FHG's Haiti - Christmas Update

I received the following message a few days before Christmas that I'd like to share with you:

Dear Friends,

We would like to take this time to thank you for your participation in For His Glory Outreach in the US and the orphanage in Port-au-Price, Haiti. We have been so blessed to serve with all of you in so many areas.

We pray that all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that this Christmas season will bring you joy beyond what you could imagine.

A Recap of 2007
We moved to our new facility this year and have so much more space for the children. It was a great labor for the Haitian staff and they did a wonderful job relocating the children.

Early in the year our adoption processor was kidnapped and held captive with our office administrator. After violating our office admin, the captors released her and she was freed from their grip – but not their memory. Some days later, our adoption processor was released. Thank you to all of you that prayed for the safe return of our dear friends. Thank you for continued prayer for their healing.

We have had a few mission trips this past year that were wonderful opportunities to spend time ministering to the lovely people of Haiti. For many that traveled with us, being able to be used by God to serve and reach out to the children and staff in the orphanage, and those we met in our travels in Haiti, was a life-changing experience.

The bunk bed cribs that were built and installed are such a great blessing to the orphanage! On one of our trips this year, we built triple bunk beds for the older children so each child could have their own bed. They are really sturdy and it's such an improved use of space.

On one of our next trips, we will repaint and personalize each one of the bunk beds with the children's names and have the children paint a little image to personalize their space.

One of the teams this year also built a chapel on an open area upstairs. The children have church there on Sundays and school during the week. We are visited by other churches that pray for us that like to pray in the chapel as well.

We would like to thank all of the mission teams that came down that showed your hearts of service to the children and worked with such dedication on medical teams, construction teams, teaching teams, Backyard Bible Club outreach, and so much more.

One team had the opportunity to bring a meal out to an entire village that lives on a lakefront. This village has so little and it was such a great experience to go and pray over each of the huts as food was handed out to the villagers.

During one of our trips, our Pastor was arrested and taken to jail on bogus charges that were designed to gain some income for some police that were not working on the right side of the law. After being forced to stand for 5 days in a 12' x 12' room with 60 other men and women, he was permitted to use the bathroom. However, in order to use the bathroom, they made him remove all his clothing and walk across the police department to humiliate him. That night, after great discouragement was setting in, he started to pray. And pray and pray and pray. He prayed out loud – loud! Hardened criminals began to pray with him. One prisoner who was about to kill himself, handed over the weapon he was going to use on himself to our Pastor after the prayer and said he wanted to live. Over the course of the next two days, 27 people gave their lives to Christ. The next day, our Pastor was released!

If you are interested in the life changing event of a mission trip, we are planning several trips in 2008 and would love for you to join us. We have churches and schools that are signed up for a few trips next year and are opening up more summer dates as well.

Our Current Needs
We are holding a donation drive from now until the end of January. We need cloth diapers, disposable diapers, diaper pins, summer clothes for all ages and sizes, sandals, baby bottles and nipples, sippy cups, formula (we try to use Walmart brand to keep the formula consistent, but will use any formula we are sent), whole powdered milk (formula and milk are the greatest needs), rice cereal, towels, wash cloths, sturdy plastic dishes, aprons and most other household items. We may have free shipment down to Miami and free shipment from Miami into Haiti. If you would like to help us in this donation drive, please contact us at MesiSenye@aol.com.

This has not been an easy year financially for For His Glory and the orphanage in Haiti. We have been stretched in ways financially that we could not imagine. We'll give you a brief background.

During one of our mission trips this past summer, we had the idea of starting a campaign called 1000 Friends in 100 Days. The Campaign launched about 70 days ago. We have DVD's we are showing as we have been traveling all around the Western US speaking to any group, church, chili cook off, you name it that would like to hear of our ministry in Haiti. The concept is to find 1000 sponsors at $30 per month. That would sustain the orphanage as it costs about $28,000 per month to run the orphanage currently.

We have a little over 50 sponsors that we are so thankful for! We are starting a Sponsorship Update Corner on our website where the children will write letters letting sponsors know what their lives were like before coming to the orphanage, pictures of the children in various activities such as school, meals and at play, a monthly menu for the orphanage and an update from our Pastor in Haiti.

Along our travels in speaking to raise awareness of our Campaign, we met with a church that saw the need and caught the vision of For His Glory and they are coming along side us to help us in our goal to move out of the city and be more self sustaining. Our desire is to move in the next year or so.

We hope to build a new facility that will have a school, and grow to make room for children from local villages to be able to attend the school at no charge. This is an amazing gift when the statistics show that in a country of 8 million people, 300,000 are child slaves and 300,000 are orphans – most without resources for hope of a better life. This is so important because God is providing a way for us to move to being more self sustaining to the point that we can even grow produce we can sell, rent out missionary housing, sell livestock and water, etc. It's the "now" that's such a challenge.

There have been some needed changes and improvements made for the living situation for the children. The new facility provides so much more room for the children. However, it has increased expenses at the same time.

Two years ago, adoptions were taking 15 months or less. Now they are taking around 2 years. The adoption fees that were meant to sustain a 15 month adoption now have to last well beyond the intended timeframe. Our long term commitments to the children were based on what we were receiving during the first half of the year. As income and donations decreased and feel short of our anticipated income, For His Glory has been faced with some tough choices for the immediate future, putting the orphanage in a volatile financial situation.

New adoptions coming in are going faster than those that started 2 years ago, so we see a trend of the time shortening a bit again, but that does not help us right now. The truth is we are in serious financial need. Without an immediate and consistent source of funding, we will have to make major cutbacks in orphanage operations. We have cut the budget nearly 30% but we are still not making ends meet. Without new donations and funding sources in the very near future, we will have to make even more drastic changes. This may include cutting school programs, reducing staff and even sending children back to their birth families -- which could could prove to be fatal for some of these children. It is in the direness of this situation that we ask you to please help us in securing the physical future for the children.

Many of our children come from Cite Soliel – ranked the most dangerous city in the world. Children are sold into slavery as young as three years old. Five year old girls are bought and sold into prostitution. Gangs rule, starvation kills and the abortion system of putting newborn babies in plastic trash bags to dispose of them when there is no hope is sadly, commonplace.

Dirt is mixed with water, oil or butter and salt to taste to make a paste that is spread out on sheets to dry and then sold for 7 cents apiece. This is eaten to stave of hunger. This is reality and this is why we must serve the people of Haiti.

We want to continue this ministry, but we need your help. We need to reach more people to help more people. We cannot do this as an individual or two, but we can do it as a team – one person, telling one person, telling one person until we have 1000 friends that will partner with us and stand in the gap.

Please consider becoming a sponsor if you are not already sponsoring the orphanage. If you are sponsoring, please consider telling a friend. If you would prefer, please consider a one time donation. If you have groups or churches that would like to have our pastor from Haiti come and speak, we would be happy to come.

We have faith that the Lord will provide and we pray that you will be blessed by partnering with For His Glory! Together we can change lives – one person at a time!

Have a very Merry Christmas and thank you for all you do for the children in Haiti!

Every Blessing,

For His Glory Outreach Staff
P.O. Box 674
Kingsland, TX 78639

I also heard back from Linda (FHG Director who sent this out). She is trying to arrange for Pierre (pastor from Haiti) to travel to the states again in a few weeks. Let me know if you'd like to have him visit with any group that may be interested in hearing their message and possibly supporting this ministry.