Bringing Church to the People

Tomorrow marks two weeks of being in Haiti “alone”, without a team here with me, and I am still loving every second of it! It truly feels so amazing knowing I am exactly where God wants me to be.

Since I have been here, I have been able to observe in our Medical Clinic during the week. Seeing the many different people we are able to help has been so incredible! (including me when I was sick this past week!) One of my first projects was to put our clinic records for 2021 into excel files, so we could easily analyze the types of patients we were getting and why they were coming into the clinic. This also allowed me to easily send the data to our clinic overseer in New Jersey. Normally, everything in the clinic is hand written, so we’re not able to get that data unless we’re physically there, but now we can easily access and analyze it. Through this, we have found that we are helping many people, both in our church and organization, and other people who have just heard about the clinic. This is a wonderful way we can reach the community, and the people that may not ever come to church. But if they are able to come to our clinic, and get help, they may be more interested in learning about our organization, and being a part of it!

Last Sunday, I was given the wonderful opportunity to help run our Sunday afternoon children’s program. This program offers a place for kids to go, learn about God in a way that interests them, and then have some time to run around and play after. In doing this, I was completely blown away by one of my English students, Binlady. He has been so dedicated to his studying, and has advanced beyond what I could have imagined. He was able to serve as my translator so I was able to help run the program, and he did an absolutely incredible job. It has been so amazing to see how God is raising up our youth to be a part of our organization, and seeing their confidence in learning English has been so encouraging.

This most recent Sunday, we were also able to do an incredible community outreach program. On our land, we have a 90ft deep water well. I was able to test the water from this well as a part of my senior project in college, and its cleaner than bottled water in the U.S.! One of our most important programs is our clean water program. We noticed that many families who lived far from the well were still going down to the extremely contaminated river to get their water, because it was just closer and easier. This was causing them to become extremely ill, and was hazardous to their health. Our clean water program takes our big truck up into the mountains, and into these far off areas that cannot reach our well, it collects families and their many many water jugs, takes them to our well to fill them, and then drops them off back at their houses. This runs for the entire day, taking many families back and forth. It is extremely helpful, not only to ensure that they are getting clean water, but also to save them from having to walk miles and miles with gallons and gallons of water. This program has grown beautifully, but, our Haitian Director, Joseph, noticed that many of these families were receiving water, but they weren’t getting a chance to hear the gospel, as they lived too far to make it to our church. His solution? Let’s bring the church to them! He has now developed community outreach programs to bring the church to these far off villages. This past Sunday, we held an afternoon service quite literally in the middle of the street, with our full band, and a generator to power speakers. It was so amazing to see so many people walk up to listen, or stop their motorcycles to come be a part of church! Because of this program, so many people were able to hear about the gospel, whether they heard it from their houses, or saw us just driving by! It truly was amazing to see how many people were affected!

Overall, God has been doing incredible things. In the short time I have been here, I have already been able to relay much more information to the US side of our organization, helping to end the “lost in translation” issues we can sometimes have, and find out a lot of answers to different questions we had. I am so excited to see what God is going to continue to do, especially as I restart my English classes in April. Please be keeping that in your prayers, and that God continues to keep me safe, healthy, and motivated. Thank you for your prayers and support!

Bondye beni w, God Bless you,

Sophia Amorski