Haiti (MNN) — Haiti’s stability has been deteriorating for months. It’s gotten quite out of hand lately, as a gang of about 300 people have been terrorizing the Port Au Prince area. That adds, and is perhaps in response, to the crippling poverty that holds Haiti in its grip. The unemployment rate is around 66-percent and an estimated 80-percent live in abject poverty.
In the wake of the U-S warning against American traveling to Haiti, Food for the Poor’s Angel Aloma says they have 600 staff members working there. But the staff are all nationals, and that enables the work to continue, says Aloma: “That’s one good thing about the work that we do; we hire all local personnel…and so all of our stuff is labor intensive, so we have a lot of employees down there.”
They haven’t faced any major difficulties, says Aloma, “I have to say that God really has had a protective hand over us, because with all of this happening for over a year now that there has been unrest in the country, we have not suffered any losses whatsoever in any of our projects. All of our projects are functioning. Our workers come to work and we have had so far no horrible incidents there. So we really thank God for that, because we know that if it wasn’t for His protective hand and His sending His angels to be all around them, I know that we would have some problems.”
God’s care and protection on their ministry have helped them keep meeting the needs of the some 18,000 local churches that serves in Haiti. It’s a ministry they highly value. “We feel that it is important to empower the churches to give their congregations material things like food and water and clothing so that they can be more open to hear the Word of God and more receptive to the Word of God. Because it’s very difficult, some of the ministers and pastors tell us down there, it’s very difficult to preach to someone when they’re fainting in your pews from hunger. So, we try to send our support through the churches so that the congregations can experience the love of God through other human beings.
Your prayer support is urgently needed, Aloma urges, “That is such an important thing right now that Haiti needs, more than anything else, even than the material and physical things that we help them with so much during the year. But right now that country needs God’s touch on them and God’s hand on them to really guide them through a very difficult period.”
In addition to prayer support, if you’d like to help financially, contact Food for the Poor by their website or by phone. Follow the highlighted link above for contact info.
