The testimony of a life that lives forever

Several days ago our family, Rod Sprenkels and Levi Kauffman went up to Soliette to see the spot of the accident and to visit Pat and Cheryls house. Wow! as we walked up to their house it seemed so different to not see Pat standing at the edge of the garden and Cheryl there in the doorway. But what was exciting was to see the garden and how it was still growing. Thinking back to the time when Pat would describe all about his plants and their purposes.

For the christian these pictures of the sunflowers in their garden made me think of this verse in Isaiah: "the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever."

 

I love this picture of Pats tomato tag, he is now forever in his "Homestead". In Gods garden......

I just had to cut the flower that was just ready to bloom (I hope this wasn't out of place). It was so beautiful and lasted for a week! It was such a reminder to pray for Cheryl and that the testimony of Pats life and what he did for his Saviour will live on in the hearts of many. His testimony will last forever. 

By God's design

       

 

As we all went about our day yesterday, none of knew what was about to happen. Only God did. 

When Aaron first got the call from Mike Martin saying, "Pat has been in a very bad accident, send somebody up with the ambulance right away! " we knew this was serious. Aaron told all of us here to gather around and we needed to have prayer. Staff and Haitian employees, together we all shared in prayer time. Creole tongue and English, none of us knowing any details yet. Soon after that Aaron got a call from Matt, saying he had just met the pick truck coming down with his body and he confirmed that he was dead. Mike was on up ahead and he said he would go and find Cheryl and tell her. 

Those of us here at the mission waited for his body to arrive and for Cheryl. Several fellow missionaries came and also Phil and Beth Hollinger (Cheryl's first cousin), everyone pitched in and did what they could. Mike brought Cheryl down on his four-wheeler after telling her the news and then she gathered a few of the things she needed. As Cheryl arrived, she said she could already feel the prayers on her way down the mountain. We all could feel your prayers. We all had never really went through anything like this. What were we supposed to do with his body and get it to the States? This is where the body of Christ stepped in and everybody worked together. Simeon Shankster took care of making all the phone calls to connect to the right people. Many Haitians came just to see the "blah" (a white person) that had died. They never had seen us go through something like this, many stood around the outside of the house just to watch. Even our thief from a year and a half ago, wanted to come in and see. What do the missionaries do when death comes knocking at their door? 

Well many here know of the testimony of the life of our dear brother. We witnessed his full life purpose here: to spread the gospel, to teach and to minister to the hungry. He had devoted his life to do the work of an evangelist, giving up the things that were part of the carnal to something eternal. Aaron and I and our family have been richly blessed in sharing in their vision here. Pat and Cheryl have given us great encouragement many times and we will miss being here in Haiti together. 

And for all the family and friends out there mourning, we feel your pain, we love you and will continue holding you up in prayer. Lets pray together for the harvest of souls out of this tragedy. As many seeds have already been sown from our dear brother in Christ.

(Here is Pat leading the biblestudy

on Mark 3 at our missions biblestudy).                          Pats garden in Soliette

 

And as many of us may question the whys and what ifs of this whole thing. We know one thing for sure, this is the day God had chosen to bring his child home. It was all by His design will. 

Dis Kòmandman Yo

French version of the Ten Commandments we seen in a park in Saint Marc, Haiti

God is like any other parent. He wants to do good things for his children. Like earthly parents, His love towards his children isn’t earned. We can’t work hard and get God to love us, He just loves us anyway. We can try our best, but we will still fail, and He loves us anyway.

In His love for us, God set down some rules that we need to follow. What good parent doesn’t give their children rules to follow. Those rules that God gave his children are called the Ten Commandments. When we live inside these rules, we will be truly blessed, when we live outside of these rules, we will suffer consequences.

These rules are paraphrased from Exodus 20:

1. You shall have no other gods before Me.

2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image…

3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

5. Honor your father and your mother…

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10. You shall not covet…

Wow, what a lot of rules. Really, they are not that hard to follow. When Jesus came to this earth, he summed it up in two simple commands, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. And with his illustration of the Good Samaritan, our neighbor is anyone we meet.

My challenge to myself is how I am responding to the unearned love that God is giving to me. Am I still living for myself or am I being obedient to His commands and reflecting the love that God has towards me to every person that I come in contact with.   

Visit with our Compassion-sponsored child

After sponsoring Rose Esther for 3 years, we were blessed to get to go and see her while we are living in Haiti. She lives about 3 hours from where we live in a beautiful area of Haiti, close to St. Marc.



We first went to her school where the school director and Compassion host met us and took us to meet her. They had her class all greet us and then she stood up and came over to meet us, as she was planning to spend the day with us. (She looked shy here, but she was very excited and really warmed up to us fast since we could speak her language).

 

We first went to her home where she lives with her father and grandmother. We had brought some gifts for her and here she is trying out her new jump rope. Our girls were glad to help her. :)

After visiting her home we took her and her Dad with the director and host into town to eat lunch at a resturaunt. Above is a picture of some men working in the rice field, along the road they had rice drying out on big sheets. Didnt get a picture of that.
 And yes, rice is brown when harvested. :)

We went to a Haitian fast food restaurant, although there is no such thing as FAST in Haiti. :)

After lunch we came back to their home and they expressed great appreciation and blessed us for everything. We had a time of prayer with them and were all sad to have to part.  

This was a very special day for our family! Our connection with Rose Esther will be deeper than the letters we had sent back and forth, after getting to know her sweet personality, her family and more about her life. We feel blessed to have had this privilege and this also made us realize the how blessed we really are to be able to live in Haiti!   

A look at the lighter note here @ IFM.

Sometimes, things slow down a little here and we all step back and take a little time to refresh and connect.



Aaron and I got to get-away for our anniversary for a night in the DR. So beautiful, refreshing, relaxing!
Our kids enjoyed their stay at Tom and Laurie Mohlers. Laurie helped the girls sew some fun things and Rylan got to go to do some special things with Tom. 

Here, Levi (our newest staff guy) and Austin are ready to leave with a couple haitian boys for an experience-packed time. What a special opportunity for these guys!

We had a going-away party for our dear Hannah with all the IFM ladies. A special time together, but we were sad to see her go.

Tiboutson and Reynald are attaching stairs off our porch to go to our roof. Yes, we have a concrete flat roof that is now turned into a patio! (will show photos on this later)

Mike did a great job with designing the whole thing and we were thankful for all the helpful hands when it was time to lift and line it all up.


Dad and Mom Lavy came to visit this past month. They wanted to see more of Haiti and pamper us a little.  

We got to go visit Clint and Brendas new home and enjoy a yummy brunch together!

After that we headed to Jacmel to the beach. 

Reynald and Rylan sit and talk together by the beach, would of been interesting to hear all their Creole conversation. :)

While here 2 energetic girls jump to capture the best shots.

We enjoyed some of the best fish here. It is seasoned perfectly and served with fried plantains and a spicy salad.

Look at this cute couple! We got to take Aarons Dad up to Pat and Cheryls house and see all the beautiful country there.

Another day we got to go to Hinche to do some fabric shopping and afterwards headed over to see this beautiful waterfall, "Bassin Zinm".
Rylan stands by his haitian friend that came along. Louidi had never been here before and enjoyed taking lots of photos of that day.

Kenslie and Jayla got to bring their friend Dadou.

Haiti is a beautiful place and it it nice to get out to see and visit these neat spots! We all need to be blessed with a little refreshing from time to time. Thanks for praying...... we ask you to continue to pray that our ministry here be effective in our last three months here.

Sharing and making a difference

It always blesses me when you see others that are in need and they are always wanting to bless you. That is often how it is here. It is the truest example of hospitality-Romans 12:13. This couple here has been blogged about before but we wanted to share a little more about them......



Below, Yonel wanted to show us where he stores his fertilizer. Recently, he has started a business of selling this. He has a real passion to help his people here.

He then wanted to show us his church and asked if we could pray and sing with them. The pastor here knew very good English and asked if there was anyway we could start a clinic there. Pray with us that this could be possible sometime if the Lord wills. 

Back at their home they wanted to serve us some very special Haitian food. Yonels wife to the left has been  sick. This is a prayer need, she has not yet found a good doctor--pray for Madam Yonel. She smiles so sweetly but yet inside she is hurting. We have so much to be thankful for, when we are sick we can always find a good doctor and usually always has a solution. We have no idea......we just have to be more thankful.
   

They served us fried fish, fried sweet potatoes, sauce and spicy slaw~~quite good. 

 

He's got the whole world in His hands

On the edge of town lies a little community of people that had lost their homes in the earthquake of 2010. This new community of homes completed in 2012, is where we left part of our hearts in 2011. Since we moved to Haiti we have visited, had kids classes and have had a vision to do a VBS here. We recently were privileged to accomplish this. We set up tents in the little community and invited the children here, and from an orphanage nearby to come and participate. This was a great privilege for these kids, and they all came bathed and dressed in their best to attend this event.

"Bienvenue" welcome in French


We asked some of our friends from Fond Parisien to come and help translate.

Here Nerlange and Nate go over his lesson for the day

Wismith was our overall translator, crowd controller and all other that came in handy from a guy that understands the culture. From what we thought may have been a somewhat chaotic event, he reassured us that it went very well!

Everyone enjoyed participating in praise and worship first thing. 

And, they all seemed fascinated in skits were acted out each day to go along with the Bible lesson.

Aaron directed the skit to go along with Wismith as he read the Creole Bible lesson. Daisy and girls are throwing a party for the prodigal son (Rylan) that came home and the happy father (Austin) stands by.

These kids love to color! They would consider it a privilege, where we may just get bored with it. 

The older kids did a word search paper on the day of our "Lost Sheep, Lost Coin" lesson

They really enjoyed the craft time and it took all of us to keep things going smoothly. 

These little dears are very precious to me....they always want to be holding on our hands. They love to be shown love in this way!

We had a large group, about 100-120 everyday. 

This guy is showing off his sheep craft. 

They enjoyed learning a couple english songs thru the week. 

Jayla holds one of our little friends that we've grown to love. 

Red, Yellow, Black and White; they all are precious in His sight

These people need love, they need hope, they are no different than any of us. They were just put in a whole other world, a life of much more hardship than any of us will ever know. But they have a heavenly Father that loves them so much! Pray with us that they took something they learned from VBS, that helps them feel and understand His love more.

to see more about VBS check out internationalfaithmissions.blogspot.com

Youth Bible school

On July 23rd, 144 students filed in for registration for the 5-day youth seminar.  

(Mike in chair, on the left Pastor Voltaire and another member of support helps, Nerlange comes for his badge and binder of handouts and Aaron helps on right)

It was so encouraging to see all the eager and anticipation in their faces, most of them had never had an opportunity like this before! 

Ivan (the director of IFM) taught on Salvation.

Shea taught on the importance of Prayer and organized prayer groups.

Andy Eversole taught Christian leadership along with the guys purity classes

Matthew Mohart taught about how The Law leads to Christ.

Rebecca shared about purity in the girls class. I (Wendy) was also privileged to help her as I had an activity at the end of each class for the girls, to go along with our lesson. On the last day Wismith and Rebecca and Aaron and I each shared our testimony.

After our last class we passed out purity bands that said "Le vrai amour attend" (True Love waits in French)

Thanks to all for your specific prayers for us in this class. We had a couple rough days as we went into some difficult areas that we both felt called to share on. But we truly seen the Lord work as the girls opened up and shared testimonies and shed some tears. We give Him all the glory and pray His continued work in their lives!

Each day there was an hour for recreation. They all loaded up and were transported to the Children's Home where Matt Newcomer led in various activities to both burn off energy as well as teach a Spiritual lesson.

Lunch was served each day. On the last day they served what they call Fèt (party) food.

Each student was given a certificate of participation on Saturday. Here Zopoppe happily shows his.

We truly seen God's handiwork through this week. Please continue to pray that the seeds that were planted fell on good soil and will produce much good fruit.