Meet the Church Advancement Staff

It has been a while since I wrote a blog, huge things are happening here at Mission of Hope in the Church Advancement department! In April we were able to hire our Village Champions or Village Leaders in 7 local villages we are currently working in, which was a huge step in moving Church Advancement forward! Our vision is to see the local churches of Haiti strengthened, empowered, and given the resources they need to serve their people in word and in deed. The Village Champions are an integral part in this as they act as a bridge between the village and Mission of Hope. I get the amazing privilege of working with these local leaders to help encourage, support, empower, and give them the resources they need to be leaders in their villages. It has been such a blessing getting to work with all of them. They are such strong men and women of God with true hearts for their country and villages. I feel so blessed and humbled each day that God has called me here to Haiti to work with this amazing team! 

Things are really starting to pick up and are in full swing in these crazy summer months! The Village Champions are doing an amazing job and have even taken over planning all activity teams are doing in their villages! This is a huge step and exactly where we wanted to be this summer. The Village Champions are leaders in their villages, are building relationships with the local pastors, and know what is best for their village making them the perfect people to drive what teams are doing in the villages. With that I would like to introduce all the Church Advancement staff!

This is the amazing team I get to work with on a daily basis!

Me, Tim, Pastor Kenol, and Rachael (from left to right)

The Source Matelas Village Champion Team:

Martial, Herlo, Roselaure, Papitass, Leon, Roro (from left to right)

 

Titanyen Village Champion Team:

Abelard, Majona, Achemetre, Emmanuel (from left to right)

The Minoterie Village Champion Team:

Orlkine, Joidinio, Editte, Obenson (from left to right)

Simonette Village Champion Team:

Jean Auguste, Frenel, Jean Louis, Jacques (from left to right)

Turpin Village Champion Team:

Leon, Wilner, Remy, Elicois (from left to right)

The Leveque Village Champion Team:

Jean Pierre, Guirline, Rosemond, Thimagene (from left to right)

The Bercy Village Champion Team:

Gespere, Yves, Leandre, Junior (from left to right)

As we move through this crazy time of year and the Village Champions are leading more of the ministry I would like to ask for prayer for all of the staff of Mission of Hope, but specifically for the Church Advancement staff. Please pray for wisdom, strength, courage, perseverance, grace, understanding, and continued ability to show the love of Christ in each interaction. 

Kite Making Fun!

In Haiti, March is the windy month and a time when kids love to make kites. So as a Church Advancement staff we decided to have kite workshops in each of the villages, for the kids throughout this month.  In order to meet Mission of Hope’s core resolution of indigenous mobilization we wanted the workshops to be Haitian run. To do this we asked local community leaders in the church, a kids club, or the like to lead the workshops and teach the kids how to make kites. To make the workshops possible we asked some North American teams to bring the supplies and help the kids in the workshops.

These workshops were such an amazing thing to be a part of! The kids loved making their own kites and were so proud of their own finished product! But as you can imagine it was a little chaotic with 100 kids in each workshop making kites, however it was such an amazing opportunity to get to witness local Haitian community leaders, lead the children in their community well. It was truly beautiful to see the leaders, translators, kids, and North Americans interact in such a beautiful way! It was yet another great tangible example of the way that God is working in this country!

Adversity

Throughout my time here in Haiti I have found over and over that spiritual warfare, one is very real and present in this world and two it manifests itself completely differently here in Haiti. Being a missionary here full time means that I am on the frontlines of the spiritual battlefield each day. In 2013 many exciting, new, and god-centered changes are coming to Mission of Hope in general and Church Advancement (my department) specifically. I have always known that the changes would not come without opposition or adversity. Satan is definitely and will definitely continue to do everything in his power to stop the spread of the gospel throughout Haiti and the world.

Recently while reading my devotional, called “Jesus Calling,” I have noticed that there has been an overwhelming theme of adversity and depending on the Lord through it all without worrying.  There will always be problems or adversity that will entice us to worry because we live in a fallen world. But as it states in Jesus Calling, “The best defense is continual communication with the Lord, richly seasoned with thanksgiving.” If we communicate with the Lord continually He fills us with light and peace, this leaves absolutely no room for worry. I did not fully understand being thankful in the midst of the adversity. The book mentioned it is because it seems so contrary to our world-view. However, a few days later I read this entry:

“ Continue on this path with Me (God), enjoying my presence even in adversity. I am always before you, as well as alongside you. See Me beckoning to you: Come! Follow Me. The One who goes ahead of you, opening up the way, is the same One who stays close and never lets go of your hand. I am not subject to limitations of time or space. I am everywhere at every time, ceaselessly working on your behalf. That is why your best efforts are trusting Me and living close to Me.”

I was quickly reminded that in the midst of adversity, struggles, and worry, the best thing to do is lean into the Lord and fully trust Him because He is always with me. This got me thinking again about being thankful for adversity, which brought me to James 1:2-4. It says, “ Count it all joy my brothers when you face trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” I finally started to realize that adversity is something to be thankful for because it tests me and allows me to grow my faith in the Lord and build a stronger relationship with him if I respond appropriately and trust Him. If everything goes great all the time I know that I would begin to trust in my own ability and think I can handle things all on my own. I was not made for that, I was made to fully depend and rely on the Lord and adversity allows me to do that. I am slowly starting to feel the adversity of the world and Satan, but I know it will get worse the more the gospel is spread throughout this world. I know it will be hard, but we were never promised that this life would be easy, in fact in John 16:33 it says, “ I have aside these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart: I have overcome the world.” Even though it will be hard I am also excited to go through it all with the Lord so he can strengthen me, grow my faith, force me to depend on him, and find my joy and peace in Him alone not my circumstances. And there is definitely comfort in the truth in that verse that Jesus has overcome the world already. I can trust in the fact that God already has the victory and nothing Satan does can ever change that. 

Thank you so much for reading! If this blog inspired you at all or you would like to support what I am doing for the kingdom at Mission of Hope I would like to ask you to prayerfully consider supporting me financially and through prayer. Without your prayer and financial support nothing that is happening down here would be possible at all! 

2 Weeks In!

I have been in Haiti now for about 2 weeks and it has been a great few weeks getting settled and jumping into my new position here at Mission of Hope(MOH)!

Now that I am here and have started I can share more specifically what it is I am doing in Haiti. My technical title within the Church Advancement department is a Village Liaison for the villages Source Matelas and Turpin. (Some of my favorite villages might I add J) So basically I will be working with the teams of Village Champions for those villages and acting as the liaison between them and the North American churches. This is something that is super exciting for everyone here at MOH because the Church Advancement department itself is fairly new and Village Champions are BRAND new! Basically Village Champions are men and women from their community that are following Christ, deeply care about their village, want the Lord to be known in the village they live in, want to help the people, and are willing to be used by the Lord to accomplish His will in their village. We don’t have Village Champions quite yet, but interviews should be starting in the next week or so. I literally can NOT wait to meet the men and women who are chosen and to jump right into accomplishing God’s work in Source Matelas and Turpin!

Last week I saw some truly amazing things that made me so excited for the future and for what God has in store! Specifically I was talking with one of the translators from Source Matelas, Martial, and just asking him a few questions about his village to get a better idea of the village and the people that live in it. Through this conversation he started to really pour his heart out to me about what people in Source Matelas need. He shared with me that he went and spoke with people from all different age groups to find out how the kids, youth, and adults can be served best.(Amazing Initiative!!!) But he didn’t only stop at the needs, instead he kept going on to share ideas of programs (like training young single mom’s to start their own business) that he had come up with in order to serve his people! Truly a man after God’s own heart!  This was probably one of the most encouraging things that could have happened because that is exactly the type of person we are looking for to be a Village Champion! It is also exactly what we are trying to accomplish at Mission of Hope! We don’t want to just hand everything over to the people for free and put a band aid on the needs, but instead get to the root of the issue and enable the Haitian people to help themselves and provide for themselves and their families.  Seeing Martial’s heart for this just made me realize all the more that God definitely has His hand in everything that we are doing, He is in control, and bringing up leaders in this country in order to win Haiti for Christ! It also made me think of one of my favorite verses “Look among the nations and see: wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.”     Habakkuk 1:5