While You Were Christmas Shopping

The Christmas season can be all consuming for us here in the US.  There’s shopping for gifts, wrapping those gifts (maybe mailing them too), decorating your house inside and out, Christmas concerts, programs and parties to attend, special meals with friends, caroling, some more shopping, and traffic – a lot more traffic from all those people trying to do the same stuff you are doing, with perhaps some travel thrown in there.  It’s a very busy time.  But while you were shopping, in a far away, very remote area of Haiti, goats, food aid and a pastor’s motorcycle were delivered, an RMI staff team has put on a roof of a parsonage and the site survey and prep work has begun for building a new parsonage.  Oh, and a house is being built for a widow and water filters are being installed.

Funds given by C3 partners far and wide have provided these badly needed things – things that will help those families and communities begin to recover.  A roof on a parsonage means that a pastor will be able to better care for his own family and for his congregation.  A goat means that a family can begin to be self- sufficient.  Food means that hungry families will have hot, nutritious meals that will sustain them.  A motorcycle for a pastor means that he doesn’t have to walk or ride a horse to the smaller churches and church plants that he’s responsible for.  Some of those smaller communities may not have had anyone come to check up on them and they desperately need to know that someone cares.  A water filter means that a family (and probably more since they’ll share the clean water with their neighbor and friends) will have clean drinking water which in turn means that they will be healthier and not threatened by cholera.  A house for a widow means that she won’t be sleeping in a makeshift lean-to.

Besides the obvious provisions, these things also provide hope and give the recipients renewed vigor and strength to help them continue on in their daily struggles.  It’s not just about rebuilding.  It’s also about recovering.  Coming alongside them in these days, weeks and months of such hardship after the hurricane is a healing balm to their souls.  Knowing that someone cares and the people in the US are praying for them and trying to help is indeed a comfort and is oh so encouraging.

Thank you to everyone who has given goats, seeds, water filters and much more to help Haiti in this rebuilding and recovery!  The need is still there.  If you haven’t done so or feel that you want to do more, you can donate HERE.