I have some investment advice. It’s a sure thing, better than tech stocks, CDs or even gold. And it’s  simple: Lend to the Lord. He will repay whatever you loan Him with generous return. God inked that promissory note in Proverbs 19:17, “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will repay him for his deed.” Any and every time you and I give generously to the poor, we in fact are lending to the Lord. We can take it to the bank that our God notes that investment of compassion and assigns it a rich return!

Here are two examples, ongoing as I write.

Wedding clothes for Haitian believers

In our recent “Spring Cleaning” post, we invited you to donate prom and wedding dresses to PPI to help couples in Haiti celebrate their wedding with joy and dignity. (See full story in the post.) Enter Thomas, Ashley and the clothing business Ashley owns. Thomas and Ashley know Christ but did not know about our Spring Cleaning challenge. In God’s timing, however, Thomas and Ashley reached out to PPI friends last week to ask them if they knew anyone that could use wedding dresses. Voila! These PPI friends immediately contacted us and a few days later helped us pick up an estimated 400 new wedding, bridesmaid and other formal dresses – a generous loan to the Lord! We’ll organize, re-box and ship the dresses to Pastor Isaiah and Celina in early June.

Bible college roof

In the Spring Cleaning challenge, we also invited you to help Pastor Jasmin build the roof on the new ITEPHA Bible college building. (See the Spring Cleaning post for more info.) PPI donated $2000 and others of you invested as well. Thank you! We’re excited to tell you construction of the roof has begun and is progressing nicely. Check out Jasmin’s progress video from a few days ago. More funds are need to complete the roof. Give toward the roof HERE. 

I love seeing God use people like us bring real progress and joy to believers in Haiti! In leading PPI, Rena and I also see how God repays our PPI friends and supporters with the satisfaction of making a difference for Christ where it’s needed most.

Bottom line: Invest!

I’m writing this post at the Detroit airport on my way to central Haiti. Over the next 16 days, we have the privilege of training some 340 church leaders in three PPI courses there. I can assure you personally that our God keeps His promise to repay us with true wealth that money cannot buy! As we’re generous to the poor, the Lord rewards us with joy, purpose, deep satisfaction and peace, abiding relationships and a front-row seat to God’s amazing work through His people, including you!

Bottom line? Invest! Lend to the Lord by helping those with legitimate needs in your family, church, community, and international organizations engaged with the poor, organizations like PPI. As you do, you can expect a rich return on your investment. Guaranteed.

I’d like to introduce you to our new ministry team member. Modie (pronounced “Mo-dee-ay”) embodies what we teach about church leadership in Haiti. I met Modie four years ago in Cap-Haïtien. He participated in PPI Course 1 along with 111 other church leaders, but I noticed him right away. For starters, Modie dresses impeccably in bright colors – yellow, red, blue suits. You can’t miss him. More importantly, he seemed to know everyone there. During our break times and at lunch, he moved among the crowd of pastors, smiling, shaking hands, patting shoulders and speaking to them. Our ministry team met him and liked him immediately.

Modie brought several other church leaders with him to the next PPI course. He began helping our team in any way he could – passing out water on hot afternoons, organizing Thompson Bibles for the day’s training. He has volunteered at nearly every PPI course in northern or northeastern Haiti since then, quietly but energetically, expecting nothing. On top of that, Modie champions our training in northern Haiti. He has invited scores of church leaders to our courses.

I talked with our team last year about asking Modie to join our ministry team “officially” for our training in March. They agreed without hesitation, and Modie helped us lead Course 3 (two times) and Course 1 in Limbé and Cap-Haïtien in early March. His servant’s heart and stellar work ethic have shone through every day – even on a day he (and our entire team) wasn’t feeling well.

One evening in our team meeting, I asked Modie to tell us more about himself and share how he met Christ. He began quietly:

I was born in Ferrier [a village in northeast Haiti]. My father didn’t take care of me so I was given to my uncle, but he treated me badly. I ran away to Cap-Haïtien when I was 12, but I didn’t know anyone there. I just tried to find something better. A pastor took me in and helped me. He sent me to school and had others teach me how to build. I started building when I was 14 years old.

Modie smiled as he told us how the pastor and his wife included him in their family, introduced him to Christ and discipled him. After finishing high school, he attended a building trades school and two years of Bible college. He is an accomplished designer-builder and has built houses, churches and businesses  across Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

He continued, “I thank God. Street kids in Haiti become criminals and die young. The Lord rescued me. He has a purpose for me and I want to follow it.” Modie’s pastor-mentor died from complications of diabetes in late February. Modie helped the family plan his funeral over the two weeks of our training, paying for much of it himself.

I was moved by Modie’s story. I couldn’t help connecting it with the content of PPI Course 3, which we led two times over the two weeks of training. Course 3 is our first course on church leadership, in which we focus on the mission and strategy of the church. We study and discuss foundational truths about the church in Scriptures such as Matthew 16:13-18 (Jesus’ first teaching on the church), Matthew 28:16-20, Ephesians 4:11-16, etc.

We spend a lot of time in Matthew 28:16-20, where the Lord made clear His mission for the church and His strategy for fulfilling it. “Make disciples of all nations,” He commands us, by going, baptizing and teaching them to obey. We answer from Scripture questions such as:

• What is a “disciple”?
• How does Jesus intend for us to “make” them?
• How can our churches be more effective in fulfilling the Lord’s mission?

We tell pastors that making disciples is Job One for the church and that church leaders must exemplify disciple-making as well as teach it. Modie’s pastor did that. He opened his heart and his home to a boy from the streets. He loved him, won him to Christ and discipled him over many years. That boy was Modie. God changed his life and now he loves Jesus and serves faithfully in His mission – a perfect picture of what we teach church leaders in Course 3. May God use this course to inspire and equip church leaders to devote themselves to making disciples in Haiti!

I was excited and a little anxious as our plane circled the grass airfield in Pignon, Haiti. Excited that we would offer ministry training to church leaders in central Haiti for the first time, and a little anxious because I wondered how MFI’s twin-engine DC-3 could land on such a short, grass runway. “They do this all the time,” I thought. Sure enough, the plane touched down smoothly, turned toward a waiting crowd of Haitians and rolled to a stop.

We exited the plane, helped unload our 900 lbs of Bibles and training materials, then scanned the crowd. Which one is Pastor François, our host pastor, and where’s the van we reserved? Both Isaiah and Jasmin, key members of our Haitian ministry team, were on their phones. They have it under control. Within minutes, an older, distinguished looking man and two younger men walked toward us smiling. The two younger men looked familiar to me. Where had I seen them before?

The older man introduced himself as François Romelus and welcomed us warmly. We introduced ourselves, thanked Pastor François for helping us introduce PPI training in central Haiti and asked about his family (common courtesy in Haiti). Then we talked logistics. We would leave Bibles and training materials for our Pignon training in locked storage at the airfield and would take the rest with us to Hinche. An 1-1/2 hours drive from Pignon, the city of Hinche is the chief (capital) city of the Centre Department, and we planned to train there first.

The two younger men stood by patiently. We had met but hardly spoken to them. As we organized our materials and luggage, they talked more to me. I was sweating. “It feels hotter than usual for December,” I thought. They told me they were pastors in Hinche. “Do you remember us?” they asked me. I told them I remembered their faces and asked if they had taken a PPI course in the past. They had attended PPI training a few years before in northern Haiti. They had another question for me: “Do you remember that we asked you to come to Hinche to train many pastors in our city?”

A lot of pastors who take part in our training ask us to come to their city or villages to train others. We can’t possibly go everywhere, and the Lord has blessed our strategy of offering training in the chief city of each Department and a strategic city within a two-hour drive of the chief city. When church leaders from a chief city invites us to come, we ask them to pray for us and tell them we intend to come to their city. We then take a picture with them and get their name and phone number. We must have responded that way to these brothers because they said, “We have been praying for you to come to Hinche for three years. Now the Lord has answered our prayers, and we wanted to welcome you!”

I stopped in my tracks and wiped the sweat from my face. I was reminded again that our God works through the faithful, fervent prayers of His children. “Thank you for praying for us so faithfully,” I told them. “The Lord is answering your prayers.” And He certainly did! Course 1 in Hinche overflowed with church leaders, eager to learn and grateful for the training. During our recognition time on the last day, pastors expressed how much they needed and appreciated PPI training and the Thompson Bibles. They gave our team a certificate of appreciation (pictured) and asked when we could return to offer our other courses. We plan to return to Hinche and Pignon in late April. 

Christie Gabhart, a long-time missionary in Pignon, sent me a note in late January. She said:

I have heard feedback from pastors from Many Hands [her mission organization] who attended your December training.  It was a huge blessing. The training, the gift of a beautiful Bible at the end. All are ‘pumped’ to take the level 2 training. And we want to take advantage of the May 1-3 level 1 training . . . . 

The Lord’s work in response to the prayers of two young Haitian pastors – and all of you. Thank you!