Ahh…Friday night. There is not a Friday night that goes by when I don’t think of the Friday nights I’ve had in Gilbert, Haiti with Pastor Nahum and the people of his village.
If you were at Pastor Nahum’s home on a Friday evening, you would see his children and orphans changing into their “nicer” clothes. Around 6:30ish you could look out the front door of his cinder block home and see a tired and weary people walking towards Pastor Nahum’s church that sits just off the left of his home. These are people who have just left the fields where they have spent a grueling day of farming under the hot Haiti sun and others who just left a small spot on the side of the street they squeezed into earlier that morning where they worked all day selling bananas, hand stitched napkins, or whatever they had in hopes to earn enough so their children would not have to go to sleep hungry for the night. The fullness of pain is seen in the faces of the Haitian people both young and old alike at the end of a hard and unbearable day of surviving their 3rd world country. Suffering describes their physical lives and it’s at the end of the day when it is most evident…physically worn down and completely sucked dry of any hope they might have had earlier in the morning. Nothing ever seems to change in Haiti. Promises are made yet the sun rises and sets over and over and our brothers and sisters remain poor and needy. They are still living under the same oppression and absolute poverty they endured the day before.
My heart has been completely shattered for an entire village of these kinds of people past the point of recovery. I’m broken for a people who God says belongs to Him...who are treasured parts of His kingdom. However, day after day I watch them bear indescribable misery and agony.
They have absolutely no voice in this great big world of opportunity.
They are suffocating.
They are forgotten.
They represent the half dead man on the side of the road waiting for a “Good Samaritan” to have mercy and take pity on them.
They are waiting for us, the church, to reflect Jesus’ sacrificial love on their behalf.
On this Friday night, I’m writing to you with urgency and desperation because when I see the longing for a better life in the eyes of little orphaned children in the brokenness of Haiti, passion burns in my soul for the church to be their miracle.
I can’t come close to fully comprehending the pain of our Haitian brothers and sisters but to the extent Jesus has given me His love for them, I do carry their burdens in spirit. It hurts me inside when they are weary after a long day of work that didn’t even provide them a meal for the day. My heart is crushed as they put their children to sleep on mud floors. My stomach turns in knots when they have no electricity to power even a small fan to relieve them from the harshest heat. And there is a sorrow so strong it takes my breath away when the orphans are put to bed with hungry tummies.
Let me take you back to Friday nights in Gilbert, Haiti.
On Friday nights, a worn down, exhausted, and helpless people gather at Pastor Nahum’s church to pray. They get on their knees and call on the name of Jesus. They lift up empty hands and cry out for God’s provisions. They wholeheartedly are depending on Him to hear their cries for help and they have no plan B.
I’ve had the blessing of participating in several of these Friday night Haiti prayer services and it’s the single most beautiful form of worship I’ve ever experienced.
Hands down, without a doubt, what happens on Friday nights at Gilbert Christian Church makes this my very most favorite and cherished time I spend in Haiti. I watch a helpless people rise from their knees believing the prayers they just laid at the feet of Jesus will change everything...it's the very reason they have the strength to get through their dark nights and it gives them perseverance to face another hard day. They don’t have health insurance when their children get a high fever and they can’t depend on the luxury of Costco stores to stock their pantries. They don’t even have pantries.
With every single breath they place their dependence on God. He is everything to them!
When I’m home, I think of my burdened brothers and sisters in Haiti on Friday nights…nights just like tonight…and oh how I miss them. I miss the sincerity of a people passionately calling on God to save them, provide for them, and heal them. It’s all very holy. I miss the freedom you have to worship and pray the way the poor worship and pray. When they call on the name of Jesus in their Creole language it sounds like angels singing. I miss hearing that sound.
I remember the very first time I experienced a Friday night prayer service in Haiti. I didn’t know what my brothers and sisters were crying out to God in Creole for, but instantly the cry of my own heart was for Jesus to hear all of them and to answer each one of their prayers.
Yes. There are a whole lot of needs that need to be met in order to help relieve the excruciating pain of our brothers and sisters in Haiti. Tonight they got on their knees and cried out to God for help.
Can we stop to see them and hear them? Can we step out in a love that will involve sacrifice and become the answer to their prayers?
May the Spirit of God remove blinders from our heart and show us what it means in each of our lives to store up heavenly treasures.
Back to Life Ministries is purely motivated by the gospel and now, as a non-profit corporation, is accepting donations to pour directly into the many needs of Pastor Nahum and his orphans.
"HE DEFENDED THE CAUSE OF THE POOR AND NEEDY, AND SO ALL WENT WELL. IS THAT NOT WHAT IT MEANS TO KNOW ME?" DECLARES THE LORD. JEREMIAH 22:16
You can make donations payable to:
Back to Life Ministries
2815 Thompson Rd
Weatherford, TX 76087
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