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