Photos by Jacque Gowing, director of Project Sixty One.
Last year, I really felt God was calling me to go to Haiti after I finished my training school with Youth With A Mission in California. I just wasn’t sure when I would be going. After a few months being back in North Carolina, God opened a door for me to move to Haiti, serving full time with New Vision Ministries.
I had no idea how long I would be there, so I just trusted God from day to day. I had no idea what Haiti would be like, but I knew God called me there, so I was going to be obedient and just trust him. The first week I was there, I had a divine appointment with a local Haitian named Wesner. He wanted to show me around town and take me to the local market, so I went with him.
As it turned out, he knew everyone. His friendship opened a door for me to minister to everyone in the town. I started playing basketball on a local team with Wesner, and every single day I went to practice, God brought people to me to talk about my faith in Christ. I got to share with lost people and other local Christians in Montrouis about having a relationship with Jesus and how God looks at our hearts.
It was a God thing for sure, and I know the Holy Spirit was just giving me words to say to each person that I talked with. After basketball practice we would go and hang out in downtown Montrouis, and Wesner would introduce me to people. I got to share the love, grace, and forgiveness of Christ with them. I built real relationships — hanging out with them, laughing, dancing — whatever I could do to tell them about Jesus. It was definitely out of my comfort zone, but I knew I had to be obedient to what God was telling me to do.
I lived about 40 miles from Port-au-Prince. We were shaken, but not stirred by the earthquake. I was actually playing basketball up the street with some locals when it happened, and it was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced. By God’s grace, no one here was hurt. We had no cell service, though, so we couldn’t call to let everyone know we were okay. There was extensive damage in Port-au-Prince and other areas.
In Port-au-Prince, and other areas, the destruction was massive. Buildings collapsed and killed many, and many more were missing. Some people that work on our campus in Montrouis lived in Port-au-Prince in the area that was hit the hardest. Without cell phone communication after the earthquake, they were not able to get through to their families and only could listen to local radio talk about the thousands of homes that had collapsed. We spent the night in prayer and prepared to take them to search for their families first thing the morning after.
As we made our way to Port-au-Prince, it was clear that we were in for a tough day. We were able to pick our way through streets strewn with debris and power lines. Every hospital had closed gates and thousands of wounded and dying lay on the sidewalk outside. We stopped at one hospital to search for our friend’s wife and while we were there, we started treating people with non-life threatening wounds.
Digging chunks of cement out of gaping wounds, cleaning head wounds — the work was gruesome. One of our friends, Dr. Kerry Reeves, had a mother beg him to go and check on her little girl. When he got there, she was completely covered with a sheet. Upon pulling back the sheet, he was pretty sure she was dead — covered in flies with a gaping head wound and disfigured face. Kerry was able to find a weak pulse and get her to respond. He got the girl some water and tried to see if there was anything he could do. Unfortunately, he was only tell the family how to care for her as she waited to see if the hospital would open. Kerry prayed for her and her family and left broken-hearted.
We picked up a 12-year-old boy whose parents and friends some were carrying him down the road using a door as a stretcher. They needed a ride to the hospital. While in the back of the truck, we tried to help him but he had a major head injury and a crushed shoulder. I wept over the little guy, so broken that we couldn’t help him. I felt so burdened that we had to talk to him about his faith before he died. We got down on our knees as he looked at us through swollen eyes. He gave a testimony of loving Jesus and believing that God was waiting for him if he was to die. We prayed and wept with him. We dropped him off at the hospital and left not knowing his fate.
On the way back home, all I could do is cry. Seeing all of those dead bodies tore me up inside. All I could think was, ‘I hope they know Jesus.’ When we got home, I praised God for everything – for saving me from the earthquake, for the people we were able to help even a little. I fell asleep for about 20 minutes and got woken up by another aftershock.
We could not count the dead bodies in the streets and on the sidewalks in Port-au-Prince. Everyone was afraid to go back into the buildings, so they built sheet tents in the streets and all over parks. Many of them are still living in these conditions. One of our good friends that barely escaped before his house fell spent the night standing in a parking lot with over 2,000 other people, praying God would let them see one more day.
After the earthquake, we were doing a lot of going back and forth into Port-au-Prince with different groups from the Montrouis area, distributing food, water, clothing and toys. It was great working with everyone, being used by God, sharing his love and being the hands and feet of Jesus. We were so busy, working long days. It was so hard going back and forth, still seeing all of the people living in tents.
Haiti is in a desperate place as a nation. While aid groups provide physical help, the people of Haiti needs God’s help. They will not ever recover solely from humanistic aid. They need the transforming power that God brings. We need intercessors to come and prophetically declare God’s truth over the nation, to come and usher in His presence into the refugee tents and the rubble-covered streets.
The Red Cross is not full of the Holy Spirit. Haiti’s Civil Protection is not full of the Holy Spirit. The UN is not full of the Holy Spirit. They bring help, but not the Kingdom. Haiti will be changed as people begin welcoming in the One who can make beauty from ashes.
Philip Causey was a Discipleship Training School student at YWAM Pismo Beach in 2009. He served for several months in Haiti before and after the earthquake, and will be joining staff with YWAM Pismo in May 2010.
Interested in going to Haiti? Project Sixty One, a ministry of YWAM Pismo Beach in Central Coast, is leading teams overseas to bring aid. For more information, visit their Website. You can also follow them as a friend on Facebook and Twitter.
