instructing us to help the poor in their need, but as I read over it, I found it patronizing and somewhat condescending as I am well aware that I am not dealing with brothers and sisters in Christ who need any reminders of these things. I’m ashamed that I had that momentary lapse of judgement—I should know better, as we have all been working together in this ministry for many years and all of you have always revealed how great your love is for Haiti and its people through your enduring interest, prayers, and action.
I am humbly asking all of you exactly what I am asking of Joy and myself, and that is to consider inquiring of God how we all can help through prayer and finances to alleviate our brothers and sisters in Haiti who are in great need at this moment. The most beautiful part of the gospel for me is the doctrine of adoption. The fact that God becomes our Father following His adoption of us into His family through His saving of us, leads to the additional fact that we all, as Christians, become spiritual brothers and sisters on a global scale (since ethnicity and nationality are no longer a determining factor in our siblingship).
Our brothers and sisters are in need, and they are desperately crying out to God for help. We know that God hears them, and His answer is manifested through every one of us who is reading this letter. This is our assignment as God’s Sovereignty has chosen us all to serve Haiti—this is our collective mission work. To serve the Haitians in this way should not be looked at as a sacrifice, but rather an honor as God could have chosen anyone to serve His poorest children in the Western Hemisphere, but He chose us—you and Joy and me! You all make this ministry possible, and I cannot put into words how much we thank you.
Please consider helping with both prayer and finances so that we can bless and provide for these wonderful people who have done nothing wrong to be in such a difficult country. I want to sincerely thank you in advance. Our Haitian brothers and sisters are waiting for God to answer their cries, and God is asking us to be an answer to their prayers—let’s answer in grand fashion and show the Haitian church what loving your neighbor as yourself really looks like. We love you all, and it is such a blessing to be able to reach out to all of you and make you aware of what is occurring on the ground in Haiti. God bless all of you and your families—have a blessed summer and we will keep you all informed. Thank you!
I know that all of you have been seeing Haiti in the news with increased frequency lately, and many of you have messaged us asking about the situation in our villages. I apologize for not having communicated with all of you over the last few weeks, but the needs and difficulties amongst the Haitian people are currently all-consuming, in terms of our time and efforts, and we greatly appreciate all of your understanding and prayers concerning our family and the Haitian people.
Well, it has been a very turbulent last year for Joy and I, for Jameson and Jordan and for all our brothers and sisters in Haiti secondary to the protests, political unrest, hurricanes and of course the virus. Because it has been so crazy, I am afraid that we have not done a very good job of letting you know all that’s happening on the ground in Haiti. Although we have met with many trials and tribulations this past year, the followers of Christ in Haiti are resilient and many programs have been birthed through these hardships! We thought we would write this blog to fill in the gaps and to bring you up to date. Thank you for all your prayers.
The question must be addressed, “how do we, as individuals and local assemblies, work together to fulfill this calling of the universal Church?” Of course, Christ has seen fit to equip His bride for this very work. In perfect wisdom, God has ordained offices and roles for governing and leading His church. However, God has also instituted other roles, within different spheres of authority. All of these, ideally, are to work together, unified under Christ, to carry out that great wartime initiative of the Great Commission, with one chief end in mind—subdue creation, bringing it under Christ’s authority, so we might know Him, enjoy Him, and glorify Him forever.
In the last entry of this series we took the first big step in identifying the personal calling and equipping of God. We took care to ask, and answer, the question of the meaning of life itself—and only in about 2000 words, eat your heart out Plato! That is quite an achievement if you ask me, however we are only getting started. Last time we concluded that in order to know what God has called you to, personally and specifically, you must know and do what God has called all men everywhere to do; glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. However, you cannot hope but miserably fail in that first task if you yet remain in your sin. To begin to know what God has called you to do for Him in His Kingdom you must be born again, repent, and be washed in the blood of Jesus.
We live in strange days. Uncertain times might be a good way of putting it. Uncertain in the sense that we are uncertain what it will take to regain a certain sense of normality, or if we will ever certainly return to what was once called normal. Uncertain in my mind, whether a return to what was normal is something we should even desire. These times are not, however, uncertain in the mind of God. For Christ remains seated on the throne.
So I am left to ask, where are such men and women of God today? Where are the Christians who can stand with Paul and address death directly, asking “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). If we truly believe that there is a heaven waiting for us upon our death; a heaven that is, “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you”; if we truly believe that we are going to a heaven in which God “will wipe away every tear…and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain”, if we believe that we will be ushered into a heaven where we “shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike…nor any scorching heat”; if we really believe this, shouldn’t we live like we believe it?
As Christians we are supernaturally empowered by God through the Holy Spirit who resides within us. This one fact is the foundation on which our separation from the world stands. Thus, we are to look, act, think, and live in a completely different manner from the unbelieving world around us when trials, like COVID-19, present themselves. So how does this look in real life? While there are many directions we could take to answer this question, for times sake I want to isolate this discussion to two things we receive as Christians that both benefit our spiritual walk with the Lord and display Christ to the world around us.
Joy and I pray that all of you are taking steps to ensure the health and safety of yourselves and your families during this time of national difficulty surrounding the coronavirus. I think that it is fair to say that these levels of fear and uncertainty are unprecedented in my lifetime as I believe that this even surpasses the similar national environment that surrounded 9/11. I thought that it would be appropriate to inform all of you how Haiti and the ministry are being effected by this virus, and also provide a Biblical consideration to all of this in terms of how we, as Christians, should be thinking, acting, and living throughout this most troublesome time.