Category: News (Page 62 of 100)

Terry and I hope everyone had a great Christmas and enjoyed the holidays. We did.

Over the last year or so, we’ve learned more about Terry’s health and what the future looks like. We had thought they were going to give her injections to boost her immune system but they have decided to let her body recover on its own. One of the many things she can’t do now is be in a larger group of people where we aren’t in “control.” Doctors have pointed out that church is one of those places. If you’re shopping, you can control what goes on around you and who you are around. In church, it’s hard to do that…so we do our Sundays at home watching our three favorite “TV preachers,” and studying.

Recently one of them opened his show reading the first several verses of Nehemiah. He then explained that Nehemiah was a person who was more than likely never in Jerusalem, but wanted to know about those returning there and the city. When told the walls had been broken down and burned, verse 1:4 says he sat down and cried:

¹The words of Nehemiah son of Hakaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa,² Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.

³ They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”

⁴ When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.

Then the speaker asked the question, “What breaks your heart?” There are many things we could point at and to, considering our world today and all that is going on in it. But Terry and I agreed that the same things that broke our hearts in 1994 still do today — those in Haiti who still live in complete poverty; those who still hang on to the voodoo belief and reject the God we know because He is so distant; the constant political turmoil Haiti goes through and is going through at this very minute.

Through the years we, together, have made a very big difference in the lives of so many people and in some cases changed the world they live in, but there is still so much more we could do. There is more we have to do. Going into this in 1994 we obviously had no idea what would take place or where it would take us. This was a point the speaker made — “You have no idea what hangs in the balance of your decision to embrace the burden God has put in your heart”.

Our burden in 2016 is still doing all we can to help our friends in Haiti. It is our prayer that you to will embrace that burden.

Thank you for all you did in 2015 for them and for all you did for us as well. We pray the New Year will be very good to all of you.

Serving HIM together,

Steve and Terry

We started sending monthly updates in late summer of 1995, so we know we have mentioned the following before, but we also feel we should never lose sight of what all of us are doing.

Christmas in Haiti is absolutely nothing as we know it in the United States. In the cities there are decorations. We know there are some people who have money, and their children are considered privileged. But in the villages, if you see any decoration they are in the form of brightly colored crepe paper or plastic flowers hanging in a church. An actual Christmas tree is unheard of; some think of them as no more than idols. So what you do takes on even more importance at this time of the year.

The money given for teacher salaries doesn’t just support a person. Odds are they have their own family, a set of parents and possibly a brother and sister living with them too. This year, because of your giving, each teacher will receive an extra $100 to help with Christmas, food, or whatever they want to use it for.

The feeding programs feeds more than just children; it also includes all the adults who gather the things needed to run the program, as well as those who act as “crowd control” and pass out food. They need to eat as well. This year, thanks to what you have provided, there will be extra meals at each place for Christmas for everyone.

This year, instead of sugar plums dancing in your heads, we hope the thoughts of what you have provided over the past year will be a blessing to you. For another year you have made a very big difference in the lives of so many.

Merry Christmas,

Steve and Terry

PS. In Terry’s last appointments most of her counts were okay. I say okay because they are just above the low normal. The concern now is the level of her immune globulin which is very low, Since this is the first line of defense against infection, doctors will more than likely start injections to raise that level.