Latest from Beauchamp
You know it is hard to imagine that we are only 150 miles from Port au Prince, in a world that is not governed by the TV, mass media, Face Book, and every other technical gizmo that you can imagine. You would hardly know that your country had changed, that hundreds of thousands were dying, hurt, homeless or that an economic earthquake was headed your way. There is the mouth-to-mouth accounts of the events in Port au Prince but it is not in our faces like it is in the states. But make no mistake we are very aware of the seriousness of this situation and of many difficult days to come.
In the past few days instead of Mike and Vogly going to Port au Prince we have been able to send people from our area who wanted to go and look for lost loved ones and to bring hurting family members back to the Northwest. Elisnel, one of our church members, was able to get 10 of his family members back to the NW. His brother had died but his sisters were alive. Pastor Irenel found his brother and other family members and brought some of them back to the NW while yet others had passed away. Madam Tipicon brought her daughter to our house today to let us know that she arrived safely. Ti-Poppa is in PAP right now and just called. He was able to send his cousin ahead and him and his sister are supposed to come back tomorrow even though he says transportation is hard to find. Good News – he says the Marines are working and starting to make it a safer city. We are glad to hear that. Most families have joy and heartache at the same time.
We went to visit two other missionaries today that live about 4 miles from us — 1 of them is saying the same thing that we have been hearing — that in the weeks ahead the NW is going to be flooded with people and there will be no food because all of the relief efforts have gone to PAP. So please pray that there will be a way to get food and help to the other areas of this hurting country.
On Sunday Mike’s sermon tried to deal with the crisis we are going through. He first tried to explain what causes an earthquake, and he is far from being an expert, but our Haitian family has no idea. He then went on to try to describe some of the things happening in PAP because none of them have been able to see pictures and most have no way to get any news except by word of mouth. He chose to speak from three passages in Psalms. He went on to say that although the earth may shake and houses may crumble, heaven does not shake and God’s throne cannot be moved. He offered words of hope and encouragement from God’s Word, saying at this time we needed to hear God speak. He shared Psalms 46, 42 and 23. With each of these he added words of encouragement and words of hope from the promises found in God’s Word. At the end he lead a focused prayer time asking the people to pray specifically for each of these items. I will not list them all but will condense some of them. We know you are praying but we also ask that you pray specifically for some of these:
- For those still alive to be found.
- For the relief aide to get to those who need it so badly.
- For all of the broken hearts to be healed.
- For the orphans who have lost their parents and do not understand at all what has happened.
- For order to come to this chaos.
- For a calm to come over the people and for God’s peace to quiet their fears.
- That the world will not quickly turn their hearts and eyes from the country of Haiti.
- That this country will not just be rebuilt but that it will have a rebirth, a new nation will rise from the rubble.
- That people might turn to God and not away from Him.
- For God’s children to be strengthened and to be a shining light in a dark land.
- That the people of Haiti as well as the world will unite to help the homeless and feed the hungry.
- For wisdom to choose the right paths on a long road to recovery.