Friends of Haiti:

Some of you may remember Steve taking a twelve week course through Child Evangelism Fellowship several years ago. The course is designed to enable a person to teach the Bible more effectively specifically to children, as well as adults. Although the course has helped, it has not had the effect we had hoped it would.

In Haiti, there are few, if any, children’s churches as we know them. Children attend the regular church services with their parents, so what they hear is not geared to their age and more than likely has little effect. Their main Bible teaching and learning come through the schools in the form of daily Bible lessons. While this teaches them to a point, it still isn’t what we have wanted. At least three of our schools are in areas where voodoo is regularly practiced, so they are exposed to voodoo more than they are to Christianity.

Recently we met with the National Director of CEF in Haiti about the possibility of them taking the responsibility for teaching the children in our schools. He is willing to meet with our school directors to set this up.

CEF would visit a school once a week or so, play biblical games, have a missionary story, memory verse and then have a lesson that is designed especially for them at their level. Each week would offer a Bible lesson with a clear presentation of the Gospel and an opportunity for children to trust Jesus as their savior. Each club also includes songs, scripture memory and review games focused on the lesson theme. Strong discipleship training to build character and strengthen moral and spiritual growth is also included.

We feel, as they do, this program will teach them much more than we ever could alone.  Since they are based in Port Au Prince we would want to help them with their expenses to the villages and back; we feel this would be money well used. At most it would be just a few dollars each trip, and they would supply the materials, although we could help some with that as well.

Our priority has always been the children in Haiti — the schools, the nutrition/vitamin programs or health care. We feel this is one more step we can take to help them have a better understanding of the Bible and what it means to them and for them. We hope you will include this in your prayers and as always, thank you for what you to do help our friends there.

Serving HIM together,

Steve and Terry

Friends of Haiti:

Time moves on. It sure doesn’t seem as if it has been two months since Joe’s death, but his is like any other death of a close friend or a family member. It never seems real.

Some have asked us what this does to the ministry there. All of us miss him. But really nothing has changed except the way we go about things. Joe’s role in the ministry was that of Paymaster. The salaries of all the teachers and monies for the nutrition programs and pretty much everything else went through him to distribute to where it was intended to go. Obviously, we have had to rearrange things to get the money to the different areas in a different way. He was also the one we put with new people coming to help, because he was so fluent in English as well as speaking Creole, French and Spanish.

Beaubrun Beaubrun and family

We want to express our thanks to everyone again for helping, for your prayers for us, but mainly for the help and prayers for Joe’s family. They are still going through a very rough time, especially his 14-year-old daughter; she doesn’t want to accept that this has happened. After a two week break his school is now back in session and everything else is as it was.

Terry and I thank all of you for being such giving and caring friends. The ministry is just not set up to handle things such as this. Without your involvement, we don’t know what we could have done. You help and prayers for everyone made a very difficult situation much easier to get through.

Serving HIM together,

Steve and Terry