July trip and Pastor Exil

Pastor Exil's temporary church

Steve Wilcox and Seth Guin work on benches.

I, Don got to go to Haiti in July with a team from Crossroads Church in Greeley. While I was with Heartline Ministries after the earthquake I got to know Pastor Exil that was injured in the quake and was at the clinic for a while. He from Citi Solay slum area and had a church/school and his home in one building, it collapsed and fortunately he was the only one inside and he only injured his hand and eventually lost one of his fingers.  When Pastor Arnie from Crossroads and I visited him in March they had erected a temporary church with tarps, rebar and scrap tin to hold services in. It in is one of the tent cities and his tent house is on the backside of the church. There were a couple of benches made of scrap wood and a couple more made out of PVC pipe on the ground for kids to sit on.  Being from down in the poorest area of a country that is the 3rd poorest in the world they do not have the means to rebuild or even put benches in their church.

 It was Pastor Arnie's desire to partnership with this church and help them as much as possible. We built church pews and fixed the temporary roof with more tarps and pipe to hold it up. The team also held children's ministry programs in the mornings. We also showed the "Jesus" film one evening to 300+ people in the community there as Pastor Exil and the leaders used it as an evangelistic outreach.

Here are pictures inside the church with the new benches and the "new roof" on the church. It keeps the rain out and the owners of the property will not let anything permanent be built as they fear they will lose their land if they do.

We also took down donated wedding clothes to be worn loaned out to those needing them for their weddings and they promptly scheduled 3 weddings held together for us to attend in the church while we were there.

This is Oriel, a special friend of ours there and security guard and guide for us in this part of Port Au Prince. He is wearing a suit we brought down. Oriel will keep the clothes and be in charge of the loaning program.

Here is a picture just outside of the church, these are individual homes or tents usually made of tarps that have been given out by aid organizations in Haiti.






Aid In Action is now hoping to take a team into Haiti possibly in December and build a new house for Pastor Exil. This will consist of removing the rubble of the old church/school/house and then building a new home on in that space.  We have been looking into the possibility of buying property and building a church in the area there. This would take time, possibly two years, to make sure everything is done legally and to avoid problems in the future. A 100' x 60' metal building with concrete floor, benches and school desks and the land  could cost around $100,000. So many lives could be touched and ministered to in these slums of Haiti that many aid and mission groups avoid going to. Please pray for God's direction on this with us please.

Here is Pastor Arnie and Pastor Exil standing on the collapsed church/school and home.








Pastor Farem, Pastor Exil and his congregation and the are around Citi Solay are what God has laid on our hearts at this time.