If there was ever a place in Haiti that needs help, it’s Gonaives.

Far from the city life of Port-au-Prince and the beauty of Haiti’s tropical

Emory Wilson truly has a heart for serving God’s children in Gonaives.

mountain ranges lays a barren desert on the northwestern coast. The landscape looks like the moon: white, empty, flat, and dusty. The city of Gonaives, which is home to about 200,000 people, blisters under the hot sun, and many of its people suffer from hunger, malnutrition, poverty, joblessness, and homelessness.

It’s here that Emory Wilson, one of Cross International’s mission partners, says God wants him to be.

“I’ve been dependent upon God to show me the way,” Emory says. “He’s been my strength and compelled me to go where I didn’t want to go.”

Emory began coming to Haiti in 2004 on outreach trips, and he moved to Gonaives for good in March 2008. Cross first began working with Emory in 2008, when Gonaives suffered horrible flooding. Today he’s building a new school in one of Gonaives’ worst slums, Jubilee, with help from Cross. Several classrooms are expected to open this fall in time for school.

To begin with, the Jubilee School will have preschool, kindergarten, and a

Several classrooms of the Jubilee School are scheduled to open this fall for students (photo taken July 2010).

class for “late bloomers,” or older children who need to start at the kindergarten level because they’ve never had the opportunity to attend school before. Emory plans to add more grades when the school is completely done.

With education, the children of Jubilee will have a chance at making better lives for themselves than the dirt-poor existence of their parents. The things they’ll learn at the Jubilee School—reading, writing, math, Bible lessons—will be tools they can use to get jobs as adults. These children are faced with some of the toughest economic conditions in Haiti, and thanks to Emory’s work, they’ll have what they need for a brighter future.

Emory says the school has been a community effort as much as anything.

“I liken this work to that of Nehemiah—when he went to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, each family built their part of it. When families come and see the work we do, I see what spot they can build along the wall…people are finding things and places they can do and are doing it.”

Click here to read about how you can help Cross International support education in Haiti. You CAN make a difference just like Emory!

Grace Ministries Mission evangelical church has a new leader with a big heart, and big plans, for the poor.

Bishop Stanley Simunyola praying over a poor Zambian family in their home.

Recently, Cross staff met up with Bishop Stanley Simunyola in Lusaka, Zambia, where he told us about the roots of his passion: a Christian teacher from his childhood. As a boy growing up in poverty, Stanley was on the verge of dropping out of school because his parents could not afford the fees and supplies. But his teacher believed in him enough to intervene and pay for his education.

As a result of that act of kindness, Stanley finished school, went to college, became and ordained minister, and earned a masters degree in pastoral studies from an American university. Now he is reaching out to a new generation of children in Zambia to give them the same opportunities.

“When I see street kids, I see potential pastors. I see potential doctors, lawyers,” he says. “I know that what is being done into the lives of those children is not in vain.”

Bishop Stanley’s ministry seeks out children who have lost one or both parents and provides food, school expenses, and Christ-centered counseling. Rather than create an atmosphere of dependency and entitlement, the program is helping the poor to see what they can accomplish through their own diligence and hard work, encouraged by the prayers, love, and support of the local Christian community. For instance, a widow whose four children are being put through school by Grace Ministries was inspired to begin volunteering at her church, and now she provides home-based care to other needy families in her village.

“They don’t want to just be recipients,” Bishop Stanley says. “They want to also pass on help to other people.”

Click here to learn about how Cross International is supporting this powerful ministry.

Cross supports education and microenterprise programs that promote development.

There is an old saying that goes: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The second part of that saying is the goal of much of the work we do to help the poor here at Cross.

However, during staff devotions this morning we were reminded of how important the first part is, as well. Our newest projects officer recently returned from Central America. It was his first time visiting some of the projects we support there, and he was struck by the impact of our elderly feeding programs — those meeting an immediate need rather than supporting development.

Cross also meets the poor’s more immediate needs through feeding programs for the sick, elderly, and vulnerable children.

“These programs provide palliative care to deal with the effects of poverty. As we minister to the more immediate needs of these people, we are expressing the love of Christ in a very real way,” he explained. “Yes, it is important to teach people how to fish, so to speak, but what about the people who are too old or sick or unable to learn how to fish? Should we just forget about them?”

It is clear from Matthew 18:14 — “Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.” — that every person is important to God.

Giving an elderly woman a daily meal is just as meaningful in God’s eyes as supporting a scholarship or microenterprise program. Both are meeting important needs of the poor and, in the process, sharing the gospel of Christ with them.

Click here to learn more about what Cross is doing to meet both the immediate and long-term needs of the poor in Latin America.

First the good news: ten African countries are only half as poor as they were two decades ago.

Young children in sub-Saharan Africa face an uphill battle for survival against poverty, hunger, and infectious diseases.

Now the bad news: child mortality rates have actually gone up, rather than down, in six sub-Saharan nations. Sub-Saharan Africa holds the unfortunate distinction of being the only region in the world that has seen an increase in the mortality rate of children under age 5. That’s according to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals Report Card released on Tuesday.

What makes this report particularly relevant to us at Cross International is that most of our work in Africa is in the sub-Saharan region. One of the six countries listed in the child-mortality report is Zambia, where Cross is providing food and education for impoverished children, home-based care for the chronically ill, and safe, accessible water for remote villages.

Waterborne illnesses and other infectious diseases are leading causes of child deaths in Zambia, while HIV remains a major threat, directly and indirectly, to the health of children. In many cases, lives can be saved by simple improvements in home sanitation and by educating HIV-infected mothers to bottle-feed their infants. Good nutrition and alternative water sources also play a big role, and children must be kept in school because they are the producers of tomorrow’s wealth, which will in turn provide the food, medical care, and healthier way of life that Zambia needs. Cross is promoting all these developments through partnerships with local Christian ministries that understand Zambia’s struggles and know how to make a difference, one family at a time, one village at a time.

Jim Kline, our Africa projects officer, recently returned from a trip to Ethiopia. While visiting a ministry we support in the capital city that provides physical therapy and education to children with disabilities, he met a little girl named Hewett.

Hewett, a 6 year old with Down Syndrome, has made miraculous progress since she started going to physical therapy at a Cross-sponsored program in Ethiopia.

The 6-year-old, born with Down Syndrome, had spent most of her life bedridden and mute. Her parents, poor and beside themselves with worry, had nowhere to turn for help.

In Ethiopia, as in many developing African countries, children with disabilities are considered cursed. These children are often kept at the fringes of society, held back from school and hidden away from people, and their parents face constant ridicule from friends and neighbors.

Hewett, however, did not become one of those “hidden children.” Instead, her parents heard about a Christian ministry that helped children like Hewett get better. After a few years of physical therapy and one-on-one attention, Hewett can now stand on her own and she speaks. Her parents could not believe the miraculous change — Hewett couldn’t even hold up her head on her own before the help of the ministry.

“She is very engaged. She makes eye contact with you and wants to touch everything,” Jim said. “Her parents are overwhelmed with joy over the improvement their daughter has made. The ministry really made a difference in this child’s life.”

Stories like Hewett’s are a precious reminder of what can be accomplished when Christians work together to help the poor. To read about more life-changing programs in Africa that we support, click here.

You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples.
Psalm 77:14

Sixteen-year-old Christopher’s village doesn’t just border the city dump – it has become an extension of it.

Cross International is providing an education for Christopher, 16, so he can work his way out of poverty.

While many poor Zambian families grow small gardens in their yards, Christopher’s neighbors fill theirs with garbage, which they dig through for expired food and recyclable goods. The smell attracts flies that seem to be better-fed than the children playing barefoot amid the filth, their tattered clothes caked with dirt. Instead of getting an education, they stay home and help their parents scavenge through the trash, because at school they will be hungry, but there’s food to find at the dump site. This is the only life they know, and the only life they even know to hope for.

The same used to be true for Christopher, whose widowed, unemployed mother has no money to pay for school fees for him or his three siblings. But with help from a local Christian ministry supported by Cross International, Christopher is setting a higher standard for the children in his village by going to school, studying hard, and dreaming big. He is now in 7th grade, his best subjects are math and science, and he says that when he graduates, he wants to become a judge! Two of Christopher’s siblings are also now in school, and the hope is that their example will motivate the neighbors to begin to break the cycle of poverty.

In addition to school fees, the sponsored children receive health care, monthly food rations, and home visits from the ministry. This holistic approach addresses the many aspects of poverty: physical, economic, psychological, and also spiritual. Click here to learn more about this life-changing project that is bringing Christ’s love to the poorest of the poor.

It can be humiliating to be treated as a charity case—the object of someone else’s pity and justification for their pride. Not being able to feed your family can be enough of a blow to your self esteem; but having food (or a house, or other basic need) provided in the wrong spirit can be almost as crushing.

Poor Filipino families participate in the solution to their housing problem by helping construct the homes provided to them.

That is why Cross International takes care to maintain the dignity of the poor. Rather than take a “Santa Claus” approach, we lend behind-the-scenes support to local churches and ministries already serving poor communities. A needy family is helped by a pastor in their own neighborhood, for example. This not only builds up a family’s self worth and sense of community, it builds up the local church as well.

Whenever possible, we also require the poor to be part of their own solution. For instance:

• Side-by-side with local Filipino Christians, poor families in Manila help build and paint the homes they receive through Gawad Kalinga.
• Villagers in Zambia collect rocks and sand to make cement for much-needed wells and latrines through the Chikankata Water Project.
• And disenfranchised Haitian families living in the Dominican Republic are asked to pay a token amount toward their children’s education at Light Community School.

As Christians, we are instructed to treat others—including the very poor—as we would want to be treated (Luke 6:31). More than that, in humility we are to consider them better than ourselves. (Philippians 2:3). It is with such humility that Cross International strives to honor the poor by helping them in Jesus’ name, and with his love.

It’s interesting to see which products are being marketed most heavily during the Christmas season. This year, Amazon has been promoting its Kindle electronic reader, which makes it easy and fun to download and read the books of your choice.

Technology is changing the way we educate ourselves, even when it comes to studying God’s Word. Take, for instance, the new Glo interactive Bible software. Now your private study can be enhanced with high-definition video, images, historical animations, zoomable maps, and 360-degree virtual tours.

You can give a child an education at New World Christian School in Ecuador.

The wealth of knowledge at our fingertips presents a stark contrast to the situation for many children around the world who cannot read or write and have never heard the gospel. These kids want to learn, but they don’t even have a pencil and paper to practice their ABCs.

For instance, in Ecuador, Jose Guman was just a young boy when he left his Quichua mountain community to work in the city as a shoeshine boy, because his widowed mother couldn’t afford his school expenses. Eventually, Jose dropped out of elementary school so he could work longer hours. Then his mother moved to the city to find work, and ended up earning just $5 a day selling peas.

Jose’s life began to change when Cross provided a scholarship for him to attend a Christian school designed to meet the particular needs of child laborers and ultimately get them off the streets. Now a 10-grader, Jose wants to go to college to study teaching, so he can share his knowledge with other poor children in the Quichua village where he was born.

Education is truly the gift that keeps on giving! Let’s be thankful this Christmas for the teachers who have impacted our lives, and for the opportunities we’ve had to hear the gospel and study God’s word. Let’s also pray that poor children around the world will have those same opportunities.

Click here to learn more about New World Christian School in Ecuador.

We support a network of 18 Christian schools in Haiti that educates and feeds more than 6,600 desperately poor children. Many of these kids find their school and its loving teachers to be a refuge from heartbreaking circumstances.

Celena, 50, rescued 15-year-old Mari from the streets four years ago, and continues to give her a loving home and a Christian education.

Take “Crazy Mari,” for example. That’s what people called her, anyway. She sure looked crazy with her bare feet, torn clothes, and matted hair, thought Celena Joseus, a teacher at a Christian school in rural Saintard, about two hours outside Port-au-Prince. Celena had found “Crazy Mari,” whose real name was Mari Filsaime, wandering the streets.

When Celena approached the girl, the first words out of the 11-year-old’s mouth were, “I am hungry, Madame.” It was then Celena realized this girl was not crazy at all, just terribly neglected. Mari’s mother, who really did have mental problems, had abandoned her and wandered to another town. Her father was dead. Her extended family, thinking she was crazy like her mother, refused to take Mari in — so she was left to fend for herself.

“God touched my heart. I saw a child who was hurt and it made my heart ache,” said Celena. Already a mother of six, she took Mari home to raise her as her own child.

In the loving home of Celena and her husband Pierre, the school principal and pastor of a local church, Mari blossomed. Today she is a happy, healthy 15-year-old who has been attending the Christian school for three years. Celena said, “Now everyone is shocked to see Mari; they cannot believe she is the same girl everyone thought was crazy!”

CLICK HERE, to learn more about this network of Cross-supported Christian schools.

This week Americans observe Columbus Day, in honor of the explorer Christopher Columbus, whose mixed legacy has stirred a lot of controversy over the years.

Christopher Columbus

A statue of Columbus still stands in Hispaniola, the Caribbean Island discovered by him five centuries ago, now divided into the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Here, Columbus and his successors brutally enslaved and massacred the local Arawak population, until not a single one remained. Around the same time, the first African slaves also arrived on the island.

Haiti’s claim to fame is that, many years later, it hosted the first successful slave revolt in the history of the world. The slaves won their freedom by force, while slaves in other countries had to wait to be freed by their governments.

It’s a tragedy, then, that a more subtle form of slavery continues to be practiced in Haiti. Children from poor families are handed over to wealthier families with the promise that they will be educated in return for servitude. Instead, these “restavek” children are abused and treated as less than human.

Cross International supports special restavek schools, where the children are able to get a real education and, more importantly, some time away from their oppressive conditions. In these schools, they are treated with love and respect, they have a chance to befriend other children who share their hard life, and they get to hear the good news of the Gospel.

You can help us bring hope into the life of a restavek child today! CLICK HERE to learn how.