Forever Changed (An Open Letter to My Support Team)

Dear People I Love,

Sitting down to write this letter to all of you who dared to follow God’s prompting and support me in my journey to Haiti last week, whether financially, in prayer, or both, is both an exciting and daunting task. How does one sum up 8 days of their life that will forever change all the days that are to follow? How can I relay the depths of what transpired during my time in Haiti in less than a novel’s worth of pages?

First and foremost, I extend my deepest, sincere, and most heartfelt thanks to all of you on my support team. You believed in me, in Mission of Hope, and most importantly, in what God is doing through trips like these. And I assure you, He is doing a lot. Without you, this literally would not have happened. Rejoice that you have played an integral part in furthering the gospel to a group of people who desperately need and want it; you have advanced the Kingdom forward into the dark places where voodoo still holds its death grip, albeit a little less tightly now. :O);  you have made it possible for more children to be educated, fed, and made healthy. YOU have, and God will reward you for it. For it is written: “And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” Matthew 10:42. By supporting me in this mission, you have done just that, and God has taken notice.

Tent cities still exist.

I will never forget my first view of Port-Au-Prince from the air as we prepared to land. My breath caught in my chest and, I admit, I wondered what I had gotten myself into! As far as the valley stretched to the base of the mountains was utter poverty. Tent shacks, half crumbled homes & buildings, & piles of rubble were all I could see. As we broke through the haze of the heat and touched down on the runway, I felt as though I were having an out of body experience, one that would last for the next few days as I acclimated to my new surroundings. After hanging in the airport for a couple hours trying to locate the 13 bags the team checked, we left for Mission of Hope hoping that the one woman with the laptop at the airport would be able to locate those bags and get them to us. Praise God that by the next day we had them in our hands!

Me and Jenny

Sunday, our first full day in Haiti, was spent touring the Bercy (North) Campus of MOH where we were staying. Right now there are 4 dorms (2 unfinished), 2 school houses, a playground, a cafeteria, a water tower, and various guard stations on the campus. However, I have seen the plans for what the finished product will be and it is amazing. Their aim is to make the campus not only a place to house missionaries, but to hold pastoral retreats as well. After our tour of Bercy we hopped on a bus and headed to the village of Leveque where MOH has been building new homes and transitioning people displaced by the earthquake in 2010 out of the blue tent ovens homes you see everywhere. As soon as we got off the bus the village children ran to us and jumped into our arms! They are used to seeing missionaries in their village on a regular basis so they had absolutely no reservations! One little girl named Jenny, about 2 or 3 years old, kept coming back to me. I carried her around the church that is being built at the top of the hill in the center of the village and talked to her in the little bit of Creole I knew (“Kijan ou rele?” = “What is your name?”; “Kilaj ou?” = “How old are you?”). We looked out over the brightly painted houses that MOH has built on either side of that hill, one side being designated as a community for the deaf and blind. We laughed and made goat noises at all the goats as we trekked back down the hill to our bus. It was hard to leave her when we had to go. That was a feeling I would have repeatedly throughout the week.

Houses built by MOH in Leveque

After Leveque we headed to the Main Campus of MOH and took a tour there. Schools, Clinics of all kinds, Missionary housing, Intern Housing, Staff Housing, an awesome Church building, the Orphanage, Cafeteria, 3 Cords Store, warehouses, & Madame Cheap-Cheap’s market – there is a lot to be seen! It is incredible all the work that MOH is doing, including housing for over 65 orphans who live in a family style environment, with their own “mother” or “father” (depending on what age they are) to take care of them and 4-5 other “siblings”. MOH has a goal of housing 150 orphans by 2015; pray they reach it! MOH also sends trucks of food and supplies out to other schools and orphanages in Haiti and currently feeds 54,000 orphans each day by doing so. They set a goal of raising that number to 100,000 by 2015 as well! (Estimates are that there are 400,000 orphans in Haiti today).  Please check out www.mohhaiti.org to see more on all that they do. It is truly incredible; God’s work in action every day.

Sunday ended with church service at the Mission of Hope Church. I don’t think I can accurately describe how awesome it was. They have a new screen where they can project the bible verses and song lyrics in both Creole and English so that everyone could sing along. The Pastor, Claudel, and his worship team were incredible. The Spirit of God was moving so strongly in that building that I felt as if I could actually physically see it sometimes. It was awesome.

Our week was broken up by alternating village days and work days. Each day we would head out to Source Metalas (pronounced “Soos – Maht-lah”), which is the village that Kensington Community Church (KCC) has “adopted” through MOH, twice a day after breakfast and lunch. Every team that goes to Haiti through KCC will be serving in Source Metalas from here on out, providing a greater opportunity to develop stronger relationships and lasting change. We met many of the villagers and heard their stories. Many of them invited us into their homes and welcomed the opportunity to have us pray for them. We were amazed and encouraged by the amount of strong, mature believers in the community who, even though they had so little, they only asked that we pray that they would know God more fully. Beautiful. Over and over we heard them say “Without God, I am nothing.” Their humility and pure faith was more powerful than any sermon I’ve ever heard. As Isaac, an 8 year old boy who came with his family to serve at MOH, so eloquently said “When I looked into their eyes (the children), I felt God in my heart.”

The kids of KCC singing. 

On our work days we would either head out to paint houses or pick up trash in the village. One day we had planned to do children’s ministry. Right in Source Metalas, a man named James and a group of his friends have all given up their money for college to create a “Sunday School” of sorts for their village children. They have cleaned out a space behind one of their houses and made benches for the children to sit on and are teaching them songs and stories from the bible. The kids love it and so do we! We performed our skit for them and handed out the craft we brought. They were wooden paddle ball games that they could color with the markers we brought and boy, did they color! They each took time carefully coloring in the pictures and writing their names on the backs. Many of them were so proud they would bring them up to us to show them off. It was wonderful to see how much they enjoyed it. As we were ready to leave, James brought us their mission statement and would you believe that they call themselves “Kids Church Community”, or KCC! Incredible.

Friday was Wahoo Beach Day where we could relax as a team and enjoy a look at the beautiful place that Haiti could once again be. The weather was perfect and the water was heavenly! We took time to reflect on our week and prepare our hearts for returning home the next day. As we looked back on all that had transpired, on how God spoke so specifically through our devotions every morning, on how touched we were by all the people that God placed in our paths, on how strong His Spirit moves through that Country, and on how loud that crazy donkey on campus was, we couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by it all. God has a plan for the people of Haiti, and they are ready to embrace it. I could not be more thankful for the opportunity He has given me to be a part of what He is doing there. My life is forever changed.

There are so many other stories I could tell but that would make for an extremely long letter! I am more than happy to meet with anyone who would like to hear more about our trip or about what MOH is doing. I have posted many pictures on Facebook and videos on YouTube from the trip that you can see and the team is preparing a DVD slideshow collection of pictures and videos from the whole team that I will give everyone an opportunity to see once it is completed. I’ll also be posting more thoughts on my trip and experiences here on my blog, in the future.

The extreme poverty is real and the problems are immense, but the people are beautiful and they are ready for God to take over Haiti. Thank you so much being a part God’s plan for Haiti and allowing me to be as well. May God richly bless you for your service in His name.  I love you all!

Nan Bondye,

(In God,)

Jessica