"Medical Relief"

Melissa Pierre had a Colostomy surgery in September. Now her mom owes the hospital $1,000. Melissa has 3 older brothers and to make matters worse Melissa's dad left and no one knows where he is. Melissa needs to go back for regular check ups and lab tests. Her mom needs to pay for these. Because Melissa's mom doesn't have money for food, Melissa has not been getting enough breast milk. Then Friday night she got sick with diarrhea and vomiting causing her to dehydrate. Thankfully the vomiting stopped, so we have her some Pedialyte. We also gave the mom a case of MannaPacs, some cans of beef, Herbalife, money for formula, and money to go to the appointment on Monday. You can help by making a donation marked "Medical Relief".http://www.ifmhaiti.org/ways-to-help.html

On Friday, Melissa's brother was sick. Here is at the clinic. Jeana is giving him some medicine.

Assisting Mothers

Lovely came from the mountains to the children's home asking for help. Last week her sister Loveline died from a sudden illness, leaving 4 orphaned children. The oldest Djouvensky is not quite 3 years old, the twins are 1 1/2 yrs old, and baby Rose Milove is 5 months old. Normally, when someone dies, the grandparents help, but these orphans maternal grandmother died in the 2010 earthquake.

So what can we do? This is the daily question we are faced with living in Haiti. Since these orphans still have a father and an aunt, we are going are going to try to help them keep the children instead of taking the children into the children's home. We call this program "Assisting Mothers". We buy formula for them and give them fortified rice packets (MannaPacs) that we get from Feed My Starving Children and Love A Child.

Please pray for our Children's Home staff, Andrew, Andrea, Donita, and Barb. If you would like to help us buy formula, mark you donations "Assisting Mothers" and mail it to International Faith Missions, 5553 County Rd 79A, Saint Joe, IN 46785 or go to http://www.ifmhaiti.org/ways-to-help.html to make on online donation. Thank you and God Bless. -Mike

Evangelism

The pastor has encouraged several organized evangelism events during the school vacation. Yesterday afternoon we loaded up over a hundred of the church members and drove a short distance to an area call Nan Plezi for the purpose of seeking lost souls. 

Pastor divided everyone up into small groups and then from there we walked through the village singing and stopping at houses, praying for the sick, encouraging believers, and inviting people to accept the Lord and be saved. 

Afterward we met back at the church for a final prayer and brief sharing. It was reported that eight souls chose to follow the Lord as a result of this time of witnessing. Pastor Voltaire plans to make contact with a church in that area for follow up and the group leaders agreed also to visit them again to see that they get connected with a church. 

Please join us in praying for these people and that true discipleship could take place as Jesus said, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the age. Amen 

Youth Project

This is an epic event in my opinion.

The youth from the church were inspired to take on a building project for a family recently deported from the DR. A local family, Raymond Louis from our church, had taken them in to their own home when they had no place to go. Raymond has a wife and two children and this other family is a man and wife and I think three children or so. That's quite a crowd for Raymond's two room house. 

The youth along with the deacons decided to raise money and material donations among themselves and other church members to build a house on a piece of property donated by Raymond Louis. 

Again, I say this is epic. I am so excited to see them taking initiative to do something on their own and not sitting around expecting the mission to do it, or to pay them to do it. They now have a sense of accomplishment far beyond what there would have been if they were hired to do a job. They are beginning to see what they are able to do by themselves and that is a major step in development. 

I should say that much of the inspiration and motivation came from a very energetic source, namely, Wismith Joseph who is one of the deacons at our church. And I should further say that the first project of this nature was to finish out the little "deacon's depot" at the church. The youth were tasked then, as with this house project, with calculating the budget for the project, gathering supplies, coordinating the volunteer laborers and assuring that construction was executed according to specs. An "engineer" was assigned as project manager.  

Mike Martin assisted in an invaluable way with teaching construction methods and techniques; some of the guys do already have experience in masonry and building, but all were very enthused about the project. 

 Boss Hérode Fevry

Mackenson Laguerre

 Mike Martin

 Laine Sinexant (L) the engineer; and Nerlange Volcy (R)

 Mike and Deacon Augustin putting the metal on.

 Tiboutson and Renald working on the door

Teachers Seminar

We decided to try having a teachers seminar this year to address the need for more intellectual continuity among Christian teachers. It was a little intimidating since neither Mike nor I have teaching experience. We decided a two day seminar would give us a good gauge of both our capacity to host such a thing and also the interest for it in the community. 

Our goals were to equip teachers with better understanding of the issues and to consider answers to the questions of humanism and socialism. Also, to encourage a more disciplined learning environment. 

Pursuant to those goals we had the following subjects:

-The Christian Worldview (by Tony Jean)

- Student Discipline (Tony Jean)

- Classroom management (Moïse Oscar)

- Science and the Bible, can the two agree? (Matthew Morhart)

Tony Jean is a man who was instrumental in developing a new curriculum for Christian schools in Haïti, called Mwen Kapab. Currently the other books available are written from a evolution/humanism perspective and most of the teachers don't even realize what is at stake. The state creates the exams for 6th, 9th, and 12th grades and naturally they correspond with the secular content of their curriculum. 

It was a Godsend to meet Tony just a few weeks before the seminar when we went to check into using this curriculum in our own school. He understands the dichotomy in which the Christian teachers work and think and had already done some teaching on worldview. 

Moïse is the pastor's son and works in educational development. He has visited many schools and probably seen it all. 

Matthew Morhart is from the far NW corner of Haïti. He has translated a number of materials from Answers in Genesis and has mastered Creole making him a valuable speaker in the areas we were considering. He was the only non-native that we had speak this year. 

It's always difficult to gauge the effectiveness of a training of this kind, however I do think that the 90 some teachers and school directors that attended have been made to acknowledge the tendency to crawl out of their sacred box and into their secular box on Monday morning as the head off to work. They now have more exposure at least to the issues and hopefully a few tools to deal with them. 

Lidios Delouis having devotions at the start of the day. 

Pastor Matthew Morhart. 

Small morning refreshment. 

Mike takes care of registration and all the badges and certificates that are absolutely culturally essential. 

The schedule. 

A local school administrator filling out a worldview survey that Matthew used during his discourse. You can take the free worldview test here: http://www.worldviewweekend.com/test/register.php

Matthew explaining the difference between Science Historique and Science Experimental with the five stones on the floor. 

Youth Seminar II

Just a quick update, not many photos-- maybe later. 

This year we have around 235 youth from 24 churches enrolled with nearly all of them attending. 

I want to thank you all for praying. We sense a better atmosphere this year than we've had before. It's seems like the staff of 25 or so from various churches are working together very well also. Amazingly, we have, for the most part, stayed on schedule even with the meals with only one exception and that was only 10 minutes or so that we waited. 

It feels like a more serious environment and the youth are comparatively respectful. We are getting good solid teaching on regeneration, moral purity, and how God works in our lives. One of the speakers, Pastor Leader had to leave today because of the death of one of his aunts. That has precipitated a bit of shuffling, but I trust with your prayers it will turn out to the furtherance of the gospel. 

Two more days...

Please continue to pray. 

-that we will have energy,

-that we will continue to work together to the glory of God. 

-that the powerful Word of God will touch hearts to affect lasting change. 

Third year of the Youth Bible Seminar

We are in the second day of our five day youth seminar. Please pray that God would work in the lives of the youth in Fond Parisien. We have 234 registered students from 24 churches.

Subjects for this year:

• Moral Purity
• Regeneration
• How God speaks to, and works in, the lives of His children.

Taking notes.

Teaching.

Alter and Mackenson marking "present" as the students enter at the front gate.

Question time. The youth love to ask questions.

A competition. Each church must answer three questions from the day's classes.

Marylis is doing a super job at organizing and facilitating meal preparation. 

WATER girls, Jana and Laura, washing dishes.

Rose faithfully cleans the church and bathrooms, helps prepare food, and washes the dishes. Rose has worked for the mission as school janitor for many, many years.

Merzantan, a seminar speaker and Pete.

Visiting, eating, and looking over notes.

Breakfast time.

Prosper handing out drinks.

Renald and Solius working with the other support members to set out all the filled plates.

Thank you for your prayers and financial support that make this youth seminar possible. Most of all we thank God for the work He is doing in our lives and the lives of the youth here in Fond Parisien.

Youth Seminar

Our 5 day youth seminar begins tomorrow morning. We expect about 200  youth to participate.  Please pray for us as we make final preparations. Pray for the pastors and teachers that are giving the lessons. Pray for the students that they would have hearts prepared to receive the Word, that it would take root deep in their hearts, changing this generation of youth. We covet your prayers. 

Cleaning the bathrooms. 

Meeting with support staff to finalize plans. 

Cleaning up the yard. 

Soccer- Haiti's favorite pastime

Matthew Byler from Bonners Ferry ID is here at the mission for a month in a program of Sharon Mennonite Bible School called WATER (World Awareness Training in Evangelistic Responsibility). 

Among the other more menial things, he is involved in providing meaningful activities for some neighborhood children. 

Welcome and Goodbye

The only constant is change. Today we said goodbye to Levi Kauffman who has served here for the last two years. We will miss him a lot, but we are confident of the Lord leading him in his life. 

We also are glad to welcome Andrew, Andrea and Isaiah Byler to the mission team, they will be serving as directors of the Children's Home.  Please pray for them as they integrate into life here. 

     God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. (Hebrews 6:10-12 NASB)