These past few weeks have been busy! On May 18th we had our first missions team of the year, and our first missions team in over a year come down! This team consisted of 24 people from a Christian college in Texas called Christ for the Nations, plus our two summer interns from that college as well. They came down to spend two weeks doing different work projects, and doing 10 days of Bible Camp with our Aslan children. I had heard about the groups that come from this college every year, and how amazing they are, but I was still completely blown away by each and every one of these students. From the second I met them all it was obvious that they were all so spirit filled, and completely on fire for the Lord. They came on this trip so ready to make a difference in Haiti, and they absolutely did!
One of the main projects they came down to work on was to build a swale, essentially a drainage pond to redirect the water flow on our property when it rains and prevent it from eroding our existing structures on the land. They worked so hard in the hot sun to mark out where it would go, and then got right to digging. Unfortunately, we quickly realized that the soil was all clay, extremely compacted, and very very heavy, it just wouldn’t be practical for us to dig it by hand. Because of that, we rented a backhoe to dig it out, but these students were then tasked with moving the soil into other areas so we could work on evening out the land and redirecting the water into the newly dug swale. These students worked so hard in the hot sun without complaining a bit, and I have to say I was incredibly impressed. They also were tasked with painting and repairing the railings around our church. They chose a few artistic students to work on this to make sure it was done beautifully, and it really was!
This team also planned a 10 day Bible camp for our children, 5 days for the boys and 5 days for the girls. They had so many amazing Bible lessons, skits and games planned for our kids they truly had so much fun! They also made sure to take the time to stop and pray over any student who wanted to come up for prayers, and did altar calls for salvation which was so amazing to see. They really took the time to pour into our students and just love on them, it really was so amazing to see!
This group of young people truly were so amazing, their hearts were so focused on God and his love overflowed from them to all of the people around them. It was clear to see that each and every one of them were meant to be here for this time. It was also so encouraging to see all that God was doing in their lives! I always like to say, as much as people come and give to Haiti, the people of Haiti will give it right back! About halfway through their trip we were able to take the teams to nearby waterfalls for a day of rest and relaxation. While we were there, one of the girls felt like God was speaking to her, and that she wanted to be re-baptised because she had been young and didn’t truly understand the meaning behind it the first time. We all gathered around her and watched her get baptised, and by the end of the day about 15 more people also wanted to make the decision to be re-baptised. It was so amazing to see how much God was doing in their hearts even on their day off!
One of the coolest things to see overall was the way they loved our children. They truly knew how to pour out the love of God onto them. In Haiti, not everything (or sometimes barely anything) goes as planned. That’s just part of life here, but it can be hard for teams to adjust to sometimes. However, this team was so understanding and patient. If something didn’t happen at the time we thought it was going to, they didn’t get frustrated and angry, instead they were content just to sit and play with the children until we could start the next activity. Watching them just sit and pour out the love of Christ onto our children was so amazing to see!
We were all incredibly disappointed for our two weeks with them to have to come to an end, but very excited for what the rest of the summer will bring! We currently have our two summer interns that flew down with that group staying with us, and it has already been so amazing to have them here! They will have stayed for a total of 10 weeks by the time they leave at the end of July, and they have so many exciting projects ahead of them! They will be able to help us in our medical clinic, with checking people in at the front desk, and help us to continue to organize and computerize our files to make our clinic much more efficient. They will also be helping to teach our English classes, do hygiene workshops with our community, meet with our sponsored children to get updated information from them, and whatever else may come up while they are here! We are so excited to see all that God is doing to do through them while they are here!
Overall, God is just continuing to do such amazing things here, and continuing to get people interested and passionate about Aslan’s ministry in Haiti and it is so exciting to see! We have recently received the finished mini-documentary done by the production group that first came down with us in March, and it was so amazing to see that video on all that we have going on down here! I will link the video below if you’d like to watch it, it’s a great overview of all the different areas of our ministry here!
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MryZKr1URSE
Sophia Amorski 