First Baptist Church, Live Oak, Day 3 and 4

The Lord tells us that we must minister to the physical needs of his children as well as the spiritual needs, and on Day 3 of the First Baptist Live Oak mission to Bercy, Haiti, the team endeavored to care for those physical needs. The teams' four nurses, Wynyard, Linda, Kristin and Bob, the pharmacists Melody, Jared and Kristina, the registrar Voncile and vital signs specialist Pam were joined with much experienced guidance from Rusty and Cheryl in a medical clinic.

We treated about 150 men, women and children -- mostly children -- for a myriad of ailments ranging from simple stomach aches to near-terminal infant malnourishment. "Momma Cheryl" as she is known here, directed one very sick baby into the orphanage in temporary custody to nurse him back to help with much prayer and hands-on TLC from the ladies. The baby was nicknamed Peanut (because of the large amounts of peanut butter he ingested) and we are asking for prayer for Peanut. Pastors Charlie and Nathan ministered to the spiritual side of the patients, addressing them with a message from the Gospels. Many would-be patients had to be turned away at the gate by security personnel and were asked to return for the clinics Saturday or Monday.

Meanwhile, April and Rob worked the 170 children of the Baptist elementary school on a hot, dusty playground, teaching them games and exercises while being observed by the faculty with an eye toward an ongoing physical education program.

Cristina began an ongoing instruction program with the Nannies to help them learn basic skills in cleaning, nurturing and simply playing with the orphaned children.

We closed the day with another spirited bilingual prayer meeting with pastors Charlie and Nathan. The team has come to love the spirited interpreter Herby for his passionate way of relaying the pastors' messages to both the Haitians and their Live Oak guests.

Day four was a day to go tell it on the mountain. In the morning in a classroom in the mission school, Melody and Kristen led 20 teenage girls in a purity class and five children were led to Christ.

After other morning chores ranging from phys ed class to fitting more than a dozen children for new shoes at the school several of the missionaries set out with Rusty on a walking trek of several miles up and around the mountain, canvassing humble straw-roofed bungalows in the far-flung farm village of Terre Noir to share the gospel and invite the residents out for a praise and worship service at the mountaintop open-air church. A mission team of college students from Kansas earlier in January had constructed a tin-roofed shelter for the Terre Noir church, which for three years has been a mission outreach from the Baptist Church in Bercy. The college students hand-carried all the materials for the shelter in a two-mile walk up the mountain. There are no passable roads up to Terre Noir, only foot paths. Under that crude shelter, looking out over the mountains and the Caribbean Sea in the far distance, two beautiful new souls were introduced as new believers in Christ -- two young men who had been visited by the Live Oak team who will help this mission outreach grow in the future. Pastor Nathan, an accomplished accordianist, led a rousing session of praise songs and hymns that continued to draw worshipers from the mountain community. As Rob said after one very elderly lady walked up to him, kissed him and told him she loved him, no words could describe the beauty of this mountaintop experience.

The elated but exhausted mountain climbers returned to the orphanage to find a delicious hot meal and cold drinks prepared by Wynyard and Voncile. Evening devotions and sharing were filled with comments about the awesome mountaintop experience and how the joyous Haitian worshipers could conduct missions to the United States to teach us how it's done. When people have so little materially, does God mean more to them than he does to us? Are they spiritually much wealthier than we are? It's something to pray about.