Time for OUTREACH.....We leave for Haiti and the Dominican Republic in less then 24 hours!

Dear Friends and Family,

Thank you for your continued support as I follow this journey God has called me to. It is hard to believe the lecture phase of our training is over and we our heading out for outreach. Our team leaves for Haiti tomorrow (Wednesday) night. I am turning in my staff application tomorrow with the intention of joining staff when I graduate from my DTS and staying on here in Kona with photogenX. I would be serving the Nations in Kona and around the world. I will share more information when God has confirmed more specifically what I will be doing. I am excited about going to Haiti and seeing how God will use us there. We have received several prophetic messages that there were angelic forces going with and surrounding us. My time here during the lecture phase has been simply amazing. God has continued to blow me away, especially as I draw closer to Him and pursue Him more.

We will be going to the DR for a week. While we are there we will be learning what we will be doing when we return from Haiti. We will be heading to Port-au-prince, where the earthquake happened in January 2010, to provide mercy ministry, teach a mini DTS (discipleship training school), and various other ministries, then we will be in St. Marc for 3 weeks doing similar work and then back to the DR for 3 weeks. We will also be working on stories and taking pictures for the Voice For the Voiceless 2.0 and the 30 Days of Hope Prayer book that we will be publishing later this year. For more information, please visit www.photogenx.com. We will be sleeping in tents while we are in Haiti. It is rainy season there, so we're guaranteed to have lots of fun. We tried the tents out this past weekend when our team camped over night on the beach. It's going to be a little tight, especially with our gear and luggage.

This has been an amazing experience for me and I highly recommend everyone do a DTS. There are campuses and courses ALL over the world, there is something for everyone. www.ywam.com


Please pray:

-That we would see God's heart
-That we would see and perform signs and miracles
-That we have the ability to present truth, love and hope
-That we are able to meet tangible needs of the people
-For supernatural health for our team as we travel and during our time in Haiti and the DR
-Unity in our team
-Protection for all over all our camera gear and equipment
-For an HD Video Camera to shoot the movie "Eyes of Hope" that we are working on. (for more info, please visit www.eyesofhope.info)
-That God would provide the balance of $900 for our leader Cyrielle's outreach fees before we leave so she can go on the trip with us
-That we would give Him all the glory in all we do

For updates please follow my blog: www.christinefontaine.blogspot.com.

Please don't hesitate to write me and let me know how you are doing and how I can pray for you!

Lots of love,
Christine

Matt 28:19

p.s. my cell phone is being TEMPORARILY turned off while I am out of the country. I will return to Kona on September 18 and will re-activate my service. Please feel free to email me at wdj_d4u@yahoo.com OR wdjd4u@me.com, I will check my email when possible, we expect to have internet in all three places we will be staying, but there are no guarantees.

HOW GREAT IS OUR GOD - Louis Giglio

We watched this clip a couple weeks ago, it will BLOW your mind! It's about 15 minutes long and absolutely worth it!



Louis Giglio - How Great Is Our God




I hope you enjoy it!

Meet my Haiti team....

I took these pictures about a month ago during team time we had on a weekend retreat and had completely forgotten to post them. We were at a fairly rustic retreat so no one was happy about having their pictures taken. I'd like to introduce my team to you, so you can have faces with the names to pray for as we go on outreach...




Meet our fabulous leader, Cyrielle Thuny. Cyrielle is from France and a little crazy, in a good way!





















Meet Jörn Burger from Germany! He is a great guy and lots of fun to be around!






















Meet Hannah Siegrist from Lancaster, PA. She did NOT want her picture taken! :) She is absolutely beautiful and on FIRE for the Lord!











Meet Elizabeth Loebs from Mooresville, NC. She is so sweet, sincere and caring! I believe God is going to use Elizabeth to heal many on our outreach! Elizabeth is one of my prayer warriors!















Meet Hilary Haddow from Tacoma Washington. Hilary was in my small group, she is so honest, smart and loving! Hilary is planning to do the 18 month Round The World Track starting in January.












Meet Steven Michelau from Canada. Steven is 6'7", yes he is TALL, yet a little shy! I am looking forward to seeing Steven come out of his shell!













Meet Emily Rice from Bridgewater, NJ. Emily is bold and on FIRE. She is one of my prayer warriors.












Meet Jillian Bakke from Sammarish, WA. Jill is a little shy, but amazing! She was recently healed from a gluten allergy here during our DTS.

















Meet Emily Williamson from Boise, ID. Emily is like a daughter to me. She lost her mom when she was 7.












Meet Dani Fuchs from Gemany. Dani is responsible for coming up with the idea of doing the movie 'Eyes of Hope' and driving the process. While he can be a clown, he also has a serious side. He has great faith!

















Everyone on my team is so beautiful and amazing and uniquely gifted! I feel honored to serve with such an awesome group of young adults! I praise God for each and everyone of them! They are my family and I love them all dearly and I know you will too!

Susi Childers - A Wake Up Call

Susi Childers, one of the photogenX founders, spoke at one of our Thursday night meetings a few weeks ago! Susi is an AMAZING woman, leader, wife, mentor and so much more!! Here is a link to her talk titled 'A Wake Up Call', it is worth listening to!

I hope you enjoy it!

ONLY 16 days.......................

...........................until we leave for Haiti! WOW!!



There is an outreach team that just returned from Haiti on base now and I had the opportunity to talk to Phoebe today and get some feedback about what it was like. They were in St. Marc's the whole time they were on outreach. One of the things she told me was that everything is oppressed, the people, the air, the food, the soil, etc. One of my team members talked with a group the other day and was told that the demonic forces are SO prevalent that you can feel it when you step off the plane, so it's extremely important for the team to be unified, which is something I have been praying since we found out where we were going.

God has been teaching me SO much more then I have had time to blog about. We are pretty busy from early morning to night, so I feel like I have done a really poor job about communicating, so I apologize. My primary focus has been spending quality time with the Lord, being still and really learning to hear and obey Him. Prayer is a HUGE part of EVERYTHING we do, if we even think about something, before we take a step, we pray about it! I love it! I have really grown in the area of Intercession. We have a 24 hour prayer room on campus, between 1-2pm everyday there is a organized worship time and from 2-3pm a dedicated prayer focus. I try to go whenever my schedule allows. On Thursdays, they have been praying for Haiti. God has really been teaching me about the power of Intercession. As I have positioned myself to really hear from God, my life has been transformed, people have even noticed a physical difference in me. This reminds me of when Moses came down from Mount Sinai and had a glow around him and everyone knew he had been in the presence of the Lord.

Our speakers have been awesome!

Every week we have time for local outreach, one week we saw 5 people come to know Christ. I have witnessed healing and had many opportunities to pray for deliverance and see people freed from lies they have believed for years. We have also been building relationships with locals and lots of opportunity to pray with people. Last night we were able to witness to two different guys on the street, both open and seeking. We prayed for both of them and it was really neat to see their demeanor change and peace come over them as we prayed.

It's clear that each of us has been hand picked to be here and neat how everyone is uniquely gifted for the tasks we've been called to. We leave in just 16 days. There are ten students on our Haiti team (7 female and 3 males) and currently 1 staff. The following nations are represented on our team: Canada, Germany, France, and America. We will be leaving for Haiti around the first of July and going to the Dominican Republic for a week first (flights are much cheaper), then to Port-au-Prince for three weeks and St. Marc for three weeks, where we will be sleeping in tents in a Refugee camp, then back to the DR for about five weeks.

It has been clear to me since I arrived that God has called me here and to stay! More and more that has been reaffirmed. I am planning to join staff when I return from outreach at the end of September, however I am not sure exactly what I will be doing yet. There are many opportunities and I am waiting on the Lord for clear direction. God has told me to dream big, that I will be part of pioneering something and that I am called to 'The Nations', but not to a particular Nation. Every time I am obedient in stepping forward in faith, He continues to amaze and bless me! I plan to join staff with the YWAM-photogenX Ministry (which is focused on justice issues) and likely working with one of the ministries within it or possibly staffing a Round the World Track (also part of photogenX, which would involve mentoring and disciplining young adults. I wish I had more to share at this time. I anticipate the support I will need to raise is approximately $1,500 and I will have some one time needs.

On another note, we had the opportunity to volunteer for the local Ironman Half Triathlon (1.2 miles of swimming 56 miles of biking and 13.1 miles of running = 70.3 miles), last weekend. It was a LONG 12+ hour day, but a huge blessing and fun. I had the opportunity to mark bodies, watch the start of the race, set up timing stations, direct and encourage/cheer on competitors and watch everyone cross the finish line and cut timing chips off. I didn't even mind the buckets of sweat pouring out on my head as I was cutting chips off competitors ankles and congratulating competitors for finishing the race . I got to see all aspects of the race, which was a lot of fun! A lot of training goes into competing for a Triathlon, which made me think of how amazing God created our bodies and how crazy it that our bodies could even do something like a triathlon (and this was just a half). It reminded me of how we are running a race, as Christians, and how important our training is, how important positioning ourselves to be with and hear from God is, but most importantly how we are capable of doing SO much more then we actually do! I think too often we put God in a box. God is so much bigger then we give Him credit. When we dream big (outside of our human capacity), we allow God to step in and do what only He can do!

Prayer requests:

• I have another contract on my house (the first two fell through), please pray that everything would go smoothly and not go into foreclosure. I will be out of the country by the time it closes, so this adds another level of difficulty to the situation, but I know God is Big enough to handle this.
• That we would keep our eyes on Him and give Him the glory for everything we do.
• For our teams to be united!!!
• For all the preparations that need to come together.
• For supernatural health for all the teams going out, that no one would get sick or injured.
• For all the finances to be released for all needing support.
• For those we will encounter and minister to along the way and in Haiti and the DR.
• That we would rely on His strength for everything we will encounter.
• For revival and restoration!
• For boldness as we are called to do things we have never done before.
• For clear direction about my next step and for the support.
• For complete healing for my body (from my current illness).
• For a friend and her family, who had a miscarriage this past weekend.
  

Thank you so much for your prayer and support! If feel led to support my ministry, there is a 'Donate' button to the right of my page. I am looking for people that want to partner with me on a monthly basis, if this is you or you know someone else that might be interested, please send me a message at wdjd4u@me.com.

May the PEACE of God rest on you!

Love, Christine

QUESTION FOR YOU....

DOES ANYONE READ THIS BLOG??? :) I'm just curious.

I would love to hear from you and to know how I can pray for YOU!

Please post a comment or send me an email and let me know how you're doing and what you think of my blog. I apologize I haven't had too much time to post!

Haiti

In just 4 short weeks, 10 students (including myself) and our leader will be boarding a plane to spend the next three months in Haiti and the Dominican Republic ministering to those in need and sharing the Good News of Jesus. I’m sure everyone has heard about the earthquake that hit Port-au-Prince, the capital, in January of 2010 that devastated the already poorest country in the Western Hemisphere where 80% of the population lived under the poverty line and 54% in utter poverty before the earthquake, subsisting on less than a $1 a day and the formal unemployment rates ranging from 70-80%. It is estimated that over 1 Million were displaced from their homes and hundreds of thousands lost their lives.

Youth With A Mission (YWAM), the Mission organization that I am serving with, has been serving in Haiti for over 24 years. Our team will fly in to the Dominican Republic, as the flights are cheaper and we will be finishing up there, and then heading to Pot-au-Prince for three weeks, then St. Marc for three weeks, and back to the Dominican Republic for five weeks. In Haiti we will be doing various humanitarian aid, mercy ministries, and a mini DTS (Discipleship Training School). This will be a much smaller scale of the 12 -week training that we have been receiving here in Kona. The topics we will be teaching on are: Hearing God’s Voice, Repentance/Forgiveness, Relationships (guys and girls), How to have an intimate relationship with God, Prayer/Bible, Spiritual Warfare, Father Heart of God, and Holy Spirit. We will be staying in a refugee camp! I can’t tell you how excited I am about going and living with the Haitians for the time we are going to be there.

Haiti’s population is just over 9 million. Due to the excess mortality from AIDS, there is low life expectancy, higher infant morality, higher death rates, lower population growth rates and changes in distribution of population by age and sex than would normally be expected. Only 3.4% of the population is over the age of 65, 58.5% are between 15-64 and 38.1% under age 14. The median age is 20.2. In 2007, it was estimated that 120,000 were living with HIV/AIDS. The education system is really weak, only 52.9% of Haitians over 15 can read or write.

The degree of major infectious diseases is high for food or waterborne diseases, bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A and E, and typhoid fever, vector borne disease, dengue fever, malaria water contact disease and leptospirosis.

80% of Haitian’s are Roman Catholic, 16% are Protestant, however roughly have of the population practices voodoo. Even those that claim to be Christian, practice voodoo and Christianity simultaneously, so the spiritual climate is very interesting. The country made a 200-year ‘pack’ that they would practice voodoo.

According to the CIA World Factbook: Two-thirds of all Haitians depend on the agricultural sector, mainly small-scale subsistence farming, and remain vulnerable to damage from frequent natural disasters, exacerbated by the country's widespread deforestation. The economy has recovered a little in recent years, registering positive growth since 2005, however four tropical storms in 2008 severely damaged the transportation infrastructure and agricultural sector. US economic engagement under the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) Act, passed in December 2006, has boosted apparel exports and investment by providing tariff-free access to the US. A second version of the legislation, passed in October 2008 and dubbed HOPE II, has further improved the export environment for the apparel sector by extending preferences to 2018; the apparel sector accounts for two-thirds of Haitian exports and nearly one-tenth of GDP. Remittances are the primary source of foreign exchange, equaling nearly a quarter of GDP and more than twice the earnings from exports. Haiti suffers from a lack of investment because of insecurity and limited infrastructure, and a severe trade deficit. In 2005, Haiti paid its arrears to the World Bank, paving the way for reengagement with the Bank. Haiti received debt forgiveness for about $525 million of its debt through the Highly-Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative in 2009. The government relies on formal international economic assistance for fiscal sustainability.

Haiti is a transshipment point for cocaine en route to the US and Europe. There is substantial bulk cash smuggling activity and Columbian narcotics traffickers favor Haiti for illicit financial transactions, there is significant pervasive corruption and Haiti is a significant consumer of cannabis.

Spain, France, the continent of Africa and later the Unites States have all been crucial in shaping traditional Haitian cuisine. Several foreign countries have gained control of Haiti over its history, introducing food and ideas from their native lands. Early Haitian tribes cultivated fruits and vegetable such as guavas, pineapples, cassava, papayas, sweet potatoes and corn. Europeans arrived soon after and began introducing oranges, limes, mangoes, rice and sugarcane. Slaves from Africa were transported to Haiti to work sugarcane plantations.

Before the earthquake, Haiti was not on the verge of disaster, it was already past it! Haiti needs all the help it can get! Some of the top needs are food, drinking water, medical supplies and shelter. Haitians are extremely vulnerable because of poor infrastructure and extreme poverty. We need to take care of the poor in times of crisis!

Please take some time to watch the below. It shows a vision for sustainable development and presents a realistic view on Haiti. www.fondwa.org

PLEASE PRAY for Haiti!

Pray that:

· God would be glorified and His glory to be known.

· Haitians would not doubt, but cry out to God.

· For those who believe, it is a great opportunity for harvesting souls. Deuteronomy 4:30 talks about God watching for those who will turn to Him and obey in times of tribulation. When so many are bowed low, pray that they truly come to realize there is NO other Savior!

· For God’s Mercy to be on Haiti and its people.

· Those on the outside would have hearts of compassion to give out of their surplus to fill the deficit that is widening in Haiti.

· That we all extend ourselves any way possible to secure our brothers and sisters in Haiti.

· God would bring Peace among the people and prevent violence, riots, and more crime.

· For healing to those who are broken in body and/or spirit.

· For the local government to lead selflessly and efficiently.

· For nations of the world to be moved with compassion and a desire to serve.

· Survivors do no lose hope and will look upward for faith, understanding, hope, and love.

· For unity and reconciliation among the Haitian people.

· For a deeper global understanding and solidarity between the wealthy and the poor.

Please all pray for our team going to Haiti!

Pray that:

· For unity in our team, that we would move together as ONE!

· For strong immune systems, that no one would get sick or injured!

· For clear communication with our contacts.

· For the messages and teaching we are preparing to share, that they would be clear and point directly to Jesus.

· People would see a difference in us and they would stop and ask us what we have, because they want it to.

· For finances to be released for everyone on the team and for us to bless those in need.

· Many would come to know Jesus through us.

Some photogenX staff went to Haiti in February and one of the stories I have heard was how they could hear women being raped at night, so I know that we will see and face some difficult things. Pray for protection and strength for us!

If you would like to support our trip and help those in Haiti, please prayfully consider donating (there is a ‘Donate’ button to the right on this page.. Any amount will make a difference.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, for all your prayer and support.

I would love to hear from you and know how I can pray for you. Please drop me a note in the mail (Christine Fontaine, University of the Nations, photogenX- April-2010, 75-5851 Kuakini Hwy, Kailua Kona, HI, 96740) or send me an email (wdjd4u@me.com).