Haiti is a land of contrast and extremes, from its sights to its sounds, as we experienced daily:

In December 2011 a meeting was held at Through the Roof Ministry Centre in Flinton, Ontario, for persons interested in participating on a short-term mission trip to Haiti to help build a school for the local Free Methodist church in the city of Gonaives. The group would be led by Reverend Bruce Kellar.

When the team left from Toronto for Port au Prince, Haiti on February 21, 2012 there were eleven in total - eight men and three women ranging in age from 16 to 62, and twenty-five bags of check-in luggage including gifts. There was a short stop over in Miami before landing in Haiti.

The team was met at the airport by Larry Judy, the FOHO (Friends of Haiti Organization) coordinator, who made our local arrangements. We all jumped on a flat bed truck and headed to the Mission House where we would be having supper and spending our first night.

On the road the next morning for Mapou where we would be staying while we worked in nearby Gonaives, and travelling in a convoy of 2 pick-ups and the flat bed, we stopped for a “break”. Someone noticed that one of the tires on the flat bed was in need of changing, a God intervention. It was changed in no time at all and we were on our way to Mapou again.

The next day at the work site we started our 10-day assignment -- to continue pouring the school’s flat cement roof. Two of the eight classrooms had been roofed previously. After bending many feet of pencil rod, tying rebar and mixing concrete, then pouring it up on the roof by bucket brigade, three more class-room roofs were completed. We also poured some of the support beams for the remaining three rooms.

Up to nineteen Haitian men of the local church worked along side our team each day and friendships with them quickly developed despite our different languages.

Pastor Michel Smith, the Gonaives Free Methodist Church minister, was very pleased with the progress we had made during over visit. On Sunday we had the joy of worshipping with the Gonaives congregation, and Pastor Bruce was honoured to preach through an interpreter.

Each day of our trip we encountered a God intervention, from safe travel to healings and many of us meeting our sponsored children from International Child Care Ministries.

The food we ate was delicious, even if I do say so myself (I was the main cook with help from all the other members). When we were on the work site, the simple but delicious lunches were graciously cooked by three Haitian women of the church.

What a great experience as our team members saw God working through the hands of God’s people from two different countries who started as strangers and became friends through helping each other toward the goal of a new school. All of our team members were touched in various ways. God had a lesson for each of us as we participated in this important work. As Matthew 5:16 says, “let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

A series of teams from Canada and the US were dispatched to the northern city of Gonaives in the fall of 2011.  The FMC’s primary school there had been lost during severe hurricane-related flooding in 2008, and since then children had been going to classes in the church itself and other scattered venues

The first Canadian team in October worked on the foundations for a new 8-room school. The team was led by the Verona, Ontario FMC and Pastor Jeff Nault, who also had led the first Help Haiti Heal team in 2010.   The team of 13 also included persons from Smiths Falls FMC and Whitby FMC.

Another Canadian team followed in November, led by Grant Sigsworth, HHH Coordinator.  The team of 15 came from FMCs in Ontario (Whitby, Peterborough, St Catherines), Weyburn, SK, and Lapeer, Michigan as well as the Ajax (ON) Alliance Church including worksite lead, Phil Raby.  This team finished the foundations and erected the lower walls of concrete blocks.

Both teams, bolstered by a dedicated crew of 15 or so Haitians from the local church, worked diligently and made significant progress.  The teams were lodged at a FM guesthouse in the nearby community of Mapou where in early 2011 a work team led by the Belleville (ON) Centennial church had completed a large primary FM school.  Both teams were blessed to worship with the host Gonaives FMC, and the teams’ pastors preached through a translator. 

At 8:30 AM on Wed., March 30th, 9 men and 2 ladies from 8 Ontario Free Methodist congregations took to the air from Pearson International Airport, on their way to 10 days of inspiration and perspiration. We were destined for the mysteries of Port au Prince and eventually 100 miles through the mountains to the tiny village of Mapou, in the flood plains to the north.  Our assignment: finish construction of a Free Methodist school canteen. Our mission: be a blessing to the lives and ministries of Haitians and beyond, through our work, attitudes, gifts and especially relationships.

Darcy Bee had come down from Housey’s Rapids; out of the east, Susanne Warren of Athens, Pine Grove's Mark Pedlar, and Malcolm McFarlane, Odessa; Campbellford sent Alexandra Wilson & Geoff Barham; Ethan Foley was from Madoc Baptist, and Pastor Bruce Kellar from Flinton’s “Through The Roof” FMC.  The organizers, Pastor Rodney Peterson & Les Young, were from the host church, Centennial Free Methodist in Belleville, as was Daryl Sim. 

We were lugging baggage far overloaded with food, gifts and money for 15 foster children sponsored through our churches, shoes and clothes to donate, and a guitar Daryl would play for Pastor Rodney's devotions and later leave for Pastor Louiseil to give to the faithful at Duvalier, one of his little church-plants near Mapou.  As well, 3 boxes of welding rod were squeezed between 60 solar-powered portable radios for Mondale Perkins, head of the Haiti office of International Child Care Ministries (I.C.C.M.), to distribute among area schools, and national FM Pastors.  The GALCOM organization digitally pre-set the radios to FM97.7, Radio Lumiere, a Creole-speaking Christian station.

Other than one meeting in Belleville, we knew each other only through e-mails, and sharing encouragements from Canadian "Help Haiti Heal" Co-ordinator, Grant Sigsworth; from Canada's I.C.C.M. director, Paula Moriarity; and from Dave Casement of GALCOM.  We already had a taste of Pastor Rodney's outstanding leadership, but didn't fully anticipate the value of his experience as a missionary in Haiti years ago, or the benefit of Malcolm's and Mark's participation on a work team in Haiti last October.  We didn't dream that with Pastor Bruce as site foreman, and Darcy welding, we'd finish a day-and-a-half early, having time to help some local Christians, and repair damage to a tiny school far beyond the roads, well into the dusty back country.

Via Skype, volunteer missionary/co-ordinator of visiting work teams, Larry Judy did his best to prepare us ahead of time, then help us flee the aggressive 'Red Hats' at the airport.  Arriving at our apartment, behind sliding steel gates, across a pot-holed back alley from the missionaries' home, we were happy to escape the confusion of streets filled with humanity and the unfamiliar smells of sidewalk vendors, and roaring, dilapidated 'tap taps,' colourful trucks & motorcycles packed with sweaty passengers. 

How we enjoyed the hospitality of Larry and wife Alice, providing our first supper in Haiti, and later travel companionship.  Thanks to Alice's advice and Charlotte Dyer's pre-trip coaching, our cooks, Alex and Susanne, made sure the hot, tired workers had safe and tasty, nutritious meals throughout our visit.  We learned bits of Creole and lots about the culture while eating with Ceilo, the grounds/building keeper, and our constant guardian while in and around our Mapou compound.  'Tinene,' the young man who accompanied us from and back to Port au Prince, was a constant work and play companion, as well as language tutor for 17 year old Ethan.  Both Ceilo & Tinene could only watch sympathetically while Pastors Rodney & Bruce preached several times, following Haitian custom of full suit and tie, in temperatures exceeding 90 degrees, at all 3 churches we attended.

Thanks to generous support from our home churches, we had funds for all steel roofing and rafters, windows and doors, blocks and mortar materials, and 2 weeks of Haitian salaries for 6 local men to finish their canteen (necessary for students' mid-day meal), and the classroom building to the peak, for the next group to complete.  Praise the Lord!

Through ICCM’s gracious arrangements, we experienced the absolute joy of personally greeting 14 of the 15 children sponsored by team members, and friends in their home churches.  What a blessing to meet these beautiful smiling kids and realize first-hand that we are making a dramatic difference in their lives and homes.  

Our team was saddened by their living conditions, but heartened by the faith of Haitians with whom we worked and worshipped in Mapou, Duvalier, and Port au Prince.  Pastor Louiseil was a special source of inspiration.  He made no salary from the churches where he served, drove a clunker, yet used most of his income as a lawyer to buy land for church-plants where they had none, build schools, and pay a little to devoted teachers he found in the congregations.

Our "Belleville & Beyond" Team  gave a little but got back way more.  We especially were amazed by the Haitian believers' strength and commitment, in spite of adversity we might find insurmountable.  In presentations after returning to Canada, each of us pray that our people can learn the faith lessons of the Haitian Christians.  As said an old man walking the beach and tossing stranded starfish back into the sea, "No, I can't save them all, but..." as he stooped over to pick up another and dispatch it to the water, "... I made a difference to that one!"

May God bless all supporters of this worthwhile program of continuing assistance to Haiti's reconstruction and recovery.

By Les Young & Pastor Rodney Peterson, on behalf of our devoted "temporary missionary" team (capably steered by Grant).