I would like to thank the Lord for the way He is making things happened for VBS. As I had already said, since last year, I had the privilege to meet with Mrs. Elcie Salvant, one of the teachers because Mrs. Pérard had suggested that I would invite her to lead the department in Haiti. Mrs. Salvant had accepted with certain restrictions because she was new even though that was her second year of teaching at VBS. After a while, she realized that the calling was from the Lord and she accepted joyfully to be the Director of the department. Mrs. Elcie Salvant is the founder and director of two schools in the city of Cap Haitian. She had put all her energy in working with the department. I had emailed her the VBS lessons and a month before the trip she had two seminars with the teachers and had prepared the lessons with them. That had taken a great load of my shoulders, when I got to Cap-Haitian on Thursday July 4th, we only worked on the schedule and the next day we had our first VBS.
As I said before, the Lord is showing us marvelous things in the department. This year, we had 27 staff members between teachers, both for lessons and craft, some are there to lead the kids and for discipline, some were there to supervise the kitchen and serve the food. Everyone was there because they love working with children and wanted to help.
Our program:
4 VBS in four different places
1 Youth Conference, taught by Kimberly Maximin with two other pastors
A Women’s Conference taught by Micheline
Jocelyne Williams led some services and taught special crafts.
1- First VBS:
Place: Institution Shalom, Cap-Haitian
Date: Friday July 5th
Time: 9 am- 4pm
Age: from 5 to 15 years old
Number of Students: 179
1- Second VBS:
Place: Collège Maranatha, Cap-Haitian, Cite Chauvel
Date: Monday July 8th
Time: 9 am- 4 pm
Age: from 3- 17
Number of students: 680
2- Third VBS
Place: Eglise de Dieu Elim, Saint- Marc
Date: Wednesday July 10th Time: 9 am- 4 pm
Age: from 6-17 years old
Number of students: 780
3- Fourth VBS
Place: Eglise Baptiste White Rock, Saint-Marc
Date: Thursday July 11th Time: 9 am- 4 pm
Age: 5- 17 (mostly the same students served on July 10th)
Number of kids served all together: 2,162
Number of students who accepted Christ all together: 126
Every kid was served a snack and a hot meal every day.
On Friday July 12th
Conference for the ladies of difference churches in Saint-Marc at White Rock Baptist Church. We met from 9:30 am to 4 pm.
108 women were present.
They were served a hot meal like the kids.
We had a great experience with the kids. They were so willing to learn. Most of them came with their notebooks and pens to take notes. It was very hard for them to keep up with the notes since we could not use PowerPoint. We used a blackboard and chalk as much as we could. I was very impressed by their hunger for the word of God.
We also had with us a Haitian evangelist whom we invited to pray for the students. He went to each class on Thursday and prayed over them class by class. Because we had a large number of teachers and two group leaders for each group that the churches in Saint-Marc sent to the VBS, it was easier to control so large a number of kids in one place.
I am grateful to the Lord and to everyone who helped to make it happen. The food sent in the container was used for the kids and other purposes in the mission field. I thank everyone who worked so hard to load the container. The Lord rewarded your effort. I would like to particularly thank all the young people who worked so hard to fill the container. The Lord had seen it and He will greatly bless you. Thanks to Roseanne, John DeConti and the Hand to Hand for Haiti team who worked so hard all these years to keep Hand to Hand working until now.
God bless you all.
Micheline