Bringing Light to Northern Haiti
Preaching and Teaching the Word of God
Haitian Christian Ministries
2016 Issue 2
Planting Churches
This month we celebrate Donna McCall’s 10th anniversary of serving as Child Sponsorhip Director. In honor of this occasion, we sat down with Donna to discuss the Child Sponsorship Program.
In 2006 I was given the privilege of being the Child Sponsorship Director. At that time there were 550 students in grade school. A couple of years later, I started to make an annual trip to Haiti to take school photos of all the students at one time so that each year sponsors would receive an updated photo of their student. In 2009, the school added high school grades starting with 7th and adding a new grade each year. This year grade 13 was added, which is a required grade for entrance to college.
The total number of students at Pillatre this year is 1,448. The grade school students come to school in the morning and high school students come in the afternoon. Students are required to pass government tests at 6th, 9th, 12th and 13th grade. Pillatre Christian School is one of the highest scoring schools in Northern Haiti.
This year we are trying to have 100% sponsorship. In grade school there are 134 students out of 668 who are not sponsored – most of them are in kindergarten age 3 and Pre K 1 age 4. In high school there are 668 students and 283 need sponsors. Sponsorship is $30 a month for new sponsors and this helps provide school supplies, access to the medical clinic, vitamin, uniform, Christian education and a hot meal each day.
God has blessed the ministry over the years through our sponsors. There has been a 40 percent increase in child sponsorship over the last few years. I want to thank everyone who sponsors a student in Haiti. You are a blessing to each of them. If you could sponsor another student it would be greatly appreciated or if you would be willing to do a sponsorship drive at your church I can send you photos to accomplish this. Please contact me at [email protected] if you have any questions.
Pillatre Church Kicks Off a New Year
HCM Field Director Prisca Laguerre addressed the congregation at the Pillatre church the first weekend of January to kick off the new year. Here are the highlights of her address.
? 2015 was a trying time for all of us. We lost someone very special. We never thought that God would allow something like this to happen. Please continue to pray for the ministry and for the family because even though we seem to be doing a little bit better, we still have a very long way to go. God is faithful and we can always count on Him! You can see that He has been faithful, because, since Pastor Manno’s passing, He has not left our side.
? Thank you to Pastor Bob for staying by our side during this very hard transition. It was unimaginable for most of us to accept someone else in Pastor Manno’s place and we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being patient with us. If it wasn’t for you, we don’t know where we would be.
? Pastor Manno was like no other. He did everything in this ministry. Now that he is gone, it has taken seven (7) of us to do what Pastor Manno alone used to do. Things will never be the same so I ask that you please be patient with all of us as we learn what our new "normal" is without Pastor Manno.
? We want 2016 to be a good year for us. We want good things to come out of the year 2016! We want to love and understand each other. Remember what God has done for us these last 10 months!!! Praise God because he will never leave us. Let us continue to always say, "Thank you!" to God!
Church Planting News
The HCM Board of Directors along with the Senior Pastors of the churches at Pillatre and Lory and the Field Director have prayerfully decided to plant a 3rd church in Northern Haiti in 2016. There is more exciting news within this pillar of the ministry that we are hoping to announce in the weeks ahead. Please be praying for wisdom and discernment for our leaders and for God’s will to be done.