Another type of Project

Many of our groups come to Haiti and do or at least start a variety of projects for their Sister Church. The project can be anything from building a school room, to wiring a church and installing fans, to medical clinics, music clinics, evangelical focus, or maybe just developing the relationship.

Sometimes the project continues after the U.S. Sister Church leaves Haiti. Especially in a construction project.

However sometimes a project begins and ends and the U.S. Sister Church isn't there at all. Such was the case recently with Hope E. Free Church from Illinois whose Sister Church in Bomo, Haiti was badly in need of either repairs on or a new motorcycle. The U.S. church decided to repair the old motorcycle and the pictures below are a description of that process.

The unfinished product.

Start with the "bare" essentials!

At least the motor looks good!

Now that all the pieces look so pretty, can we get it back together? Where do all these extra pieces go?

Almost Done!!!!!!

The finished product!

Two proud mechanics and a job well done!

Baradere Letter to Creekside

From: The MEBSH Church at Baradere

To: Creekside Comm. E. F. Church, USA.

May the Grace and Peace of God be with you all! I am very happy to write you this letter just to inform you how Baradere church is doing. How are you doing in your church? I hope that everything is going well with you.

Praise the Lord our activities are going well. Right after the hurricane season, all the Christians met together to praise and worship God for his mercy and his goodness to us. Our spiritual activities are going very well. We always have services on Sunday morning and Sunday night, Tuesday night we have prayer service and Thursday night we have the Bible study. The youth meet every Wednesday afternoon, and the ladies meet every Friday. This month we are going to have convention for the whole district. This will take place at Baradere church. We still have good teachers that help us with the Sunday school. We had 3 people that accepted Jesus as their savior (2 men and 1 woman).

The school is starting again and this year we have 550 kids already in the school and we still have some missing. We would like to say thank you for your help to us because without your help the kids could not go to school. Once again thank you for the money you have sent recently for the kids this year.

I am continuing the work on the Parsonage and the school now. Praise the Lord we are making progress. Please pray for the town of Baradere because after the Hurricanes the Christians are very needy because they lost so much.

I am looking forward to seeing all of you in January and I look forward to the new people that will come and visit us here in Baradere. I am praying that God will give us a good time together in January.

I'll leave you with this verse from the Book of 1 Corinthians 15:58.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.

Finally I want to wish you a Merry Christmas 2008 and a Happy New Year of 2009.

May God richly bless you and protect you!

Pastor Leon Bonhomme

Suitcases

It seems that a part of a missionary's identity is tied to suitcases. Suitcases mean travel, planes, airports, delays, packing, unpacking, leaving family, seeing old friends and making new ones, meetings, changing climates - the list could go on!

RMI staff have been traveling quite a bit these days.

Dan's suitcases (along with him) went to:

Haiti in September.

Lafayette, LA in October to see Trinity Bible Church as well as another trip to Haiti.

Chicago, IL to visit The Orchard Evangelical Free Church and Village Church of Bartlett. Then to the northeast to speak at Calvary Baptist Church in Pemberton, NJ and to visit with Great Valley Presbyterian in Philadelphia, PA -- all in November. (There was snow!!)

Lakeline and NewChurch Georgetown in Austin, TX will see him in December. Several new churches in that area and the Waco, TX area will be visited as well.

Rob's suitcases (accompanied by him) went to:

Haiti in September.

Chicago, IL to visit The Orchard Evangelical Free Church and his supporters in that area. He took his whole family, so there were quite a number of suitcases.

Billy & Debbie Moses' suitcases, although recently unpacked, went with them to the RMI office for a week in October. They were there for QuickBooks training and administrative meetings.

Pray the RMI staff as they go about the everyday business of operating RMI. Pray for them as they travel, that God will bless their meetings and the contacts they make, that the trips will be successful and profitable.

A new Partnership

We finally received a list of churches from the MEBSH organization here in Haiti. There is a church in Estero, Florida that is eager to start a new relationship with a church in southern Haiti. So eager in fact that they are already on the calendar for early 2009 without knowing who their Sister Church is. So we evaluated the churches on the list and on a bright and sunny Wednesday in late October missionaries Debbie Moses, Gary McLaughlin, and I hit the road with support from two Haitian staff members Jules Gedna and Jean Chery. We were headed for the town of Cherette in the valley before the last mountain on the way to Zanglais.

After driving through a market that was so crowded that we that we drove about 2-3 miles per hour and still ran over a few peoples' veggies for sale, we came to a road so narrow that we had to pull in the outside rearview mirrors in order to pass. At times we were fishtailing back and forth in mud and at others we were driving in a small river.

We finally arrived in Cherette a small village at the foot of a beautiful mountain. About halfway up the mountain you can see a gorgeous waterfall that looks like something out of a T.V. commercial.

The MEBSH Church a Cherette consists of 3 buildings and a school structure. The parsonage is at the front of the area, and off to the left are the school rooms. To say they are rooms is a stretch. Actually there is a foundation and a roof with some wall separating the individual rooms. Behind this area is an old building that used to be the church but has now been divided into a few more rooms for kindergarten. Next to that is a new building that is the church. It is small but in good shape. However the benches inside were in pretty bad shape.

The pastor and his wife were very gracious and happy to see us. After answering all of our questions they insisted that we sit and have some coffee, bread and bananas with them. We had a great time and feel that this is God's choice as our next Sister Church.

It is always exciting when a new Sister Church Partnership gets off the ground. We are looking forward to Estero United Methodist Church's coming visit to the MEBSH Church at Cherette.

At times the road is so narrow we have to fold the rearview mirrors in.

Driving in a river.

Parsonage

School rooms.

Old Church building.

MEBSH Temple of Cherette

Inside the Church building. Most of the benches are being used for school.

This "zoomed in" picture of a waterfall doesn't do justice to God's beauty in the district of Cherette in southern Haiti.

Letter from the MEBSH Church at Ducis

From: MEBSH Church at Ducis

To: Village Church of Bartlett.

Subject: Information.

  Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We are very happy for the opportunity to write this letter. I apologize for taking so long to write you. I greet you in the precious name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. How are your church activities going? I hope that everything is well by the grace of God. When I read your letter, I realized that your country is facing a financial crisis that will probably affect the members of the Village Church of Bartlett. When we heard that, our church became very concerned because we know our country depends on the economy of the United States. We know the Bible says:  all gold and diamonds belong to God. I don't have to worry because I know that God will take care of you in the U.S. and us here in Ducis. We pray the He will fill our needs.

We would like to thank you for your promise to support us through Hope for Kids even though your country is facing financial problems. That's very important to us because without your help many of our children could not go school.

Our Spiritual activities are going well thanks to God. We had some church members that stopped attending, but the church keeps working very well and the rest of the members are very motivated. The ladies in church had a revival and 32 people accepted Jesus as their Savior and some of the members that left us decided to return back to the church. In November we are going to have a Baptismal Service and we are expecting 20 young people to be baptized.

Last April, one of the district church pastors died. So far we don't have a new Pastor to fill that position. I am currently visiting them once a month for bible study as we wait for MEBSH to assign a new pastor in December. This situation touched me deeply as Pastor and director of the district.

Right now we have 80 kids taking part in our Awana program. We are not doing things the same way as the Awana program does in Port-au-Prince. This is because we could not afford to bring people from Port-au-Prince to Ducis for seminar.

Please pray for us that God will send his blessings upon our church and family here. We promise to do the same thing for you because we know that God will answer our prayer and take good care of us all.

May God bless you and your church abundantly!

Your Brother in Christ,

Pastor Anthony Moise