Haiti
Remembering a Day We’ll Never Forget
On this day two years ago, the Haitian people cried out in unspeakable pain. It’s a day I will never forget—and I know the Haitian people will never forget it either. January 12, 2010 began like any other day in Haiti. There was nothing remarkable about it at first. Children went to school, parents went … Continue reading
Remembering
When Cross International was launched more than a decade ago in South Florida, we began the majority of our overseas ministry in Haiti—only 90 minutes from Florida’s shore, yet the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Today we continue to work with many of the same partners we first sponsored in those fledgling years. Together … Continue reading
Dreaming Big through Education
We often write about the value of education in the struggle against poverty. But I think the message is more compelling when it comes from the mouths of the Christian missionaries who are actually working with the children of the poor on a daily basis in Cross-sponsored schools. Here is a letter from a staff … Continue reading
Construction Update
“The God of heaven Himself will prosper us; therefore we His servants will arise and build…” Neh. 2:20. On a recent trip to Haiti, I was delighted to see the building projects Cross is working on, all with help from our generous Christian benefactors in the States. One such project is rebuilding a school in … Continue reading
New Restavek Center
We got to meet Alexander Venell, the pastor of a brand new MEBSH learning center in Lakawann, Haiti. Cross has been helping dozens of church-operated literacy centers provide food, education, and the gospel to restaveks (a Haitian word for children forced by poverty to work as domestic servants). The Lakawann school has only been open … Continue reading
Letter from Haiti
I’d like to share excerpts of the latest update from Christian Light Foundation, a Cross ministry partner that is radically changing the lives of the poor in Haiti through evangelism, housing, nutrition, and education. The letter spotlights the tremendous work of the ministry’s dedicated staff, who, like Christian Light Foundation founders Emory and Mary Wilson, … Continue reading
Life as a Restavek
One of my favorite Cross-supported projects in Haiti is a specialized education program for restavek children. Together with our ministry partner Mission Evangelique Baptiste Du Su D’Haiti (MEBSH), we support 49 literacy centers throughout southern Haiti! (Restaveks, or children working as indentured servants for a host family, are routinely denied the opportunity to attend school. … Continue reading
God’s Answer
I’ve visited Haiti three times since the January 2010 earthquake. Though I’ve interviewed more people than I can even remember off-hand, I still feel that awful pang in my heart when a child tells me they lost their parents in the earthquake. One child who said those words to me was Charna, who I visited … Continue reading
School Brings Hope to Rural Children
It was the most remote place I’ve ever been. On my recent trip to Haiti, we traveled from the city of Les Cayes to visit students at the Cross-sponsored Calvary Baptist Church (CBC) school in rural Bainet. The journey took five hours by car—over red dirt roads, white rocky roads and seemingly impassable roads that … Continue reading
If God is For Us, Who Can Be Against Us?
Recently I had the wonderful opportunity of visiting with Jean-Gilbert Altidor, a warm-hearted husband and father of four, who is also a recent Cross International housing beneficiary living in Les Cayes, Haiti. Beneath lush banana trees and the hot Caribbean sun, I sat in front of his new home and listened as the smiling 52-year-old … Continue reading
