Prayer Requests

Soon we will be seeing the mountains of Haiti again after nine months in Michigan.

This summer we will especially appreciate your prayers as we return to Haiti. 

1. Only a few days after we arrive, we will be hosting a 35 member youth-team from Cascade CRC and Thornapple River Church in West Michigan.  Pray that God would touch these young people through their experience.

2. Pray for interpersonal conflicts within some of the Haitian churches that we work with, especially the Christian Reformed Church of Haiti.  We will need God’s wisdom as we try to show the love of Christ who makes us one.

3. Pray for our new co-worker, Troyle Sanon, who will replace Lunise Cerin-Jules as the World Renew Haiti Country Consultant.  Please pray for Lunise also as she plans to move on.

4. Pray that God will raise up a new missionary family to come to Haiti with CRWM.  CRWM is posting a new job description for a “Youth Leadership Consultant” with a focus on ministry to Haitian young people.  Pray and spread the word.  If you know anyone who might be interested, put them in contact with us!

5. Pray that God would help us find an occasional childcare provider for our children during the summer months.  Pray for God’s daily presence with us—He knows what we need!

Goodbye with Thanks!

Isaiah and Vivian did profession of faith at Fuller Ave. CRC in May.

As we look back on the  past nine months, we give thanks to God for many blessings.  We are thankful for Grand Rapids Christian Elementary School whose educational specialists spent countless hours working with our twins to catch them up in reading.  We benefited greatly from many doctors catching us up on thirty months-worth of appointments that we missed in Haiti.  We give thanks for the study leave in which Sharon served as a chaplain, who encouraged and prayed with hurting people.  Zach nearly finished the second revision of his Ph.D. dissertation and hopes to graduate in the spring of 2016.  It was invigorating to grow personally, spiritually, and professionally.  We have gotten a new perspective on our work in Haiti also.  We were appointed as missionaries to Haiti by CRWM in July 2005.  In the last ten years, we’ve internalized a lot of stress from our life and work in Haiti.   God has used these months to help us surrender our hopes and dreams for our ministry to the Holy Spirit’s leading.  In our travels from western Minnesota to Ontario, we have been encouraged by the prayers, sacrificial support, and encouragement we have received from you, our partners in ministry.  In a time when so many missionaries must spend unforeseen months in the USA pleading for funding, we are planning to return to Haiti on the date chosen years ago! 

Back to Haiti

Alot of people have been asking how we feel about going back to Haiti on June 9.  We have mixed emotions. There is much to look forward to.  We have good friendships that have been tested by the ups and downs of life.  God has blessed our ministry with a network of Haitian and North American colleagues whom we respect and trust.  Our children are looking forward to seeing their pets, moving back into their rooms, and unpacking their toys.  Though it lacks some basics, we rent a spacious house in Haiti with a beautiful garden of tropical plants.  We are looking forward to delicious mangos and the sunny weather.

But there is pain in departure. The friends and family we leave behind in Michigan have been with us since childhood, witnessing graduations, weddings and baptisms.  It has been refreshing to enjoy a little anonymity.  On most days in Haiti we are approached by four or five people asking for money because as foreigners we are perceived to be wealthy.  Zach has already starting having dreams about broken-down cars, generators, water pumps, and refrigerators in Haiti.  Though they are little things, please pray that we will find our most essential belongings functional.  Pray for our children who have a big adjustment to make leaving friends, schools, and grandparents behind.  In these times, a Gospel promise comforts us, “No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive times as much in this present age . . . and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30).  Most of all, pray that we will be confident and faithful in our calling to serve God’s people in Haiti.