Hello friends and greetings from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Thank you for your prayers. We feel the power of your prayers in our lives on a daily basis. Please pray and praise your way through the following notes.

Larry and Tracey Luth and their son, Samuel are heading to Haiti this week to begin working with us at Sous Espwa. Larry is taking on a new position as a result of our strategic planning sessions in the fall of 2010. He will be working as “Youth & Leadership Consultant.” We look forward to adding the Luths to our team.

Jean Valery Vital Herne of Port-au-Prince and Mario Matos from the Dominican Republic are leading Strategies of Transformation (STD), a leadership training program for church leaders who live and work in economically poor communities. STD hopes to form Christian Community that supports these courageous leaders who are working with “the least, the last and the lost.”

This past week their session focused on the family system. Each participant reflected on their own family upbringing. The session turned emotional and challenging as these men and women struggled to find positive examples from their past. Mario and Valery shared the gospel that through the power of Christ, they can learn from this and transform their current families, or they would end up transferring the past experiences to their present families.

Please pray that the Holy Spirit will transform families and especially the families of this group of committed leaders towards reconciliation and growth for the glory of God. Community transformation begins with individual and family transformation.

On a personal note, here are a few prayers and praises:
  • Quisqueya Chapel, an international fellowship of believers where our family attends, has invited Jason and Andrea Schmick to come and work as a Youth Ministry Couple focusing on the youth and young adults at the chapel. We are excited about the possibilities this holds for our large and vibrant youth group.
  • Jenny LeMahieu completed close to 10 years of living and working in Haiti this past July. For most of that time she was our colleague at Sous Espwa. Her father has had a serious bicycle accident in September and is now recovering slowly at Mary Free Bed Hospital in Grand Rapids, Ml. Please pray for complete healing for him and strength and encouragement for the whole family.
  • Jon Debruyn who has come to Haiti twice to spend time praying and teaching us about prayer is now in need of our prayers. He began Prayer Ministry International (PMI) several years ago in order to support missionaries and partner organizations through prayer. He has since gathered groups of prayer warriors and travelled to numerous countries. He is currently battling cancer on several levels. Please remember him and his family as well.

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2: 10

Love, Howard, Ruth, Natasha, Micah, and Malieke Van Dam