Quick Update

I'll put together a much more detailed post about the trip later this week, but I just wanted to post this before I go to work:

Here is a video of the children’s choir practicing… If you want to see something from the trip I think this sums it up. The chorus to the song they are singing is “Change My Life” or “Change la vie”. Our goal is to be the hands and feet of Christ to them to enable them to reach their community and beyond for Christ. They have actually planted two churches from scratch in these incredibly harsh conditions. We just want to come along side them and take part in the great work they are already doing.

One of the most moving moments for me was watching Junior, the assistant principal, get water out of the Hydraid filter that Richard installed for them. For the first time EVER, he is able to provide clean water for his two children and the 600 children that attend his school. That has to be empowering on so many levels. They knew that their water wasn’t clean, but they didn’t have any other choice. They had to drink the dirty water even though they knew it was bad for them. Now he can give his children water that won’t make them sick. If that isn’t a picture of Matthew 25, I don’t know what is…

Here’s the children’s choir video.

Holy Bible Church - Children's Choir from Jeremy Sanders on Vimeo.

Planning for the Future

On Thursday morning Jeremy Sanders, Richard Bradley, and Hal Heis flew out of Birmingham on their way to Gonaives, Haiti. The plane stopped once in Miami, then arrived in Port-au-Prince on Thursday afternoon. From what I have heard from Jeremy the flights were uneventful. Water filters were picked up from a warehouse in the city, then a four hour bus ride took the team and supplies to Gonaives. At one point the bus was on its side and stuck in the mud, but the experienced driver was able to get it out and continue the journey without further problems.

The conditions for the team are much better this time around, and they are even sleeping in beds instead of on a concrete floor! The bucket bath is still the method for bathing, but it could definitely be worse. Just ask any of the February team members!

The place where they are working is called the Holy Bible Church and School, and it is outside the city of Gonaives. Jeremy said that it is an absolutely beautiful area. There are about six hundred children who attend school there, some of them walking eight miles one way to get there. Besides being a place of learning, the school also feeds the children one meal a day. For some of the children, this is the only food they will eat all day. Approximately two hundred of these children are earthquake refugees from Port-au-Prince, so the school has had many more mouths to feed than normal since January.

Friday was the last day of school, so the guys were able to see a small ceremony in which the children's names were called one by one and each received a report card. One important aspect of the day was that Jeremy was able to speak with the teachers and find out what is needed and how we can best help. He also spoke with them about basic hygiene, and they plan to set up a handwashing station outside the school.

He was also able to speak with some prospective medical trainees who will soon be graduating from the Holy Bible School. He gave them some advice about the process of continuing their education, such as writing a two page paper about themselves, outlining who they are and why they should be considered for medical training.

On Friday and Saturday Richard worked on getting the water filters functional. There is not really a source for clean water at the school, so these filters will help immensely. I believe he said there are fifteen in all, but only two of them will be set up for now since school is out for the summer. There is a summer day camp that goes on at the school, but there are not nearly as many students as during the school year.

On Saturday, they went into a village in which voodoo is the predominant religion. A few years ago a church was started there and now sixty believers attend the church. One church member is married to a practicing voodoo witch doctor. I do not know her name, but I can imagine that she and her husband need lots of prayer. Also, the community is still steeped in voodoo, despite the presence of a thriving Christian church. It is a very dark place. They desperately need the gospel. Please join me in praying for the believers there to have the strength to love their neighbors, for the desire to share and show the gospel, and that the hearts of the unbelievers would be softened.

The team also heard about a village on the mountain adjacent to the school in which there are no Christians. Voodoo is the only religion in this particular area. I am unsure if they visited that village, but I will have details from Jeremy soon. Even though Haiti is considered to have been "evangelized", there is absolutely no Christian witness in some areas.

Hal preached at the Holy Bible Church on Sunday morning and the guys chipped in to buy the church members (about two hundred, I think) dinner, which consisted of two goats. I am sure there was other food, but all that stuck in my head was the part about the goats. Jeremy said it was all very good. Due to rain and extremely muddy conditions, there was no church on Sunday night.

On Monday morning, they rode in the back of a truck, then on a motorcycle, into the main city of Gonaives. They had planned to speak with the director of the micro finance company, but he is out of the country for two weeks. However, they were able to exchange some information and hopefully something will come of it when the director gets back to Gonaives.

On Tuesday morning, they will begin the journey back into Port-au-Prince by bus, where they will catch a 12:30 flight for Miami. They should be back in Birmingham by 8:30PM.

While it is very difficult to communicate with Jeremy right now, he did relay to me that he has fallen in love with the people of Gonaives, and with the beauty of the area. He is excited about the return trip, which is scheduled for some time in September.

The one person I have not mentioned yet is Elise. He is the pastor of the Holy Bible Church, he runs the school, and he planted the small church in the voodoo community. I was priveleged to have him in my house when he came to the US for a visit in April. He seems to be a wonderful man of God and I can not wait to hear his entire story one day. Jeremy has spoken with Elise extensively during this trip and from the way it sounds, has grown to appreciate and respect him. He is a Haitian who was led to Christ by Icy Mae Frederick, a missionary from GFBC, several years ago.

There are plenty of gaps in this account of the trip, but Jeremy will be able to fill them all in when he gets back.


"If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday." Isaiah 58:10

Gonaives, Haiti

It seems we have a team in Haiti once again. This team is much smaller than the previous one, but this time they are mostly interested in gathering information and getting to know the people of Gonaives.

After some research, I discovered that Gonaives lies in the western part of Haiti and due to the geography of the area, is very prone to severe flooding. The city is surrounded by mountains and hills on three sides, with the Caribbean Sea on the fourth. Floods resulting from two deadly tropical storms within the past six years killed more than 3,000 people in Gonaives. Many people fled the city, primarily to Port-au-Prince, after the catastrophic floods. When the earthquake hit Port-au-Prince in January, many of them returned to Gonaives with only the clothes on their back. Gonaives is now home to 40,000 earthquake refugees.

I found the story of a family from Gonaives who lost a daughter in the floods during Tropical Storm Jeanne in 2004. Devastated, they packed up and headed to a place with better schools and "better fortune". They had been living in Port-au-Prince for only a few years when the earthquake hit and their son was crushed in their rented house in the downtown area. Now they have gone back to Gonaives. The mother said, "Living in Port-au-Prince is a problem. Going to Gonaives is another problem. Everywhere you go is a problem. If I could, I would have left this country and been somewhere else by now. But I have no way to do that".

We all know that Haiti is an extremely impoverished country. These devastating natural disasters have wreaked havoc on the already desperate situation in which these people live and despite many of them giving their best effort, there seems to be no way out.

One of the goals that our team in Haiti is trying to accomplish is to get some of the locals set up with microloans. I do not know all the details, but Jeremy has been in contact with an organization in Haiti called Fonkoze, which deals with these loans.

Another goal is to get some medical training for some of the locals, perhaps students from the school where they are working this week. If there are people in the community who can take care of medical issues when they arise, as well as handle some preventative care, they will not have to rely on outside doctors and nurses to come in and do it for them.

Self-sufficiency is the ultimate goal and we would like to come alongside them and help where we can. We are learning as we go and want to help the situation rather than make it worse. This does not appear to be an easy task, but with God's guidance we believe we can make the right decisions. And if we make the wrong ones we will learn from our mistakes and try something different.

Jeremy has put together an extensive document about the purpose of these Haiti missions and I think he plans to put it on the blog. It explains all of this in much more detail, but I hope this gives you a preview of what is going on.

Later tonight I plan to post an update about their experiences in Gonaives over the past few days.

Haiti Bound

I'm heading for Haiti in the morning with Richard Bradley and Hal Heiss. Hal actually runs the stateside fundraising for the school that Elise runs in Haiti outside of Gonaives. We are going to be meeting Elise tomorrow and picking up a pallet of water filters to take to the school. The purpose of this trip is to meet several people at the Ministry of Health, Fonkoze(a micro-finance institution), and look at the church roof and determine how we can get clean water to the school reliably. We'll be back Tuesday and hopefully I'll have more info then. Kandy will provide any updated information if I can call her. We would greatly appreciate your thoughts and prayers while we are there.