sorry its taken so long for this to get up here, i wanted to at least have a few of the paper copies out there before i did this blog report, so this is my trip to Haiti summed up on a 8 1/2"x 11" sheet of paper.
May 24th 2010 Haiti report/ summer outreach
Greetings from Chad Reimer in Homer, Alaska
First of all I want to let you know that I thank the Lord for all of you out there who are taking the time to read this and for your prayers and support. God has given out many different roles/ gifts in the work of His Kingdom, and its my prayer that we can see God purposes for our lives and be faithful with them, because we are called to do the work of Jesus. Hebrews 12: 12-13 is a verse that stuck out to me during our outreach.
So April 12th we(I led a team of 4 students and 3 other staff) went to Haiti not really knowing exactly what our time there was going to look like so we came with a heart to do what ever was needed. We worked with YWAM Haiti in St. Marc (which is about 1 ½ hours from Port Au Prince), St. Marc is a place where the earthquake hit too (but not as severely) and a place where some people(roughly 12,000) from Port Au Prince fled to. YWAM St. Marc has been in Haiti for 20 years so they are firmly established and so when the earthquake happened they were set forth into motion sending out rescue teams, setting up tent cities, taking over a abandoned medical clinic, and distribution of foreign aid among other things. So our time there was split between working at the YWAM base doing things like sorting medical supplies, distributing food, working on building a school, interceding for Haiti through prayer and worship, preparing housing for future house building teams, doing day to day tasks so that Haitian staff could go out and do ministry, etc.
The other half of our time in Haiti was spent out in the field, we lived in a tent city called Parisse for a week and a half with a translator really living life with the people, we were the first team to work with those people and so a lot of our time was spent doing assessment, seeing where they were spiritually, praying for them, really trying to build them up in the faith to help them see hope after such a disaster as a lot of them lost everything they had including family members. In prayer and worship we wanted to show them Gods love, we wanted to show them that God is worth our attention, that He is the rock in whom we should build our house upon. We also worked with the physical needs, we provide the basic needs of food shelter and water but we are working with them to build houses on the same piece of land that the tents are, so they are getting paid to build houses that they will get to move into which will hopefully give them a sense of ownership and so they can see that there is a way to see hope physically also. We spent up in the countryside up the mountain in a area called Guavier, we were measuring land to see how much Coffee was growing up there because we want to create up to 150 jobs by setting up a co- op program and building some sort of processing area so they can export their coffee internationally so that they can get good prices. The rest of our time was spent was planning land for a new tent city, clearing the land with machetes and praying for it also
The spiritual atmosphere of Haiti is a bit confused and that is really represented in the physical. Most will say that they are Christians but practice voodoo and don't really understand what sin is, so pray for a softening of hearts and a fear of the Lord which brings understanding. I don't have exact numbers but I know that in single events hundreds of people came to Christ throughout our time in Haiti and even though my team was more behind the scenes when it comes to typical evangelism souls were won for Christ.
So I just got back here in Homer Alaska after those 6 weeks of outreach and I'm starting to get to look at my summer plans, and so far they are undefined but they have a lot of potential. I will update you more on those plans with my next letter, I'm just happy that I get to focus on Alaska and its people. Thank you for getting behind me and really making this happen, praise the Lord for all He has done in my life.
3838 Bartlett st, Homer, AK, 99603 Chad Reimer
chad.reimer@gmail.com 1-907- 235- 9339
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