-Tony

-Tony

Lourdjina (looJEEnah), the little handicapped girl whom God blessed with a stroller though a friend of ours, is doing well. We were able to visit her again during our January trip to talk to her and her parents. Lourdjina is almost two and has cerebral palsy, it appears.  She definitely knows her mama, papa, and now me, as I visit her each time I go to Nanwo.   I am delighted to see that her parents are using the handicapped stroller we brought, as Lourdjina cannot support herself in any way.  Her mama brought her to church for the first time all dressed up pretty with ribbons in her hair.  May we continue to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Pray for Lourdjina and her family to know Jesus and walk with Him well.

-Dixie

On our recent January trip to Haiti, we were able to pick one up in country and surprise some of the church leaders with this blessing. Without a generator, they have been unable to use some of their instruments for praise and worship, and the hard of hearing have had to lean in close to hear anything on Sunday mornings. Additionally, the lights around the church and school campus have been dark in the four months they have gone without a generator.

In their joy, the church leaders fired up the Honda unit at 4:30 in the morning so that they could hold a prayer and praise time with the aid of lights… and amplification, to our team’s slight annoyance. But the fact that they now have the generator they have been praying for made the extra noise an opportunity to praise God.

Thank you Jesus  or providing!

-Dixie

As much as she loves school, RoseMicaelle’s  real passion is in creating beauty. She loves to paint the girls’ nails, thinking about what it would be like to fix ladies’ hair and give manicures. And although she’s never sewn anything, her biggest dream is of one day being a seamstress, custom tailoring, designing, and creating beautiful clothes. If only she had the money, she would buy the finest threads in the most brilliant colors and create masterpieces! But that is a far-off dream for a 3rd grader in a rural corner of Haiti trying to be a student and a substitute mother.

RoseMicaelle realizes her need for Jesus now more than ever. She thanks Him for doing  so much for her, providing a house, food, schooling, and life itself.  Her understanding of God leads her to praise Him and obey Him.  Soon after the 2010 earthquake, her father found salvation in Christ, much to the chagrin of her voodoo-entrenched extended family. They rejected him and his young family, putting them out on the street and provoking RoseMicaelle’s mother to leave them for better surroundings.

If you walk onto the grounds of the elementary school Hope in Haiti works with in Nan wo, Haiti, you might see a shy face peek around the corner of the building, peering out to see who’s visiting. If you walk up to her, you’d find that this quiet girl is named Nerla. Her natural beauty is obvious but she still reaches to cover a recent scar on her lip. If she shyly offered to show you around, she would probably show you her home: a 10′x10′ concrete room she shares with four other teenage girls. Nerla is nineteen–the oldest of them. Materially, she is also probably the poorest, if you can even compare one person’s poverty to another’s in Haiti.

Nerla is here for one thing: She left her three brothers and two sisters back in the mountain village of Kawo so she could come here and complete her sixth grade of school. It is not uncommon for children to get a very late start to an education, especially if the family has no money. Nerla attended Hope in Haiti’s other school in Kawo for six years, but now in a second effort to pass 6th grade, she is actually living on the school grounds in Nan wo. In fact, she tries to spend all her time there, not even going into town like the other students. Still, she misses her family and her home in Kawo. The scar on her face came from a recent motorcycle taxi accident while catching a ride back from the end of the Kawo trail at the foot of the mountains.

Would you consider sponsoring this determined young lady?

Nerla wants to be a nurse some day so she can take care of her parents and neighbors, but this means she has a long road ahead academically. How will she do it? God knows. In the mean time, she likes to cook, so she has made it her job to cook for the other girls she lives with. She prays for her mother and father. Her mama is a Christian woman who cooks over a charcoal fire, washes her clothes in the stream, and has to carry all her cooking and drinking water in a bucket on her head. Her father, who is not a Christian, gardens a small parcel of land for food and does some construction for money.

Nerla came to know Jesus Christ as her savior in 2010. “I love Jesus because He saved me. He died for my sins and gives me wisdom, and so He makes me rich. He will supply all my needs.”

What would Nerla do if she ever met her goals, became successful, and had money to spare? “I would help my family and give them what they need.  They need money so they can help their other children.”

With the challenges of difficult classes and unrelenting poverty threatening her at every turn, you would think Nerla would be discouraged and give up hope. You would think that after failing to pass her grade last year she would have put away the books and joined the other women her age scratching out a living in the markets to survive. But she presses on. Her hope is in the Lord. “Nothing is difficult in Christ.”

If you would like to be Nerla Aluis’ sponsor or find out about sponsoring one of the hundreds of others awaiting your help, write to info@hopeinhaiti.org

This year, we are inviting you to take part in this endeavor. Would you consider giving at least one doll and one small (Matchbox ® sized) car to all Pastor L to make the end of the year brighter for our kids? All we ask is that the dolls not be Barbie ® dolls, but just regular baby dolls, and that the cars all be small ones.

If you are interested in being a part of this, please email info@hopeinhaiti.org right away and let us know!

Thank you

-Brandon

This Christmas, you can bring the story of Jesus Christ to a young Haitian child.

For a young nine-year old in rural Haiti, having a book that is all your own is a special gift in and of itself. Having a book that tells the most important message there ever was would be a God-send, literally. We are inviting you to make that possible.

Paulos Group has published a children’s story Bible in Creole that is designed to point the young reader to Christ using the exciting narratives of the Bible. This hard-covered, fully illustrated 351 page book paints the picture of Christ’s redemption, beginning with the creation story of Genesis. Using the imagery and dramatic accounts of people like Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, and David, this book opens up a child’s mind to the history of the Bible, but more importantly, to the foundational truths of God’s overall redemptive story. Each of the forty-four chapters is uniquely Christ-centric, allowing the reader to see how God planned to have a relationship with us even from the beginning, overcoming our sin problem with His promised Deliverer. If you would like to browse this book in English, click here.

What really excites us is that the publishers are printing this book in Creole! With the nation’s “higher” language being French, many of the most important books in Haiti are unavailable in Haitian Creole, the common tongue. Many Haitian churches don’t even teach out of Creole Bibles, preferring to read out of the French Bible, to the confusion of the parishioners. With this book in the hands of kids (and even adults), we hope to be a part of the much needed change toward full understanding of the Gospel and the message of the Bible among our precious friends in Haiti. This is where you come in. Our Christmas wish is to provide copies of this book to all the children involved in our schools in Nan wo and Kawo, plus their friends and neighbors as well. Between now and December 31st, we would like to raise $10,000 to cover the cost of the books and their shipping to Haiti. Would you consider becoming part of that effort to give a child in Haiti the gift of understanding the message of God’s Word? If so, please write info@hopeinhaiti.org

MATCHING GIFT ALERT:

Some anonymous friends of Hope in Haiti have pledged to match gifts up to $5,000 so that we can meet our goal of raising $10,000 for Creole children’s Bible story books. If you make your gift before December 31st, 2012, your gift will be doubled! Praise God for this opportunity.

Lourdjina (looJEEnah) was born outside Dessalines, Haiti around the time of the horrific earthquake that rocked the capital city of Port au Prince. She is the only child of young couple who live about a mile past the church and school that Hope in Haiti sponsor. Outwardly she looks like a healthy child, but Lourdjina was born with an abnormal condition that keeps her from being able to control her body movement as well as most people. Although she may or may not grow up to be as intelligent as any other person, Lourdjina will never be able to physically function without the help of others. Cerebral palsy is found all over the world, with an average of 2 out of every 1000 live births [source]. With the daunting prospects of caring for her, Lourdjina’s parents could easily give up hope for a bright future for their family. At one point, her father even tried to get Dixie to take her home for adoption! (Try to understand… culturally this is an acceptable way of bettering their child’s life). Economic conditions are not improving, and they have no way of affording special equipment for their handicapped daughter.

But thanks to a gift from Byron and Shelly at Maranatha Children’s Ministries , we were able to bring a stroller to this family—a stroller specifically for young handicapped children who cannot walk. Praise God for His limitless provision! This stroller will allow Lourdjina to see the world beyond her home in the country. Now she can go virtually anywhere her parents go, but without having to be carried.

We are so happy to have even this minor role in bettering the life of this beautiful little girl. We pray that she grows up to have a powerful testimony for Christ.

I talked with Dixie this morning and she is floored with the way God provided so quickly and with such generosity. She would love to get a generator now while she is in-country, but there may be an option to find a long-lasting generator here in the States that we can bring with us in January. Please pray for wisdom in this decision, as it is quite important for us, for Louinet, and all the people in his flock. In the mean time, a handyman in Dessalines was able to come and patch up the aging Coleman generator once more on Friday, but this fix is very temporary. We don’t know how many more days it will run.

We will keep you updated on this project.

Yours in Christ,
-Brandon