JUST MERCY
Hunger and Desperation
Things in Haiti continue to go downhill. Hunger is rampant. Gas at $12/gallon is contributing to the high cost of food. (We are now sailing back and forth to the mainland which is time consuming but necessary due to the cost of fuel instead of using a motor.). Some food is now being loaded on big wooden sailboats and brought around the country by sea to Les Cayes but it isn’t enough and the cost is out of most people’s ability to pay.
Bill is home for this month but will be returning to Haiti shortly after Christmas. He wrote the following:
I don’t quite know what to say or do these days as folks are so full of desperation and hopelessness, for we live with hunger and can see no change coming. Each passing day the situation worsens. With food prices soaring and no work or money, we see our friends and “family” in Haiti struggling to find something to eat and it is increasingly more difficult to find anything.
While I have been home this month, calls have come from Janou, the small village in the mountains, and Bedzimel (Baiu de Mesle), the village by the sea, pleading for help, asking us to send something for even a little food.
There have always been needs in Haiti, but this is different. The gangs are keeping the roads blocked and food or gas cannot be trucked from the capital to the rest of the country, at least not without paying high extortion rates. All the gas stations are closed now, at least in the south.
Food can still be bought if you can afford it but now most of it is over six times the price of not too long ago. If you have a job as a professional, you may make 1000 gourdes a day and have to work six days to buy a bag of rice. But that means little when there is so little work.
I was just told people on the street in Les Cayes are begging for just 25 gourdes to buy a little food. 25 gourdes is about 19 cents. What will that buy??
If God lays it on your heart to help financially or more importantly pray, we will see that some folks don’t starve or go hungry. I just don’t know, friends, how this will end or what to do about it. I just know that today the need is desperately real and we will do what we can.
My hope is that in these times, they and we can know and rely on these verses from Romans 8
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:31-39
For King and Kingdom! – Bill
An outdoor kitchen, shower room, and septic tank is being built in Raket.
We are so grateful that Agape Flights continues to fly supplies for us and other missions into Haiti, like this leaf filter to keep debris out of the cistern at Raket!
We are grateful for the box of deer sticks donated by Cloud’s Meats in Carthage, MO in October. It was such a blessing to many people in Haiti!
The beauty of God’s creation continues to bless our hearts.
Just Mercy operates solely on donations from generous folks like yourself. God takes those gifts and multiplies them in order to serve the multitude. As cost of living continues to rise in all of our worlds, we don’t take your gift for granted and want you to know the people in Haiti are shown the love of Jesus and His gracious gifts of provision are from people who have been blessed and choose to bless others. Thank you in advance for all you do to keep the work of Just Mercy continuing in these villages of Haiti.