Busy day with Answered Prayers!

March 6th, 2010
Last night as we gathered and prayed, we verbalized our frustrations and prayed and really felt that God spoke concerning why we were here-The things I shared on the last post.
1. "Do you love me? Feed my sheep." Jesus told us.
2. "Nor do I count my life dear to myself." Acts 20:24- Never consider whether or not you are of use- but always consider that "you are not your own, you were bought with a price". 1 Cor 16;9

He really heard our prayers! We met with two pastors in the morning. Really dear men, full of faith and integrity! We listened as they shared their story of struggle and faith as God had called them to start a school for children that would be affordable and meet the great need for education in Haiti. They also had plans to start church services and were currently meeting on Saturday nights for worship. They had about 150 or so children, some of them orphans who were students at the school. They shared how God had provided a place for the school, even though not exactly what they wanted, it was a building that they could meet in and God provided for the money for rent and even things like benches for the children to sit on.
They have a great need for two large tents so that they can start school up in April. We really felt God lay it on our hearts to try and raise the money to buy the tents and have them shipped to them for the school. Even very basic supplies such as paper and pencils are difficult for them to buy.

We then went to a building in downtown Port au Prince that was run by a Methodist church. We met the pastor who was involved because of Reggie's friend's wife. She was running a small community health clinic from the same facility. They were reaching out to the youth in the community by having drama classes and also evangelism.They also were involved in relief efforts to those living in tent cities around the area.
After a bit of a wait, we began putting together hundreds of small packages of basic hygiene supplies like toothpaste, soap, and toilet paper. We then piled garbage bags full of these supplies into the back of a small pick up, we all climbed into our Jeep and followed them to two different locations. At the first one the pastor had us unload several of the large bags to a compound where numerous families were living in tents to be distributed by them. We then went to a large enclosed soccer field that was now housing over 200 families.It must have had over 600 people living here. We waited outside while one of the men went through the locked gate to find someone. they came back out, led us into the compound carrying the rest of the supplies that we were going to give out to these families.

What happened next is hard to describe, but it felt like at any time things could get completely out of hand. These people were so desperate for anything that we had. The man who was the self appointed leader of this small town had established a system of government. The city was divided into 12 sections. Each section was overseen by a woman that he appointed. As new families came to seek help here, they would be assigned to a particular section. He also designated some of the young men to be security. They wore black shirts that said "Securite" and carried clubs and bats to maintain order. They made everyone line up to start getting one small bag each and people quickly started pushing and crowding us. Every few minutes the Security would yell at us to stop handing things out until they could control the crowd. They were yelling and banging their bats and clubs on the metal booth that we were in. People would come at us from the side just trying to get something. I had women bring their babies, up grabbing my arm and begging me to give them something because they had a baby.

We of course did not have enough supplies, and it was heartbreaking to have to say it was all gone.Once we were done however, the crowd quickly dissipated and we were able to walk around the compound and talk to the leader, which is when we found out how it had developed over the last 6 weeks or so. We were very impressed with his leadership and knew that the pastor we were working with would be able to come back and bring more supplies.The children every where were just so precious with beautiful smiles and waves for all of us! Really gut-wrenching to know how little we could do for them.