Guyana International Bible Institute

1 January 2001

This is a special thank you to all of you who recently helped with my trip to Port au Prince, Haiti. The following is a short report to let you know what your contributions accomplished. For the rest I hope you find this brief report interesting.

Port au Prince, Haiti, is just a short 1 1/2 hour flight from Miami, Florida, but it is eons away in culture and economy. The people are many and very poor. Port au Prince is a city of 2 million and the country has a total population of more than 7 million. In the midst of all these people are approximately 100 congregations of the Lord's people.

Jack Exum and I went to Haiti to teach preachers and conduct a gospel meeting from December 10-15, 2000. The meeting and the preacher's conference was a great success. On Sunday morning the 10th, 7 wonderful people surrendered their lives to the Lord and completed that surrender by being immersed into Christ. Three denominational preachers responded on Tuesday night and were converted. This made a total of 10 baptisms. The preachers traveled four hours from their villages, across mountains, to come to the preacher's conference. Sergo jn Paulis is from the village of Saul-d'ea and preached for a Nazarene church of more than 300 people and operates a Christian school. Luc Jean Joseph lives in Belladere and preaches for three churches, called the "Body of Christ," each Sunday. And Leon Louloute also preached for a Nazarene church. All three vowed to return home and teach New Testament restoration principles to their churches. On Thursday morning two more denominational preachers, Pierre Alexer and Emmanuel Joseph, both preaching for Pentecostal churches in Port au Prince responded to say they wanted their churches to be simple New Testament churches. Approximately 60 preachers attended each day of the conference.

This is part of the approximately 60 preachers who attended the Seminar in Haiti.

Guyana International Bible Institute is discussing with Jean Elmera concerning the possibility of 5 English speaking, dedicated and seasoned Haitians to come to Guyana, attend GIBI, prepare themselves, and then return to Haiti to teach prospective preachers there. GIBI would be willing to give the Haitian school direction and oversight. We witnessed people with a heart to serve and our hearts went out to them. Someway we would like to help them. The need to train men in Haiti is great because the average training time of those who attended the conference, before they started preaching full time, is three weeks. There is no way they can successfully lead churches with no more training than that.

Two denominational preachers who converted during the Seminar.

Jean Elmera says there are still cities in the south of Haiti with a population of 280,000 that have no churches of Christ. He says there are other areas of 2 million people where there are churches but no preachers. GIBI cannot go to Haiti, establish a school and teach the people due to the language barrier. But we can lend our oversight and influence to such an effort. We can train Haitian men in Guyana, who can teach other Haitians. Haiti seems to be a nation that is ripe unto harvest. It is a nation where the churches and preachers are trying to support themselves. It is a nation that needs some French/Creole speaking people to work. It is a nation that needs some trained preachers.

Meet Pierre Elmera and Family

Pierre Elmera, his family and Jack Exum

Pierre and his family are faithful members of the Lord's church in Port au Prince, Haiti. He was forced to take early retirement a few years ago and since then has been using all his extra time working with a nationwide correspondence ministry. He has been financing this ministry with what little retirement money he can spare. He has several hundred students enrolled in the program all across the nation of Haiti. He tries to visit as many of the students as possible.

Pierre can use some financial assistance. Some of you may be interested in Haiti and this type of ministry. If so, you may be willing to help Pierre spread the Good News by this means. If you want to help you can send funds to:

Please mark your checks for "Haiti Correspondence."