An organization in Northern Haiti, For Haiti With Love, takes the call of Matthew 25:35-40 to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and shelter the homeless seriously. 

The headquarters of For Haiti With Love is part medical clinic, part pharmacy, and part homeless shelter. 

“It’s a variety of things that you encounter with people who have absolutely no flexibility with money,” DeHart said.  “We’re dealing with the poorest of the poor in the population, which means there is no emergency fund.”

For many Haitians, they have come to rely on For Haiti With Love as a place to go when they have emergencies. 

The organization transports people to the hospital and helps arrange how people will pay for their hospital visits. 

“It’s just a variety of things that come up that you’ve got to have flexibility in your budget and in your personnel to be able to deal with, we’re there to help the people and sometimes their definition is a little bit broader than ours,” DeHart said. “And so you try to fill that gap.”

One challenge this ministry faces is security. DeHart said a necessary part of living in Haiti is having a security team of armed guards as well as gates around their facility. 

For Haiti With Love is well-known enough in the area that they can manage the demand for medical care and food more than ministries closer to the Port-au-Prince area. 

While working with patients, a majority of whom are being treated for burns, For Haiti With Love makes it a priority to share the Gospel through prayer. 

“We make them very aware that without God’s provision, we wouldn’t be there to be this disperser of His funds in order for them to get the benefit…God is the supplier, we are just managing it,” DeHart explained. 

For Haiti With Love has been blessed by very loyal supporters in the United States. DeHart said they pray to be the best stewards of the money they get. 

Medical care for burn victims can be very expensive and it can take a long time for a patient to heal, but DeHart says that she prays people will stick with the organization in their giving so they can continue to help people in need. 

Pray for peace to be brought to Haiti and that For Haiti With Love can continue to service the community of Northern Haiti well. 

Challenges

Haitians grow desperate as gang violence ravages the country. Travel remains difficult due to the constant fighting, and prices for food and fuel have sharply increased. The inflation rate has reached 30 percent.

Henry’s office promised to alleviate the situation, including social programs for extreme poverty and stocking gas stations.

Eva DeHart of For Haiti with Love says, “They have a very expensive cost of living now because they import so much stuff here. As our prices go up, theirs go up, plus the cargo. And because of the restlessness, they’re keeping the kids home from school, keep them safe in the streets.”

“That is usually just Port-au-Prince. But this time, it’s Cap Haitien as well. It’s pretty much country-wide.”

With violence and protests in the street, DeHart says burn injuries have become more common. In their Cap Hatien burn clinic, they treat people’s wounds and also share the story of Jesus with them. “We pray with them, bandage them, and let them know that no matter what’s going on out there, God is still with them. That’s about all you can do because it is so unpredictable.”

Pray the gang violence in Haiti would dissolve, leaving families and communities to live in peace.

The header photo shows tires burning in a 2019 protest in Haiti. (Photo courtesy of Voice of America, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) 

Eva DeHart of For Haiti with Love describes the effect of the rains. “You have mud, you have a lot of standing water, and you’ve got lowland areas where homes are being filled up with rainwater. You’ve got children who can’t go to school because they can’t get across the areas of standing water to get to the school. It’s just really miserable down there right now.”

A food crisis

The rain has closed open-air markets, cutting off a major source of food for the population. The weather has also caused more burns to be treated at the For Haiti with Love burn clinic. DeHart says, “Because of their French culture, they cook outside the home. So when it’s raining, they drag those open charcoal burners into the house to cook. And that is opening up exposures and increasing the volume of burns in the clinic because you’ve got the kids at home.”

For Haiti with Love has begun a food program as the situation grows more desperate. Pray their care would draw many to Jesus. DeHart says, “Food just automatically brings about the warmth of God’s love by material provisions. But in the meantime, we pray for the rain to stop, and for the people to hang in there and do the best they can until that happens.”

Header photo courtesy of by Benfe from Pixabay.

When no power sources are available, candles, lanterns, and fires become essential for lighting and cooking in Haitian homes.

While this solves one problem, it creates another.

(Photo courtesy of For Haiti With Love)

Eva DeHart with For Haiti With Love says, “Their cooking is usually outside on the ground with wood charcoal. Anytime you have open flame — and especially open flame low — it just lends itself to accidents.

“Children running and playing end up tumbling into the hot boiling water or into the burning charcoal. [Or they are] so hungry that they pull the food off of the table before it started to cool and they end up with food burning them all over.”

For Haiti With Love runs a burn clinic in Haiti to provide free medical care for these accidents. DeHart says, “We are there because of God, and God’s people in the United States provide the medicine and the bandages to make this all possible.”

God’s love comes out in everything they do at the burn clinic — from dressing a child’s burn wounds and encouraging distraught caregivers, to follow-up treatments and conversations.

Going into the New Year, For Haiti With Love needs your support to keep their burn clinic running and well-stocked. Burn incidents in Haiti often require extra bandanging and supplies to keep wounds clean since the home environment isn’t always conducive to this.

Click here to make a year-end gift to For Haiti With Love.

(Photo courtesy of For Haiti With Love)

DeHart also requests your prayers. Ask the Lord to bless those who walk through the burn clinic’s doors with His healing and spiritual hope.

For the believers working in the burn clinic, DeHart says, “There are odors to burned flesh, and they deal with that. They deal with the blood and the discomfort of debriding wounds. They deal with absolutely painful cries from the little ones and even the adults sometimes because burns are so painful.

“[Pray] for their courage and their endurance of everything that they see, patient after patient,” DeHart asks. And pray also for “their patience in order to be more understanding to each one that comes across their table, that they’re not just another face, but they are another one of God’s creation that needs our help.”

Header photo courtesy of For Haiti With Love.

For Haiti With Love’s Eva DeHart says “no.”

“Up north, it’s pretty much back to life as normal because Cap Haitian is more on the ‘survival’ level,” she says.

“Life is tough, and… they don’t want to make it tougher.”

How protests affect ministry

Even though Cap Haitian – For Haiti With Love’s location – lies approximately 150 miles north of Port-au-Prince, unrest in the capital city still affects ministry there. For example, riots in March caused For Haiti With Love to lose the help of two short-term medical teams coming from the U.S.

A short-term medical team serves in For Haiti’s clinic in 2018.
(Photo courtesy of For Haiti With Love via Facebook)

“You get flexible when you’re hurting in the mission field, and particularly in Haiti,” DeHart explains. “You just take a deep breath and say, ‘It isn’t going to happen that way, so what do we do next?’”

The answer for DeHart and her in-country staff is ‘carry on’ in whatever capacity they can. Help lighten the burden with a financial gift here.

“Our burn clinic is still very active; we still have a limited program. We provide homes for [the] homeless whenever we have the funding.”

Every interaction provides an opportunity to share the Gospel in word and deed. This often means ministering to the parents of a burned child, DeHart says. “You pray with them… and then you treat the child, and you try to talk to them (the parents) about safety,” she explains.

“Of the burn patients that we had last month, 44 of them were under five.”

Why so many burns?

Burns are an ongoing problem in northern Haiti. Due to poverty and a widespread lack of infrastructure, people cook their meals over open fires in ground pits. These pits often lack covers, making it easy for young children to toddle into danger.

As described here on For Haiti’s website, “Accidents happen, and where there are a lot of people and a lot of open fires, there are a lot of burns.”

A full plate of warm food is a rarity for kids in northern Haiti.
(Photo courtesy of For Haiti With Love via Facebook)

Food scarcity makes the problem worse. Warm meals – or any meals – are not available on a daily basis. So, DeHart explains, “when [children] get the opportunity to eat and the food is on the table cooling, they’re too hungry to wait for it. They reach up and grab things off the table that end up coming down and burning them,” explains DeHart.

“[Then], they’re at a burn clinic instead of having lunch.”

What’s next?

It looks as though protests and burns will be continuous challenges in beleaguered Haiti. Pray for peace in Port-au-Prince, and pray short-term mission teams will be able to fulfill their commitments. Pray also for donors to continue supporting For Haiti With Love so it can keep providing physical and spiritual care through its medical clinic.

Click here to support For Haiti With Love.

“We just really need their support, and we need God’s support in keeping things calm so that we can do His work to the best of our abilities.”

Header image depicts fires set in the streets during Haiti’s 2018 riots.  Photo courtesy of For Haiti With Love.

A Christmas Gathering

(Photo courtesy For Haiti With Love)

This Christmas is set to be no different with the ministry inviting 500 kids to join in on some holiday cheer. For Haiti’s Eva DeHart shares;

“The children will be ages five through fifteen this year. We stress the Gospel, we have the Jesus film for children in Haitian Creole now. Then they understand what For Haiti with Love is doing for their country in the way of feeding people and treating burns. And they get a full meal with rice and beans and candies and home baked cookies from the United States.”

Each kid is able to have two cookies each. Other food for the party includes chicken and even Gatorade. For Haiti with Love is careful to include foods which the children’s stomachs are accustomed too. Otherwise, their digestive systems can’t handle heavier foods, such as beef, and the kids will end up sick.

At the party, the kids also receive gifts such as hygiene products and school supplies and even toys. Though these gifts might not seem like much to some, they mean a lot to these kids who are growing up in one of the poorest countries in the world.

Reaching Kids

Cooking for the big celebration begins in the morning’s early hours, usually around 3 a.m. Kids generally begin arriving around 7 a.m., and every kid who walks through the door for the celebration is greeted with a beaded necklace placed around their necks.

However, each year there’s a specific donor of the name, Dr. Cooper, who usually donates three pallets of toys. Sadly, he has passed away, but, other donors have since picked up where he left off and have helped provide toys for these 500 children, who are each individually invited.

“Our staff and some of the people in the area that we know go out and seek the poorest of the poor children to give those invitations to,” DeHart explains. “We are highlighting children that are normally overlooked. So, it’s very rewarding on our part to watch the excitement and the enthusiasm of these children.”

(Photo courtesy FHWL) For Haiti with Love Christmas party.

The kids and their families get so excited for the Christmas party that often times the kids will come, wearing their absolute best or borrowing the best of a cousin’s.

However, For Haiti with Love’s annual Christmas party isn’t only to celebrate the holiday, but to share the story of Christ’s birth and the Gospel with them.

“They’re celebrating Jesus’ birthday and [the kids] know that that’s the whole purpose of the [party],” DeHart says.

Beyond the Party

And for those who don’t know, For Haiti with Love has four aspects to its ministry.
1. Proving nutritionally balanced meals to the hungry through its food program.
2. Providing formula for babies in need.
3. A construction program to help complete churches, schools, homes, and even marketplaces.
4. Emergency medical care for the poor, such as burn care.(For Haiti with Love is currently Haiti’s main burn center in the country.)

How to Help

(Photo Courtsey FHWL) For Haiti with Love Christmas dinner.

So if you would, will you come alongside this ministry and pray?

“You can be praying for a little girl by the name of Mael. She got severely burned on the back of her legs and they were not healing right and suddenly she’s finding herself in a position of not being able to walk,” DeHart shares.

“She’s an eight-year-old who Shriner’s has accepted her in Boston. So pray for the doctors and pray for her total healing.”

Pray also for the success of the Christmas party and for the kids to have receptive hearts when hearing the Gospel.

Want to join For Haiti with Love in bringing a Christmas celebration to Haiti’s poorest children? Click here to help!

“Burns are painful, they are slow healing, and they are very expensive.” (Image courtesy For Haiti)

For Haiti With Love’s Eva DeHart says silver sulfadiazine, more commonly known as silvadene or SSD, is their most effective burn cream.

“It’s a combination of sulfur, which is the healing part of it, and silver, which is an anti-bacterial, anti-infective,” she explains. “It protects from infection and promotes healing, all at the same time.”

But For Haiti’s supply is almost out. And the likelihood of getting more is tied to an unusual element.

“The clinic in Haiti is now tied to the precious metals market, because that is silver,” DeHart states.

As the price of silver goes up, so does the price of burn cream. In March, the price of silvadene jumped from $10 USD for a 400-gram jar to $42 USD. On top of the price hike, DeHart says their partner, Blessings International, has run out of burn cream and isn’t able to help For Haiti’s clinic.

For Haiti was able to raise $2,000 for an entire shipment of silvadene, so there’s hope on the horizon. But, the shipment won’t arrive until October.

“Between now and October, we’re in a pinch,” DeHart explains. “It’s kind of embarrassing to run a burn clinic without burn cream, but it is really hard to find it right now.”

Although For Haiti has found a small supplier who can provide silvadene at $35 USD per jar, it’s beyond what the ministry and most Haitians can afford.

“If we had a big budget, we could just go ahead and order a whole bunch of the 400-gram jars and not worry about it,” DeHart says. “But we really don’t have that kind of budget.”

When the clinic runs out of silvadene, patients have to bring their own.

“Since they don’t have the money for it, then that meant they were borrowing money from relatives to bring their burn cream to the clinic,” explains DeHart.

What happens if patients can’t scrape together enough cash?

“Infections are a real danger, and even the smallest burn can be life-threatening,” she says.

While burn cream is expensive, the doors opened by treatment are priceless.

“It’s really an important service to the people, and a wonderful opportunity to witness,” DeHart says. “Accidents do happen, but sometimes those burns are voodoo priests, or victims of voodoo priests.”

One voodoo priest came to For Haiti’s burn clinic for treatment and left with more than he expected. Not only did clinic workers treat the man’s burns, they shared the Gospel with him.

“He ended up coming back every day. They gave him a Bible, and then he would come up with questions that he had about things in the Bible,” recalls DeHart. “They were actually doing daily Bible studies with him to answer his questions and encourage him where to read next in the Bible.

“It’s some of the one-on-one opportunities you get that really keep you going.”

Pray for a supplier to come forth and help the burn clinic until For Haiti’s October shipment comes in. Pray for decrease in severe burns so less cream is needed for treatment.

If you’d like to help send more burn cream to Haiti, click here.

Eva DeHart with
For Haiti With Love says silver sulfadiazine, more commonly known as silvadene or SSD, is their most effective burn cream.

"It's a combination of sulfur–which is the healing part of it, and silver–which is an anti-bacterial, anti-infective," she explains. "It protects from infection and promotes healing, all at the same time."

But For Haiti's supply is almost out. And the likelihood of getting more is tied to an unusual element.

"The clinic in Haiti is now tied to the precious metals market, because [burn cream contains] silver," DeHart states.

As the price of silver goes up, so does the price of burn cream. In March, the price of silvadene jumped from $10 USD for a 400-gram jar to $42 USD. On top of the price hike, DeHart says their partner, Blessings International, has run out of burn cream and isn't able to help For Haiti's clinic.

For Haiti was able to raise $2,000 for an entire shipment of silvadene, so there's hope on the horizon. But the shipment won't arrive until October.

"Between now and October, we're in a pinch," DeHart explains. "It's kind of embarrassing to run a burn clinic without burn cream, but it is really hard to find it right now."

Although For Haiti has found a small supplier who can provide silvadene at $35 USD per jar, it's beyond what the ministry and most Haitians can afford.

"If we had a big budget, we could just go ahead and order a whole bunch of the 400-gram jars and not worry about it," DeHart says. "But we really don't have that kind of budget."

When the clinic runs out of silvadene, patients have to bring their own.

"Since they don't have the money for it, then that meant they were borrowing money from relatives to bring their burn cream to the clinic," explains DeHart.

What happens if patients can't scrape together enough cash?

"Infections are a real danger, and even the smallest burn can be life-threatening," she says.

While burn cream is expensive, the doors opened by treatment are priceless.

"It's really an important service to the people and a wonderful opportunity to witness," DeHart says. "Accidents do happen, but sometimes those burns are voodoo priests, or victims of voodoo priests."

One voodoo priest came to For Haiti's burn clinic for treatment and left with more than he expected. Not only did clinic workers treat the man's burns, they shared the Gospel with him.

"He ended up coming back every day. They gave him a Bible, and then he would come up with questions that he had about things in the Bible," recalls DeHart. "They were actually doing daily Bible studies with him to answer his questions and encourage him where to read next in the Bible.

"It's some of the one-on-one opportunities you get that really keep you going."

Pray for a supplier to come forth and help the burn clinic until For Haiti's October shipment comes in. Pray for a decrease in severe burns so less cream is needed for treatment.

If you'd like to help send more burn cream to Haiti, click here, then select "DONATE NOW."

At the moment, the flurry of ceremonies has had an
interesting impact on a burn clinic ministry in Haiti. For Haiti With Love's Rosaline DeHart
says: "It seems like there's a
season for it.  Right now, our clinic has
people burning from neck all the way down to their ankles. I've heard that it's mostly from the voodoo
rituals that they're going to. It's
three jars of Silvadene cream every other day, and a lot of bandages and
tape." 

That lays out a critical need. Two years ago, FHWL lost their Silvadene cream donor and
was forced to purchase their supplies. Funds and donations severely restricted how much they could purchase. Each
jar costs $57 for 400 grams. The additional financial commitment is having a
direct effect on their food program. At a dozen jars per patient per week, that starts adding up fast, in more ways than one.

Since For Haiti offers the only burn clinic, a shortage of
the cream could mean people's lives hang in the balance. More importantly, For
Haiti with Love won't be able to share God's love with the many people that are
sent their way by the local hospital.

DeHart notes that as they respond to the physical needs, they also address the
evident spiritual ones. "With the
burn patients, we always tell them about Christ when they come in, especially
when we know that they've been burned by a voodoo priest. We tell them about Jesus and tell them how He
died for them."

From the burn clinic to the feeding programs, it's all done
in the name of Christ, with the hope of meeting spiritual needs. For Haiti with Love is giving freely of God's love and gifts to help make life better for the poorest of the poor in Northern Haiti. Click here if you can help.