News – Page 86 – Haitian Island Ministries

April was a very productive month! It was also a very rainy month but productive first.

You surpassed the goal of $3000 needed to buy Bibles by $1274! What a blessing you are being to the children! When we reached the goal, Steve began buying and distributing them at the schools. We wanted to wait until we had enough for everyone before we started buying them. The business we are buying them through is located in downtown Port Au Prince. Its building was destroyed in the earthquake and now, like so many others, works out of a tent. Because of that, their stock or supply is limited. So we can buy 40 or so, they reorder, let us know, we get those, and so on. With this newsletter, we have posted pictures of the Bible purchase.

All of the kids were very excited to receive their own Bible, and during school breaks, you could see them sitting and looking at or reading them — exactly want we wanted to see! Before passing them out Steve had them promise him they would read some each night.

Then there’s the rain. It poured during April and did so even to the end of the month. During the last week of the month several were killed in areas close to dry river or creek beds, and many living in the tent cities were forced out of their homes by flood waters.

This will be a continuing problem as long as there is no other place for still almost half a million people to live. With hurricane season almost here, that threat hangs over them daily. Please remember to keep these families in your prayers.

Along with pictures of the Bible program, and the flooding, we’ve included some new pictures of one of the feeding programs.

(Click here to see more pictures.)

Thank you again for going well beyond the need asked for to buy Bibles. By doing that, you’re helping us buy more for others outside the schools and spread the Good News. We appreciate each one of you, for everything you do to help our friends in Haiti.

Serving HIM together

Steve and Terry

In late October 1994, Steve Smith came out of a surgical suite carrying a hand full of supplies that had been opened but not used or contaminated. A nurse, coming out of an adjoining room did the same, asked him what he was going to do with his and he told her he saved them for organizations going to and working in other countries. Although no longer sterile, there is a great need for supplies like these as long as they are clean.

She asked if she could give his phone number to a group making plans to go on a mission trip that could possibly use some of what he had. Twenty four hours later, Steve had been invited to make his first missionary trip and to Haiti. This came three days after a prayer group at their church had prayed God would open a door to the mission field for him.

After spending the last week of 1994 and the first week of 1995 in Haiti, Steve and Terry, along with their pastor and three friends, sat down on Saturday the second weekend of March 1995, set the ground work for the ministry, and gave it its name: Haitian Islands Ministry, or as it is known now, HIM. Steve says, “I wish now we could take credit for the name but that was our pastor’s idea and I guess in hindsight it sounds better than my name: Haitian Outreach Project, or HOP — although around Easter that might sound okay.”