LOVE FIRST.....LOVE ALWAYS!: St. Marc: Weeks 4-6

It was a sad day to leave the Children's Home and the family we had in Port-au-Prince!

This is going to sound really odd, but it was really sad to leave our tents where we slept behind! We boarded up a bus with all our stuff and headed to St. Marc, about two hours from Port-au-Prince where YWAM has had a base for about 25 years. I was really sick for hours the morning we left, I'll spare you the details but I went from getting sick to boarding the bus with a pan and praying a ton that I didn't get sick on the trip and yes, God heard my prayers and I made it. Our new living quarters were a cement room with no screens, where we encountered tons of mosquitos, frogs, spiders and the sort! We had fans in the room but the electricity went out at night so they didn't prove to be much use! I had been challenged with what I could eat with all my food allergies but I was super blessed to have a salad prepared for me at each meal and often an avocado to go with it! Much of the food was prepared with corn oil, with corn being one of my allergies, I couldn't eat much off the food line.

The base was 'quite' different! There weren't any children to play with or daily worship each evening as there was at the Children's Home in PAP. There was no wireless internet, the connection was hit or miss, along with the electricity and there were only a few wires to connect your laptop or computers to rarely got online. There was a prayer room and a pool though. We also had the freedom to go out of the base in pairs. You could catch a 'moto' (a moped) that would hold 3 people into town for 25 cents each. The motos were fun to ride and although looked scary, because the traffic goes any which way on either side of the street/sidewalk/etc, but I always felt safe! :)

Twice a week (Thursday afternoons and Sunday mornings) we went to the local prison and worshipped and talked with the prisoners. The first day we were there, we prayed with a lady to receive Christ and gave her a bible. God is good! Phillipson is one of the full-time Haitian staff that started this ministry and God has used him to transform lives of those he's encountered there. The conditions were insane! :( The women were all in one cell and the rest were men. Some of them had served their time but they are required to pay a fee to get out and many didn't have the resources or family to help them so they would be there long after they needed to be. There were 30+ people per cell! The prisons we have in America would be like luxury hotels compared to what the Haitians had! One of the days that we were there Phillipson got permission from the guards to take pictures with my camera and then handed it back to me and asked me to take more so here are some of the shots we got.

There was another team there with us this day doing a drama. This gives you an idea of what the prison looked like.

The men and women would gather at the door and listen intently to the message.

Many of them would write notes to give us.

Phillipson sharing a message.

A different view, they were doing construction on the upper level. In the middle is where clothes were laid to dry.

This picture doesn't really give an idea of how crammed they were in there.

This man was crying as Phillipson prayed for him.

This guy had just gotten out of prison, had given his life to Christ and was now coming back to share his testimony and help with the prison ministry.....amazing transformation!

Squeezing in the little space of a window to hear the message and worship.

Steven, one of my team mates from Canada. Steven is a measly 6'7", so we never had to worry about losing him in a crowd! :)

We brought bibles to give them and they loved them! Some wanted bibles in English so they could learn English.

The girls had the privilege to minister to ladies from the Brothel once a week. Margaret had made a decision to leave the Brothel the week we arrived and gave her life to Christ. I had many opportunities to hang out with Margaret and hear her story, it wasn't until I heard her story that we learned she was sleeping on the street since leaving the brothel and then several women at the base helped her find a home to stay with a local pastor and we took up a collection to help her get her food business going again. I was able to go with her to move into her new home and we prayed with her, she was so happy and cried and cried. Her husband died in the earthquake and she was forced to go to the brothel to earn a living, where she would have sex with as many as 10 men a day for as little as $1.25. By the time she paid the brothel for rent, she was making less then a $1/day. To hear her story, broke my heart! Margret continued to come to the Tuesday afternoon sessions when the ladies would come to the base.

One of the things I worked on while being in St. Marc was the Eyes of Hope documentary our team was working on. We interviewed police, pastors, rice workers, the Mayor, an UN worker and lots of other people. Our team split into three different teams, some of the girls went to the Brothel several days a week, a group of us worked on the documentary and another group worked on stories for our 30 Days of Prayer book for Voice for the Voiceless, a photogenX ministry, and a second book in the series, 30 Days of Hope, which focuses on individuals doing something to fight each injustice. There's a link on the side bar of this page, if you'd like more information or want to order a book.

Several of my team members have been sick on and off. The last week in St. Marc, I got Dengue Fever and was out of commission for about 3 days. Being sick in a four world country, sleeping on a concrete floor, where it's very hot and the closest bathroom is a soccer field away, was no fun! I was better for our last few days, but fairly weak.

The base had a big crusade the last week we were there each night. They worked with 30 local pastors and had buses and trucks picking people up and brining them in. There were a few thousand people there. One thing I love about the Haitians is they know how to worship!!!

St. Marc was not affected by the earthquake, however there was lots of rubble and poverty like we saw in Port-au-Prince, which made me wonder how much of the rubble we saw in PAP was from before the earthquake!