Demons of darkness, Savior of Light.

One week is not enough.

We hear teams say this frequently, about the time they spend with the kids, working on projects, and just enjoying life here in Haiti. I’ve been there, I remember my first week long trip. One week isn’t enough time to absorb the culture, the people, the poverty, the newness of it all, and the need for Jesus in this culture. I mean, Zachery has lived in Haiti for almost three years and he still experiences “firsts.”
Lately, something that God has been drawing our attention to is the utter darkness that has a hold over Haiti. It’s something that’s hard to imagine when you spend a week holding precious babies and working with adorable boys and girls who want to braid your hair and play patty-cake.
It’s something that you don’t really see until the gloss of those precious babies wanes and suddenly you realize: life here in Haiti isn’t so beautiful. Beyond the gates of the Consolation Center, there are dark forces at work.
Satan has a foot in the Church with his voodoo, and we battle with pastors practicing evil spirit worship on Saturday and preaching Christ from the pulpit on Sunday. We’re forced to wonder if the same person who raises his hands in worship on Sunday, is raising his hands in worship to another god on another day. We talk with people who declare God’s Truth one day and deceive and steal from us the next.

When the gloss and newness fades away, you realize that sin is sin and broken people are broken people, just like at home. They need healing, just like we do.

It’s not just a Haiti problem—it’s a human problem. A sin problem. A darkness problem.

Just the other day in the market, we were driving through the street and a woman slapped our vehicle and started yelling. We stopped, thinking we had done something wrong, and rolled down the window. She had followed us, yelling, and approaching, her rage increasing. All of a sudden she started yelling in perfect English expletives and threats, her animosity towards these “white intruders.” She threatened to kill us if we didn’t leave the country…and gave us a slew of F-bombs, for good measure just to make sure we got the point. The deranged, crazy look in her eyes coupled with the perfectly clear English threats caused Zachery and I to believe she was demon possessed. If you could’ve witnessed her outrage, you would’ve know that the look in her eyes and the words from her mouth were not that of just a “crazy” woman…but someone controlled by another spirit.
And yet, this happens so much. When people open their hearts and homes to evil spirits, incantations, oogans (Voodoo priests) and witch doctors, those evil spirits become very real and take advantage. While this type of spiritual warfare is prevalent here, a different type of warfare is going on at home. Look around and you see it, the Church struggling to become unified, Church leaders becoming compromised. Little pebbles of the lukewarm Church threaten of a greater landslide ahead.

God is at work in Haiti and in the United States, destroying Satan’s craftiness and by Scripture we know that the battle is already lost for Satan.

When team members say to me, “You are living my dream,” or, “You are so lucky to live here full time!” I don’t hesitate to set the record straight: We are blessed to live here and have so much joy in what we do. I mean, we get to see chubby, little kid faces ALL day long and hold babies and have 100+ little brothers and sisters and paint nails and color pictures. However, many trials make this much different from a dream job.

 Worship to a voodoo idol on the Cross.

I’ve heard it put (by my husband or someone wise like that): darkness is the void of light—and Haiti has been a dark place for so long. In His perfect timing, God is powerfully, awesomely shedding Light on the darkness.
My encouragement for this post is this: Haiti needs prayer, not just for the kids and their well being, but for the people as a whole, and the country. Haiti has been dedicated to Satan for several hundred years, when the first presence of voodoo arrived with slaves from Africa. {Voodoo is a recognized religion and ironically the Haitian calendar shares the Day of Dead (to honor the dead spirits) and Christmas (to honor the birth of Jesus)}

The real problem isn’t poverty or health or abandonment—it’s the lack of Jesus. I’ve seen kids who have literally been thrown away, comforted by the Great Comforter, and their lives have been forever changed. If more people knew that great joy, maybe our world would have less darkness and a whole lot more light?

Making a change, one nail at a time.

 

For many of us, we take our school years for granted. There were times when we didn’t like school or understand why we had to complete another equation or parse another sentence.
The fact that we can pick up a book and read, doesn’t catch us off guard as a blessing.
But in Haiti many things suddenly become blessings—fresh water, a vehicle, wellness, and education (to name a few).
Imagine being in your late twenties with a minimal education—basic reading (maybe), writing, and arithmetic. Imagine being in your fifties and only being able to scratch out an, “X” as your signature. For most in Haiti, education is a privilege and a ticket of sorts to success. Parents are often forced to choose which child receives any education because they simply cannot afford to pay the tuition for them all. For the one that attends school he has a fair chance of lifting himself out of the unending cycle of poverty. For the rest at home, they’ll need to learn a trade or occupation in order to survive.
In our latest newsletter, we talked about our newest area of ministry: mentorship and trade training. Through mentoring individuals and teaching them a trade, we hope to empower the people to become self-sustainable. Education or not, we want them to know that there is hope.

Haiti needs to be changed from the inside out. Haitian men and women need to be raised up to be the change that needs to happen in Haiti—and the Lord is faithfully doing this through spiritual mentoring and teaching self-sustainability. Learning to hammer a nail, work a saw, build a shelf, weld, or plant a field are all skills that can help Haitian men and women in their need for an occupation.
We desire to share with them the handiwork of Christ in their life and the handiwork of a trade; a trade that can help them to be self-motivated, self-sustained, and carry on the skill they’ve learned.

(Kiki learning to weld on a water tank frame)

Kiki is our first trainee and has proven to be a young man who is eager to learn. Lately, he’s been trained in the area of construction and carpentry—and enjoys the work immensely. He comes weekly, is fed a meal, and learns the beginning stages of a trade. He’s learning to weld, saw, paint, and use a tape measure (who knew!) and this guy is SO proud to be learning these skills. Having minimal education hasn’t been a negative either because it’s given Zachery an opportunity to teach him basic mathematical skills and to invest even more in his life.

(Kiki with some members on a team from our sending church in Iowa)

We’re not sure where God is going to take this ministry, but we’re sure excited to be a part of the work He is doing.

 

Pictures of some pretty people

Something we enjoy doing on Saturday’s (or any day!) is to go to the Center and spend time with the boys and girls. We don’t usually have a particular “agenda” we just enjoy sitting with them under the gazebo and playing with them, talking with them, and generally spending time together. All it takes are some magnetic letters…

connect four…

 … and a pad of paper

and you’ve got a lot of happy girls!

Happy Monday!

Prayer Request

While, the days leading up to the 2016 presidential elections in the U.S. seem to be relatively peaceful, the days leading up to the election here in Haiti are quite the opposite. In Haiti, when the people aren’t happy they protest or demonstrate in a variety of ways: road blocks, burning tires, mobs, vandalism, etc.

Right now we’ve heard of demonstrations in Port Au Prince, the capital and the city where many friends and visiting teams travel through. We’ve also heard of some demonstrations in other smaller cities or districts along the way to Port.

We haven’t seen any protests in our area. We’re just fine with keeping things that way.

Through all of this, we are reminded of how shaken and unstable our world can become without the peace of God.

Please continue to pray for peace and the stability of God.

*All photos are from this link

And we’re back!

 

You know the saying time flies when you’re having fun…. I can officially vouch for the truth of this statement. A month never went by so quickly like it did with our Christmas holiday–first in Maryland and then in Iowa. Christmas is one of my favorite holidays and I cherish the traditions as well as the reunion with family and friends. Needless to say, the trip to the US was a sweet, sweet time.

Now we’re back!

Our trip back to Haiti was challenging–but proof that God provides. We missed our second flight from Omaha to Chicago, apparently the plane thought it was too cold to travel (just like most of it’s passengers) and we arrived at the airport as our plane was leaving. But God provides because American Airlines graciously came through and gave us food vouchers and not one, but two, hotel rooms.

The next day we had an early flight out and arrived at our final destination (Haiti) right on time! Our driver, who we’ll call Stop and Go, because that’s basically what he did the ENTIRE four hour drive home, got us safely home by 8:30 pm.

I say all of this to say that God is faithful in the small things. He provides for us, down to food vouchers and hotel rooms. He provides for our needs when we don’t even recognize them as needs. He provides granola bars and words of encouragement from family and friends. He protects us, provides for us, and leads us–even in an airport. We can have full confidence that the Lord will provide, in all areas of our life, as we trust in Him. Do you have that confidence?

“Who provides food for the raven,
When its young ones cry to God,
And wander about for lack of food?” Job 38:41

The answer? Our Mighty and Powerful, God.