Violence displaces people and also isolates people. In Haiti, nearly 1 million men and women fled their homes in and around Port au Prince these past five years to find more secure places to live and work. Many church leaders have told us their stories of fear, loss and displacement, and we’ve seen the populations of safer cities in central, northern and northeastern Haiti expand through these unstable years.
Violence also isolates people, and that’s what has happened to over 2 milliion Haitians who live south of Port au Prince. The capital city serves as a geographic bottleneck between areas north and the southern peninsula of Haiti. Gang violence there has choked off most travel and trade between the two parts of the country.
When we train In areas north of Port au Prince, church leaders routinely will travel several hours – even a day or two – to take a PPI course somewhere. But we don’t know of any pastors from southern Haiti who taken even one PPI course. Add spiritual isolation and lack of development opportunities to the long list of tragedies caused by the gang violence.
Until last week.
Last Wednesday, our ministry team flew to Les Cayes, the chief (capital) city of the South Department. It took two trips in a Cessna 207 to transport our four guys (including me) and nearly 900 lbs of cargo – Thompson Bibles (28 boxes), Course 1 workbooks (2 boxes) and other training materials (4 boxes). On Thursday morning, over 120 church leaders descended on Église Bon Berge de Cambry (Good Shepherd Church of Cambry) to claim a place in Course 1. We enrolled the maximum number we could take – 112 pastors.
Some 30 church leaders chartered a bus to bring them to Les Cayes from Port au Prince and Leogane. One of our team guys told me they paid 100,000 gourdes ($765 USD) for the bus, an enormous sum for average Haitians. They slept where they could – in local pastors’ homes and the church’s lodging – and soaked in the training. Every church leader studied hard to successfully complete the course – and they did. Their joy and excitement at Saturday’s end-of-course celebration raised the roof!
On Sunday afternoon we drove 2-1/2 hours from Les Cayes to Jérémie, going from the south coast to the northwest coast of the southern peninsula of Haiti. We thanked the Lord for the (mostly) paved road and (always) beautiful mountain terrain. Pastor Carl Dimanche and his wife welcomed us into their home in Jérémie and are feeding our team very well! At dinner last night, Pastor Carl thanked us again for coming to his city to strenghen church leaders. He told us that he does not remember having good training like PPI in his city and that our coming here is an answer to his prayers. Our sense of God’s leading has been confirmed again and again. We had prayed and planned for this Kingdom venture into south Haiti for nearly two years
Thank you all for praying for this next step in PPI’s work in Haiti!
This morning (Monday) we began Course 1 at Èglise du Dieu Vivant (Church of the Living God) with 104 church leaders. The living God is with us as we open His Word together to encourage and equip church leaders!
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