Dear friends
What a trip! Praise God for His grace as we traveled to Haiti and back. We are always in God’s hands, but when you’re traveling around Haiti, you are more aware of that. Thank you very much for praying, we truly sensed that God was at work and that we had a legion of people praying for us and the task set before us. Here is a little feedback.
We had two meetings for church leaders in 2 different cities. The Live School coordinator, Evends, did a stunning job of setting these up. In the one meeting we had around 65 people and the other 50. During these meetings, we primarily spoke about Acts 1:8, casting a vision that Haitians need to reach their communities & all of Haiti. Considering circumstances, it seemed crazy, but we also challenged them to have vision to help reach out to the Caribbean and other nations in the world. In one meeting, after challenging them this way, we learned that there was a lady in the meeting who was from Jamaica. Her husband is Haitian and they came to Haiti as missionaries and fund their work through a bakery they started. She came to the meeting just to hand out flyers advertising their products, but she was so intrigued that she stayed for the whole meeting. Her presence confirmed our message that missionaries need to be sent from Haiti.
Uncle Phil (Dr Phil Steyne) was a real blessing in these meetings. As part of it, he spoke about witchcraft, voodoo and the curse it brings on a people. The leaders responded very well to this teaching and one had a sense that so much more teaching was needed. The great thing was that we could tell them about the Live School curriculum, but then say, “You will now hear one of the actual teachers of three Live School courses, speaking to you in person today.” I felt that Uncle Phil was like a battering ram who helped drive our overall message home. He taught or preached every day we were there and ended up riding in the back of a truck, all at the age of 87! Thank you, Uncle Phil.
Another key part of the trip was to get Paul Steyne and Evends to a place where they can start Live Schools. In the leaders meetings we presented what Live School is, why they should consider running with it and how they they can get started. As a result, Evends will call all the churches who were represented, see who is ready to start and then train their facilitators. A pastor from another town invited Paul and Evends to come there where he will pull together pastors from various churches to hear about Live School. Much prayer is needed for this follow up process so that there may be great fruit for the Kingdom.
On the morning before we flew out, there was a “cherry on the cake.” We had arranged to meet the president of a denomination who has 220 churches on the island. We met him at their facility where their national convention was in progress. We arrived to 300-400 people worshiping the Lord. We had a good meeting with him, and their executive committee will meet soon and discuss Live School. Should they decide to go ahead, the president will invite many of their leaders to a conference to hear about missions and Live School. Please pray for God’s perfect will in this. This denomination already has 10 Haitian missionaries working in Haiti and they have vision to send Haitians beyond the country.
Overall it was a great trip. We walked in the deep paths that Paul Steyne has walked as he has traveled and worked there for many years. Even more importantly, we believe we are working with God in this nation that needs to see the transformation that the gospel of Jesus Christ brings.
