Summer, Summer, Summer

Summer, Summer, Summer 

It has been a busy summer full of teams and camps, but it has been a great and productive time. We are so thankful for all the groups that came and joined us this summer and for their hands and feet as we work together with the Haitian people. 

.In Mid- June, we had a medical team from Tupelo, MS that did mobile clinics and also worked in a permanent clinic in Caberet. They brought so much medication with them which was a huge blessing. They were able to spend a morning at a orphanage doing health checks on the kids and then we were blessed to be able to give a personalized gift bag to each child with new crocks, clothes, and toiletries, ect., sent by a wonderful church in Worland, WY. The kids were very excited!! 

                                                                                                                                                 Later In June, we had a great team from New Work Fellowship join us for a sports camp for about 100 Haitian youth from several youth groups in our area. It was a great week of learning about the armor of God and how to deal with the spiritual battles these kids face every day living here. They also had a great time learning and playing soccer, basketball, and volleyball as part of the camp.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

As the summer progressed, we had more teams and more camps- each unique depending on the team and their mission. Whether doing feeding programs, VBS, work projects, well repair, mechanic work-whatever needed to be done, we find people willing to help.

They are also willing to to share their love with

Chris leading Mens Devotion in the mornings. 

the Haitian people through hugs, smiles, and helping in whatever way necessary.

Sheryl and a team member working at the clinic. 

We are very thankful for all of our volunteers
and all the skills and supplies they bring to us. We couldn't accomplish all that happens here just with the permanent staff we have.

We are also so thankful that we have a new family, Barrett and Carrie Todd and their 4 children joining us next week! The Lord has abundantly blessed their support raising and they are able to come as permanent staff. They spent 3 months with us last fall, so they have an idea of what life is like here.
                                                                  The clinic has been very busy over these past months. As more and more people have moved into the area, we have experienced more patients and unfortunately, more burns.
We have had many helping hands, both Haitian and American, and this has been a great help. there is no way Sheryl could do the work alone.
 Just last week, Chris and David took a team up the mountain to look at a project and on the way down came upon a very serious car accident. The team was able to get the women extricated from the car (it had rolled and they were upside down). They grabbed towels and their own shirts to stem the bleeding and we transported two critically injured women to Doctors without Borders. We know it is never a coincidence that the Lord has us right where we need to be and while we never know how He will use us here in a day, we always want to be ready for whatever that is. Thankfully, the women both knew the Lord and we able to pray with them and for them as we drove to the hospital.

Sheryl seeing a young burned girl for her first visit.

Pray that we will continue strong in all the Lord has for us and we listen to His voice as we work.

School begins in two weeks, and we will have over 300
children back in our 3 schools in the village. Pray for our directors and teachers as they begin a new year-that they concentrate first on the spiritual life of all the children and second on their academics. We want the love of the Lord to shine through in our schools and in all we do here.

We want to share about Franceska,  a clinic volunteer and the daughter of one of our long-time workers. Those of you that have visited the clinic in the last two years would have met 'Cece' as she assists with the patients. She loves medicine and asked to come as a helper and learn all she could as she waited on the Lord for her future. She graduated from Philo (year 13) in 2011 at age 19. This means that she went straight from pre-school through grade 13, never missing a year, passing every one of her national tests in 6th, 9th, 12th, and 13th grade the first-time (even with the earthquake disrupting school for 3 months) and received her diploma. There are very few Haitian young people that achieve this-most of those that do are well into their 20's when they accomplish this goal. In fact, only a small percentage of Haitian ever get this diploma and are prepared to go on to university. 

Franceska was raised by a godly mother and has been in our church in Titanyen her whole life. She is very involved in the youth group at church and she is also involved in our Weekend Barnabas program. She loves the Lord and wants to use the intelligence she has been gifted with to practice medicine and stay in Haiti to minister to her people.  For the past two years, she has volunteered her time as she has been working on trying to get in to a pre-med program here in Haiti. This is a very difficult and very competitive task. Less than 10% of those who apply and take the 3 days of testing are accepted. After two years of not getting in, we encouraged her to look at a nursing program so she can continue with her studies and not lose what she has already learned.  A new international program has opened up in Port where she could earn her Bachelor of Science in Nursing and she has been accepted to start her pre-requisites there.

We are very excited about this new opportunity for her and ask your prayers as she starts. She will have to take classes through the summer to be ready to start her first year in the fall. We will miss her greatly at the clinic, but we are grateful for this door to open. 

For the first time, we are taking on the sponsorship of helping with a university education. We have assisted several with bible school, but we feel the Lord leading us to assist Cece, so she can get the training she needs. We have told Cece and her mom that it will have to be the Lord that provides. 

Her expenses will be approximately 2600 US for this first year, inexpensive by US standards, but completely out of reach for most Haitians. We are asking for prayer that the Lord would raise up the funds for her. If this is something that speaks to your heart and you would consider giving a one-time gift towards her education, please write and let us know. All gifts will go through the clinic fund at Global Outreach and will be tax-deductible.

Our e-mail is brumfive@gmail.com and we would love to hear from you-even if it is to pass on encouraging notes from those of you that have met her.

Franceska Aspilaire

Working on one of our burned children

The Glamorous Life of a Missionary:





For those of you who may have romanticized the idea that living on a tropical island and sharing the love of Jesus all around in the warmth of tropical breezes, sitting under the shade of the palm trees, and welcoming visitors from the US, is what our life consists of here-you may not have quite the right idea. Or as the Hertz commercial says: "Not Exactly". We have learned from TV that you can put a spin on anything and we can tell you that we live in a tropical paradise in a gated community with an ocean-front view, which is the truth-we do have a gate, we do live on a tropical island, and we can see the ocean from our property (which really does provide us with beautiful sunsets), but most of the time it does not feel like paradise.

There is the reality of ministering to the real needs of people-spiritually, emotionally, and physically, that is often more of a battleground than a paradise. It is hard, dirty, can be discouraging, and draining. Yet, because we are doing what the Lord has called us to do, there is joy in that.

There is nothing glamorous in building a 4-seater outhouse by the new youth auditorium to serve the youth's needs there, or digging worms out of a wound that is infected, or cleaning out the grease traps in the kitchen after the conference is over, but these are necessary things that we had to tackle this week. It is all part of serving 'the least of these' and anyone who is in ministry no matter where you serve, knows that these dirty jobs are part of it. Yet, if that was all we did, we could not last here. Thankfully, we have the wonderful times of sharing an evangelistic film, praying with someone, singing together at the clinic and devotions before starting the day, seeing someone kneel at the altar and give their life to the Lord. We see the smile of the child who receives a lollypop after their treatment is over and the tears have stopped (we even get special hugs sometimes!). We see the joy on faces as water comes from a well the first time, or again after it has been repaired. We share in wonderful times of worship with our Haitian brothers and sisters in the Lord and marvel at their unshakable faith in such adverse circumstances.

We have times of serious teaching and talks-both individually, and in groups, to share the truths of scripture and clear up so many misconceptions of what the Bible says about being a follower of Christ. The ministry we are building with the youth and the emphasis we are developing for building leaders and disciples is exciting. We are excited that this is where the Lord has placed us and He is growing the vision He has given us.