Doug Jarvie is the president of Starfish Ministries Canada, a group Canadian believers who join us in our ministry to Haiti. Doug and his wife Ruth have heavily involved in Haiti, with Doug taking a lead role in our well-drilling ministry and in other physical projects. Doug is also active in Canada, coordinating our efforts there.
In a recent newsletter of Starfish Ministries Canada, Doug wrote about the Fraser Valley Gleaners and the contributions they have made to our feeding ministry. I wanted to share that with the rest of you: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: feeding program
Greetings from Port-au-Prince, Haiti! I arrived here yesterday afternoon, March 28, and will handle administrative opportunities for the next week. This morning I visited with Daniel Fontil for a couple of hours. This Daniel (as distinguished from our Director Daniel) is one of our former orphanage children who is now living in Port-au-Prince, teaching third grade while waiting to begin STEP Seminary in September.
Daniel came to the Starfish Ministries Orphanage in 1998 when he was 12 years old. He came from a family of 15 children who lived in a mud hut in the village of Jean Rabel in the far northwest corner of Haiti. Daniel’s life was difficult as a child – sometime they had food, sometimes not. But he did go to school and always did well in his academics. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: evangelism, orphanage
We are so grateful to God for the leadership that He is raising up in Haiti! Our Haitian Director, Daniel Thelusmond; our Assistant Director and Orphanage Director, Apollos Solomon; our Spiritual Director, Pastor Esau, and so many more are influencing the Tricotte area for the Lord Jesus Christ and His Kingdom.
They serve faithfully within Starfish Ministries, but their ministries extend well beyond their roles with us. Daniel sent us this email recently: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: evangelism
Greetings from Tricotte, Haiti! We arrived here this afternoon (Saturday, January 26, 2013). Daniel and I picked up a team from North County Christ the King Church at the Port au Prince airport at 9:15 and we drove directly to Tricotte. Those of you who have been on a team with us in the past will be pleased to hear that the first two-thirds of the trip is all paved road now. Only the last 25 miles or so is dirt, ruts, and pot holes and slows us down considerably.
The team of five men is building and installing the trusses for the roof on our new guesthouse in Tricotte. Soon they will also install the purlins and then the metal roofing. And they should have time to do some electrical work inside the guesthouse before we need to return to Port-au-Prince later this week.
Across the river from Tricotte is a village called Moineville that is virtually unreached with the gospel. We have always heard that this village is heavily into voodoo and a dangerous life style. Director Daniel began encouraging us several months ago that we should begin reaching out to the people of Moineville. So we began to pray while looking for opportunities to share with them. When we have needed laborers and masons for the clinic construction we hired some from Moineville. They were amazed as no one had considered this before and we are starting to see a softening of some of the people. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: evangelism, teams
Starfish Ministries has now completed its 15th year of ministry in Haiti! That means this is monthly newsletter #180. I sometimes wonder if we’ll run out of material to share when it comes to the end of the month BUT it has not happened. The fact is that God is at work in Haiti and there is always much to report on what He is doing. In recent weeks several new Christians have been baptized. Some new Christian couples have decided to get married. We have 28 new children at the orphanage from non-Christian backgrounds. So what a great opportunity we have to share Jesus with these children and see them respond to the gospel!
God is faithful, and we are overwhelmed how He touched the hearts of so many to provide for the needs in Haiti in 2012. We thank God for you and for your desire to serve Him as you partner with us to accomplish His purposes in Haiti. Thank you for your faithful financial and prayer support! And you have been very generous in giving toward the Christmas Giving List – thank you so much!!! What a difference this making in the lives of needy Haitians! Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: medical clinic
A SOUL IN OUR NET
Yvenord Alexis was a non-Christian when we met him on Friday, November 23, 2012. Pastor Esau and I went to Morne Chaise to talk to some couples who were supposed to make plans for their weddings. Two ladies and one man were present at the meeting. The other guy couldn’t make it. They told us they couldn’t get married because their houses are in such bad shape. Who cares about a house when it comes to getting married if two people have been living together for half of their lives with kids in “a house”? Well, whoever told us those couples wanted to get married missed the point. As our conversation went farther, we discovered that the man we were talking to was not a Christian. We shifted our focus from the wedding plans to “soul fishing”. We came back with a soul in our net for Jesus. Yvenord Alexis became a Christian. Praise God!
I just received this letter from our Haitian Director Daniel this morning. This is what God has called Starfish Ministries to do. It doesn’t matter what we are dealing with each day – we see those circumstances as an opportunity to share Jesus and last Friday that is exactly what Daniel and Pastor Esau did. We thank God for their sensitivity to where God is at work and to boldly present Christ Jesus whenever the opportunity comes. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: evangelism
For 2012, we have added a couple of new items to the Christmas list:
As many of you know, we are in the process of building a medical clinic in Tricotte that will serve the entire area. The main building materials for the clinic are cinder blocks, and we need a lot more of them before we’re done. For $1.00 you can purchase, transport, and install one cinder block and contribute to the gift of medical care for many Haitians for years to come.
When school started in October, several of our schools had more children enroll than we anticipated, and we didn’t have enough benches to accommodate them all. For $20 you can build a bench which will hold, depending on the age of the children, four to six students. It provides a place for them to sit as well as a surface for their books and papers.
Of course, we still have goats and chickens, well-drilling, bibles, songbooks, and more, too.
If you are interested in giving in this way, you can download a pdf file of the full Christmas list.
Dear Friends,
When Starfish Ministries took over the orphanage in Haiti in January, 1998, Nodi was already there. He was 11 years old when I first met him and I was immediately drawn to him. Nodi was a boy who was near death when his uncle found him at his blind grandmother’s home. She was not able to care for him so he begged for food in order to feed them both. When his uncle found Nodi so sick he brought him to the orphanage in hopes of finding a home that would care for him.
Over the years Nodi was often sick. When he was 13 years old he was diagnosed with Sickle Cell Anemia. Haitian doctors told us that this disease would take his life by the time Nodi was 20 years old. When he passed 20 they changed his life expectancy to 25 and then to 30. Nodi is now 28 years old and still doing well although he does have bouts of this sickness from time to time.
Nodi became a Christian soon after coming to the orphanage and has continued to grow in his spiritual life. Nodi has worked hard at learning English and now is quite good at it. After completing high school Nodi chose to go to a plumbing school in Port-au-Prince and completed that in a couple of years. Since then he has been doing plumbing jobs in Port-au-Prince and at our orphanage and most recently is helping at the new medical clinic. We have been very pleased with his skills in this trade. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: orphanage, well-drilling
Dear Friends,
We thank God for you and your partnership with us as we minister in Haiti! Last month we shared about a new summer ministry program we were starting. Many of you have responded by generously giving extra this past month. Thank you so much! Part of the reason to do the summer ministry came from the need to feed kids in our poorest villages. Our school ministry directors reported to us that many of the school kids went hungry at times during the summer. So we started a summer camp ministry to include a hot meal in two of our neediest school villages, Morne Chaise and Ti-David.
This morning I talked to our Haitian director, Daniel, and he gave a very positive report about this ministry. In Morne Chaise they have averaged about 125 children per day. Most of these are kids from our school but they have also been inviting village kids who have not been in school. As of yesterday, 14 children in Morne Chaise have responded to the invitation to follow Jesus. How exciting is that? We praise God for what He is doing in these precious lives! Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: feeding program
Dear Friends,
I’m sitting in the Miami Airport on my return home. A team from Central Washington University Chi Alpha Ministries spent the past two weeks in Tricotte, Haiti. David Morley from Blaine, Washington, joined us and helped me with the team leadership responsibilities. The team spent every afternoon at the Starfish Ministries Orphanage teaching English to the orphans. It is so exciting to see these kids eager to learn and then practice with me as I interact with them.
The team also did some painting at the orphanage, presented the gospel through song, testimony and drama in some of our schools and churches and played soccer and other games with the Tricotte village kids. And that’s where they met Wilson. Wilson seemed to be around wherever the team was. When they hiked to our school in Biscaille to share with the students, Wilson was right by their side, hiking along and helping at the more difficult places on the trail. Then when they arrived in Biscaille, Wilson climbed up a coconut tree and threw down enough coconuts for the entire team to enjoy fresh coconut milk. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: evangelism, feeding program, teams