Word and Deed Ministries sent out the following this morning:
Dear Word & Deed Supporters,
By now you have heard about the devastating earthquake in Haiti. With a magnitude of 7.0, it has killed thousands (with one report going as high as 100,000), injured countless others and destroyed numerous homes and other buildings.
Word & Deed is currently assessing all the information that is available which is currently quite limited. Possible partners in relief efforts include Coram Deo International (CDIA) which has had the school building it is using destroyed, as well as Woord en Daad partners AMG Haiti and Parole et Action.
We will be updating our website on a regular basis as information becomes available. You can access the website by clicking here or by copying the following into your browser … Word & Deed.
Meanwhile, pray for the people of Haiti and all those striving to bring relief and comfort.
“From the end of the earth will I call unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” Psa. 61:2
In His Service,
Rick Postma
Word & Deed Ministries
(HT: Danny Hyde)
UPDATE 14 Jan 2010 9:00 AM Pacific
If you would like to donate to the OPC missionaries, you may give to the OPC, specifying that you would like the money to go to the Hoppe Family.
To help via the PCA, go to MTW Minutemen for Missions. (HT: Katie Wagenmaker)
I visited Haiti in the summer of 1998, along with a group of the Mexican Campus Crusade for Christ. My assignment was to teach theology and apologetics to college students and pastors over a week.
The story that Pat Robertson told on TV is true (and I am definitely NOT a fan of Pat Robertson). It was told to me by several Haitians. But the story is worse, since the covenant made over 200 years-ago was ratified by means of the same cermony (the slaughter of a pig on a hill near Cape Haitien) when the 200 years of the original cermony were celebrated.
In addition to teaching in the mornings and early afternoons, I would go out with the Crusade’s team to show the “Jesus” film in the street and to preach after the movie was over. I also talked to several people in those streets. Many of them speak English, and other times I used a Haitian traslator. Over those conversations I found from first-hand that people do believe Satan is better for them than the Lord Jesus. Their questions or objections were not whether the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but why should they leave Satan to leave Jesus is Satan had “blessed” them in ways God wouldn’t. One of the causes of poverty in Haiti is that every single matter is solved through the use of Voo-Doo witch doctors. People who covet their neighbours’ belongings hire witches to cast spells on them to get what they want. I have never been in a place where the darkness of sin is so evident as Haiti.
Evangelical Christians in Haiti are persecuted. The last evening I was in Cape Haitien, a Lord’s Day, we were supposed to be showing the Jesus film near the hill where the covenant with the devil was made. (The area fenced and gated and closed to the public. The hill is infested with serpents. Voo-Doo priests go there to take food offerings to them.) The local Christians had prepared the showing the night before bringing the power generators, the screen, and benches for the people to sit. While we were having lunch after the morning service, the CCC pastor in Haiti got a call: Voo-Doo followers had burned all the things that had been prepared the night before. The brethren there told us many other things that are difficult to believe, and that I hardly share with anyone in order not to elicit a morbid curiosity on the occult.
I left Cape Haitien the morning after to fly to Port-Au-Prince and from there to Miami and back to Mexico City. After dropping me at the airport, our brethren there went to hold a prayer vigil near that hill. They were arrested and put in jail. They were released after a few days, but that shows the persecution there is agains evangelical Christians.
The reason for sharing this is to make you aware that it is likely that our Christian brethren there will not receive all the help other people will. In fact, the Haitian goverment is very corrupt, so it is likely that not all of the aid sent through official channels with get to the people who need it.
Therefore, I advise that we send help as directly as possible to evangelical churches, ministries and missionaries who are there, whom we can trust will actually give away the help to our brethren.
Truly,
Alejandro Moreno Morrison.
Attorney in law and Reformed theologian.
Mexico City, Mexico.
If anyone can suggest a UK based route for giving to these or other Christian works in Haiti I would be grateful. Tax can be reclaimed that way (by the charity).
Failing that a European route could be used.