New Church Sign

This past week Calvary Chapel Port-au-Prince received a beautiful gift from a friend of the ministry. Sadrac Pierre, who formerly ran a sign making business in Florida, made and sent down a brand-new church sign made out of plexi-glass. You can see from the pictures that it is a vast improvement over our former one! We very much appreciate Sadrac's time and generosity in creating such a professional looking sign for the ministry here. May God bless you!

Seige's Trip to the U.S.

Seige flew out today for a brief trip to the U.S. He will be visiting some of his fellow pastors and doing lots of necessary errands that need to be taken care of. Please pray for him as he travels.

Class Enrollment

Sunday, March 23rd we started taking applications for the next session of computer, English and Bible classes. You wouldn't believe how many people showed up! Sunday alone we took 122 applications! Another large number of people came today to fill out applications. This is a great way to touch lots of young lives with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are trying to figure out how to take as many students as possible.

Pics from Puits Sale

Here are a couple of pictures from last weeks church leaders conference at Puits Sale.

Puits Sale Conference

This week several people from Calvary Chapel Port-au-Prince are attending a church leaders conference at Puits Sale in the southern department of Haiti. Seige and Edy are preaching and teaching, the worship team is helping out with music, and Adline is doing a Child Evangelism Fellowship seminar. Pray that the week will be a week of spiritual growth and encouragement for everyone participating.

Vehicle Repairs

One of the realities of living in Haiti with its poor road conditions is constant vehicle breakdowns. This last weekend we had to do some major overhauling of Seige's Isuzu Trooper. Jonny Herr, a missionary with Water For Life and a professional mechanic spent a long day replacing upper and lower ball-joints, tie-rod ends, and CV boots on both sides of the front-end. We certainly appreciate all of his hard work.

During the day we also discovered our need of having a better assortment of tools on hand for vehicle maintenance and repair. If any of you have tools that you could donate or would like to help us purchase some for this purpose, please let us know.

Legal Pastoral Recognition

The list of pastors recognized on the same day as Seige. Seige is number 14 on the list.

Taking Pastoral Oath

Today was an important day in the development of Calvary Chapel's ministry in Haiti. After many trips to various government offices and many LONG hours of waiting on signatures and other bureacracy, Seige succeeded in taking an oath before the Minister of Justice which gives him official legal recognition in Haiti as a pastor. This is an important step in being able to do all the church's legal affairs in the name of the church instead of in the name of an individual. What happens very often is that land, buildings, vehicles, etc. are purchased in the name on an individual rather than in the name of an organization. Invariably this causes conflict and, in many cases, has been the downfall of churches and ministry organizations. We believe that God is most glorified by us abiding as best we can by the laws of the land without resorting to corruption and by us planning for the long-term continuation of the ministry.

Taking an oath before the Minister of Justice or getting a signature on a legal paper does not make someone a pastor. According to God's Word, it is God in His grace who chooses and equips pastors and teachers for the equipping of the body of Christ. However, as good stewards, we believe that all our affairs should be transparent and above reproach.

Faithfully pray for Seige as he leads the Calvary ministry here in Haiti.

Life in Port-au-Prince

As you drive around the city of Port-au-Prince there is one thing you can't help but see in every direction that you look---PEOPLE! Piles and piles of people! On many streets traffic slows to a crawl as cars try to navigate through an ocean of people walking in every direction. So many people and so few resources!

This last week I asked the 25 students in my English class how many of them are over the age of twenty. The entire class indicated that they were over twenty years old and five were over the age of thirty. I then asked them how many of them had paying jobs. Not a single person in the class of 25, twenty and thirty year olds, had ever had any kind of job at all! It's not hard to imagine all the difficulties these people face.

Please continue to pray that the ministry of Calvary Chapel can make a real and practical difference the lives of the people we touch each day.

Your Comments

We would like to thank you for leaving your comments. It helps us to know that people are holding the ministry up in prayer. If you would like to leave a comment, just click on the word "comment" at the bottom of a blog entry, then type your comment in the box labeled "Leave your comment". If you don't have a user name, just click next to the word "anonymous", then click on the bar marked "Publish your comment". That's all there is to it.

Thanks again for praying for Haiti in general and this ministry in particular. To God be the glory.

The Gideons

This clip is of the street kids singing on the first day of school. Please continue to pray for these kids. The road out of the life they are currently in will be a long and hard one. But each one of these kids is precious to the God who formed them inside their mother's womb. There very well could be a Gideon among them!

"The Gideons" School for Street Kids Opens

Today is really an incredible day; a day several people have dreamed about for quite some time. A new school, officially named "The Gideons", opened for the street kids of Petionville at 2:00 PM. There were 24 kids who showed up for the first day.

Monique Guillaume, founder of the ministry and pictured on the left, was in attendance for the first day and Seige Poteau, pictured on the right holding a literacy book, led a devotion from Judges chapter 6. He talked about Gideon and how the Lord appeared to him and called him a brave soldier and the deliverer of Israel. Gideon's response was that he was from the lowest family of the children of Israel and not only that, but he was the least of that family. It seemed highly unlikely that God could use a man of such humble stature to do such a great work. Seige challenged the group of street kids that there very well could be some Gideons among them if they will only open up their lives to the transforming power of God.

Church Service on March 2nd

Yesterdays worship service was very well attended. In fact, it was too well attended! A total of 22 people had to stand outside under the hot Haitian sun to participate. It's a good problem, but a problem nonetheless.

Right now we are exploring three different options to find more space. The first option is to rent a larger existing building. However, there are few existing buildings for rent in our present neighborhood that have large enough rooms to be used for worship services. Most buildings for rent are residential houses and much too small for the church's needs. The ones that are big enough are way out of our price range. (One owner, for example, was asking $7,000 U.S. per month for rent!)

The second option is to buy a piece of property and build a building. We looked at a two acre parcel of prime property last week which would be perfect for the church and all its ministries--the asking price: $250,000 U.S.

The third option, which is the way we are leaning at the moment, is to buy a tent that would cover the courtyard of the building we are currently renting and hold services outside. The room we are now using for worship services could then be used for larger computer classes. There is a company that specializes in missionary tents that can get us a 30' x 50' for around $4,000 U.S.

Keep praying that God would lead in the direction He would have us go.