FORGIVENESS, VISIONING & EVANGELIZING

Mission to Haiti – February 13, 2011

We had the opportunity this past Sunday to visit another of the churches here in Saccanville.  We do not normally attend this church, having been there only once last October with the promise to return again.  The pastor, who was, we were told, visiting from Limbe, preached on unity and forgiveness.  He challenged anyone in the congregation to stand if they were not in harmony with another member of the congregation and one lady stood up.  He then challenged her to embrace this member of the congregation in friendship and forgiveness which she then proceeded to do going to the rear of the church where she sat beside and gave a hug to the man she was having difficulty befriending.  We wondered what would have transpired had this occurred in our church at St. Andrew’s. The pastor proceeded to talk about 3 brothers who were each going their own way and how individually they were not as strong as they would be in unity with one another.  He then had one of the elders gather three branches from a nearby tree, showed how easy it was to snap one of the branches in half, but impossible to snap all three branches in half when they were all together.  The pastor was quite animated and spent almost as much time down among the congregation preaching as he spent in the pulpit preaching.  It was one strong sermon and didn’t need a whole lot of translation to understand at what he was driving.

from RCCL
website

I think Tuesday was the first time in a 25 years, that anyone arriving at Labadee/Cap Haitien, the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines port of call, has been able to disembark and travel outside the RCCL compound to visit other sites in northern Haiti.  This cruise tour was organized by the Joy & Hope of Haiti from Hamilton with the intent to have the group travel to various locations where it is working with the Haitian community in the building of schools, etc.  Once they had cleared Haitian immigration they stopped here at the seminary very briefly and we were able to meet friends from Hamilton who were a part of the tour group.

On Monday afternoon and evening and Tuesday afternoon and evening the voodoo drums started.  Our next door neighbour, Stacey, was over on Monday when the drumming started and commented that it must be Noah.  Noah is a voodoo priest who can quote scripture and knows the Bible well but admits that he has to make a living for his family so has chosen to be a voodoo priest in order to do this.  One of our students, Junior, along with 2 other students, ventured into a voodoo bastion on Monday when he went about 10 minutes down a long laneway across from the seminary to evangelize.  He asked if anyone wanted to hear stories about Jesus and the answer was, “No, Satan.”  So he told them about Satan and his downfall from grace!!  They want next to hear about trees because some of the trees around them are considered sacred for voodoo purposes.  He said he would love to tell them about trees and has indicated that he will tell them about the story of creation and perhaps, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will be part of the story.  What an introduction to the Bible when this takes place!  1 Peter 3:15 is a charge from Peter for us to always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.  The Lord bless you and keep you.