Aroma of Christ

It was a blessing to be back in Diquini this past weekend. Despite the hot dusty ride and getting bounced around in the back of the truck for a total of 16 hours, the journey there and back was quite enjoyable and full of energy, singing, laughing, and prayer. I only knew two of the seminary students from prior trips and mobile clinics, Pastor Belonie and Pastor Devicour. It was great to get to know some new people and see their hearts for God and for their Haitian brothers and sisters. Junior met us in Port, he went down the week before to organize all of our housing and eating arrangements and to get the word out in the community that we were coming.

The first night we arrived we had a service at the church and 8 people came forward and gave their lives to Christ! Matt passionately preached the truth of the Gospel and the power we have through the salvation of Jesus Christ. It was a great way to start off the crusade and everyone left excited and encouraged for how God is clearly at work in this place.

The next morning Julie and I went out in groups with the students to evangelize. Although I was a bit nervous and timid about how I as a young “blan“(white in Kreyol) female would be received, the students boldly spoke of the grace of Jesus in truth and love and almost everyone was willing to listen and let us prayer with them. There were still more who heard the message of redemption and decided to live the rest of their lives in light of that truth. There was one older lady who had been deep in the cultural roots of voodoo for most of her life. The students revealed God's true perfect love for her and what He had done on her behalf because of that love. She became a Christian that day, and to symbolize the dying of her old life and beginning of a new one in Jesus, we had a little fire outside to burn all the various voodoo articles she had in her house.This experience truly challenged and stretched me, and my own faith was strengthened through witnessing the power of the Gospel.

After lunch we planned out a VBS for the kids. We sang songs, learned about Noah and how God blessed him for his obedience, memorized Genesis 7:5, and Julie and I sang a song in English that we had taught them back in April. We were both amazed that straight after we finished singing that same song in Kreyol, they started right into it in English and remembered the whole thing without any of our help! We had a great service that night, Devicour preached and the theme for this weekend was all who are tired and thirsty, come to Jesus because He is the living water and only in Him can we find true lasting life. There were more people who came forward after he spoke to give their lives to the Lord.The next morning Julie and I went with Junior to see a lady who had a broken hip the last time we were there. Julie had given her some exercises to help strengthen her muscles and wanted to see how she was doing. We walked down the side of the mountain through the mix of tarp tents, lean-tos, and the occasional cement house. The lady was very happy to see us and said she still had pain but could walk and get around just fine. After we left her house, Junior told us about how he had helped build 12 houses in Diquini during his time there. When he was in his early teens he went to live with a missionary family in Port who took him in as their own son. He told us that his “dad” had sent him money to buy materials to build houses for those in Diquini who had lost their homes in the earthquake and were now living in tents. He took us to see a couple of them and they were by far some of the nicest houses in the area and definitely a big step up from the tarp homes surrounding them. Junior told us that he has been looking for more support so that he can buy materials and continue building houses for these people. The need is so great and each night we were there, there was thunder, lightening, and pouring rain. We heard of one house collapsing under the force of the rain, and I'm sure there are many more that are frequently damaged during those kinds of storms. It is also safe to say that no one living in one of those tents would have a chance of staying dry when it rained. It was heart breaking to think that most of these families had been suffering in these conditions for the past 9 months.I am praying for a way in which I could help raise support to give these people proper homes to live in. If you would like to join in helping the families of Diquini, you can get in touch with me via email and I will give you more details about how you can do that.

Kids club on Friday afternoon got a tad bit chaotic when we brought out beads and string to make bracelets. We had black, red, white, green, and yellow beads and we explained to them that black stood for the darkness our sin, red represented the blood of Jesus that cleanses us from all of that sin, the white bead represents how we are made clean and pure through His blood that covers us, the green stands for growth in our faith in who He is, and yellow represents heaven and the hope we have of spending eternity there with God. The seminary students were all really wonderful, and it was a blast working together with them.

Saturday night Pastor Belonie preached about Jesus and the Samarian woman in John 4. He incorporated humor, passion, and intensity into his message and had all of us shouting an amen at one point or another. He drove home the point that whoever drinks of the water Jesus offers will NEVER again be thirsty and that water will become in him a spring welling up to eternal life. We sang and danced, more people were saved, and the night ended in everyone running to their homes to try and escape the downpour. We were all up early the next morning. Church started at 6 because we needed to get on the road early so we wouldn’t be driving on the treacherous roads in the dark. The service was lovely, we heard from Pastor Elizay about the true bread and water of eternal life. In total, there were about 20 people who came to know the Lord during the crusade. We took communion, prayed for the church, and pastor Charlo who took over after Junior left, prayed for all of us as well. After church we had breakfast, packed up, and spent some time together as a group thanking God for who He is and all He had done in the short amount of time we were there. We prayed for His continued presence and blessings in the lives of His children in Diquini. I am so grateful that God has allowed me to be apart of experiences like these and apart of the work He is doing here. Even when we feel weak, discouraged, unfit to accomplish anything for the Kingdom, worn out, under attack, in the middle of a crisis, or out of our element, praise the Lord He is so much greater than our circumstances and that through our weaknesses He is made strong. For it is Christ who is living in us, and who chooses us as vessels to accomplish His will so that He may be glorified."But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing..." 1 Corinthians 2:14&15