First Baptist Church, Live Oak

Here we are the Haiti Mission Team from First Baptist Church, Live Oak, FL. We were up early to catch our flight out of Jacksonville and were joined at the airport by two other team members from the Jax area, Richard Dexter, a contractor, and a frequent visitor to the orphanage, and pastor Charlie Owens of the Harmony Community Church. We were eager to get to the orphanage and get busy and even more excited to see how God would use each of us on this trip. With several nurses, teachers, a contractor, a pastor, a painter, a heavy-equipment operator, a teenager and other willing hearts, we were sure God had something incredible planned for us.

We were greeted with lots of hugs, huge smiles, and many, many hands when we arrived at the orphanage. The children are beautiful and expressive and we felt God giving us a hug through each of them. Their smiles are contagious and no one can say no to little arms held high for you to "hold me". Anda fit right in and immediately made many new friends.

Rusty and Cheryl Merritt, the voluntary coordinators of the orphanage-school-church compound of the Jacksonville Baptist Association, immediately set about making us all feel at home, orienting us, feeding us and praying for us. We all should pray for them because they run the compound with no compensation for their outstanding but hectic work, or for their constant commuting between Haiti and Jacksonville

In the evening, they escorted us on a walk through the dusty village paths of Bercy, past tethered cows, goats and pigs, to an open-air prayer-meeting/worship service under the stars. No man ever made a more beautiful cathedral than we had right there in a dusty courtyard of a ramshackle home with the moon, the trees and the stars to decorate the soaring ceiling. Pastor Owens shared duties with the pastor of the JBA's Haitian Baptist church, Nathan Chariot, in proclaiming God's word. Singing of familiar hymns such as How Great Thou Art, blending English with Haitian Creole in soul-felt worship in song, was a moving experience. As we walked back along a narrow path to the compound, Anda Scott told her mother, "You remember that hayride we went on? This is like a walking hayride."

An unusually cold night helped the weary travelers get a good night's rest and awake to a very busy second day. Some of the ladies visited the orphanage below our sleeping quarters early in the morning and immediately found ways to help improve the hygienic conditions there. After breakfast and devotion, we met with the Haitian church to pray and discuss plans for a feeding ministry, both spiritual and physical, at a nearby maximum security prison. The women of the Haitian church had been up since 3 a.m. cooking huge pots of beans and rice, and a beef stew to feed more than 200 prisoners. After a long ride in a van, pickup truck and tap tap (a colorfully decorated modified mini-pickup with a passenger cab on the back) we arrived at the prison. We found tiny cells, 8 x 10 at best, packed with as many as 12 men. Many of them responded with tears to the message of the Gospel and the singing. Many Creole Gospel tracts were passed through the bars to outstretched hands. Many of those hands were grasped by our team members in heart-felt brotherhood. The fact that God was at work here was as solid as those prison walls. We left knowing that God's command to minister to the prisoners was answered on this day and will continue to be from that day forward. Rusty Merritt was particularly moved to report that the prison ministry was another continuing outreach from the Haitian Baptist church that was founded by Jacksonville Baptist Association missionaries. Hours later, we got back to the orphanage, again to a huge welcome from the children.

In the afternoon and into the evening, we worked on organizing medications and preparing the pharmacy for three upcoming medical clinics.

And that was just the second day.