Haiti Trip - May 10 - 19, 2008 View Pictures
The purpose of my trip to Haiti was to teach a seminar on Biblical Church Leadership for 60 pastors. These pastors are the district supervisors for the MEBSH churches (Mission Evangelique Baptiste de Sud d'Haiti) that we work with in Haiti. The seminar took place at Institut Biblique Lumiere just outside of the city of Cayes.
I left home at 2:00 AM on Saturday, May 10th and departed on schedule from Newark Airport at 6:25 AM for Miami, Florida. The flight from Miami was delayed five and a half hours due to mechanical problems and I missed my connecting flight on TortugAir in Port Au Prince. Thankfully, we have a fine Christian named Nader who owns his own shuttle service and takes me from the main airport to TortugAir at the regional airport. He was able to get me a room at the beautiful Hotel Montana in Port (check it out at www.htmontana.com). That was the good news. The bad news was that I was scheduled to preach in the Camp Perrine Baptist Church with Pastor Jean Admettre at 7:00 AM and at the Perigny Baptist Church with Pastor Amos Candy at 10:00 AM the next morning and the only Sunday flight on TortugAir left Port on Sunday at 4:00 PM. To complicate matters, I was on standby for the next days flight! I didn't look forward to spending another day in Port with nothing to do.
Proverbs 16:9 says, The mind of a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. I had planned on preaching in two churches that Sunday, but God sovereignly overruled my plans to fullfill His purpose. While I was at the Hotel Montana I met a group of wonderful college students who had come to Haiti to work with a mission in the northern town of Port Au Paix. Most of the students were from Eastern Illinois University and were experiencing Haiti for the first time. I had the privilege of spending Saturday evening and Sunday morning with them, including a worship time together. It was a great encouragement to me to see their passion for God as they openingly shared how God was working in their lives and I witnessed their desire to serve Him in such a needy place. Hopefully I was an encouragement to them as well.
TortugAir flights seat seventeen passengers and only eight showed up for the flight so I was in good shape and landed at the Cance Airport outside of Cayes Sunday evening, where I was met by my good friend, Johannes Schurer who teaches at Institut Biblique Lumiere. My teaching schedule was one session Monday afternoon, one session each morning and one each afternoon, Tuesday through Thursday, and one session Friday morning. Each session was two hours in length. In addition to the seminar, I also had the opportunity to speak twice to the women at the Centre Lumiere, a training school for Haitian women founded by Luis Schurer, Johannes' wife and to the Wednesday night Bible study for the missionaries working with MEBSH.
On Saturday we distributed over two tons of rice to the churches in Camp Perrine, Glail, Perigny, Lamongue, Ferme Le Blanc, Achille, and Mont Casse. The churches then distributed the rice to poor families in their area. Along with the black beans that were in harvest, it was enough rice to provide each family one meal a day for up to five days. We were able to feed approximatley three hundred families through the generous giving of the members and friends of Schuylkill Valley Bible Chapel. The pastors, deacons and people thanked me over and over again for helping them in this way.
The next day, Sunday, May 18th, Pastor Jean Admettre and I, along with several men from the Camp Perrine church went to the Baptist Church of Lamongue for services. From where I stayed, the drive was an hour and a half, most of it over dirt and gravel roads. After we parked, we loaded 250 pounds of rice on the horses and hiked for an hour up the mountain to reach the church. On top of the mountain was a small concrete block church with around 100 people waiting for us. We had a wonderful service together. When the people saw my digital camera and tripod (that brother Alose Joseph had graciously carried up the mountain for me, along with my water, Bible etc), they asked if I would take a group picture of everyone in their church. They told me that I was the first visitor (non Haitian) that had ever visited their church. Lamongue is one of the poorest areas in Haiti that I have seen in my visits, but even in their poverty they shared with us what they had and we enjoyed a wonderful meal of rice and beans, fried chicken, pasta salad and plantains at the home of one of the deacons. You can't beat the warm hospitality of the Haitian people. By the way, those benches in the pictures of the Lamongue church are the benches our team built in September of 2007 - and they carried them up the mountain on their heads!
I arrived home Monday night (Tuesday morning) at 3:30 AM. It was a good trip. God blessed in so many ways. I want to thank so many people who prayed for me as I went to Haiti. I especially want to thank the wonderful people of SVBC for their help, support, and prayers. You're the best!
Pastor Steve