Haiti Missionaries
The Iron Market
Port au Prince’s main street, Gran Rue, though marked Boulevard JJ Dessalines, for Haiti’s first governor general, leads to the Iron Market. Fabricated in Paris for an Egyptian train station, the flat packed structure ended up in Port au Prince in 1891, no one knows why. Two massive ironwork buildings with cavernous thirty-foot doomed ceilings…
Read More48 Years of Service to Christ
Abandoned at birth, Joel was adopted and grew up fishing, hunting, and enjoying beautiful Canandaigua Lake. At age thirteen, his parents accepted a job managing a hotel away from the Lake, Joel loved. They left the boy in an empty house, next door to his grandmother to finish eighth grade. By the time he was…
Read MoreMichou’s Healing
This is an excerpt from my unpublished memoir of our first ten years in Haiti. This is a true story of a true healing that brought an entire family to Christ. Just yesterday while Joel was in the Cap Haitian Marche, Michou the girl, now 51 greeted Joel with hugs and kisses and told others,…
Read MoreThe Call
An excerpt from my unpublished memoir Walking with the God of Miracles. Joel was 20 when he went to Haiti with a ’70s Fort Lauderdale street ministry. In Haiti, one of Final Hour Movement’s young missionaries lived in a mud hut in L’Artibonite, a region infamous for rice paddies and savage voodoo practices. When the…
Read MoreVoodoo Ceremony
An excerpt from my unpublished memoir Walking with the God of Miracles Now the week before Easter, when raucous voodooists celebrate Christ’s death and deny His resurrection by worshiping Satan with frenzy and frequency we came upon a voodoo ceremony. Fresh darkness fell as we found a a foot path shortcut through the ravine. Illuminated…
Read MoreEvangelists and Treasure Hunters
The weeklong ministry adventures into the province began with loading the truck, including dirt bikes and covering everything with a tarp. The men then drove hours over unpaved, rocky roads to remote villages. When Joel invited me, I interrogated him, “Have you seen the house? Is there a bed? Is it clean? Is there a…
Read MoreThe Brazilian Ambassador’s Wife
Before my salvation, my brother Joe introduced me to his favorite late night TV show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. The comedic episode featured a healing evangelist before an audience stocked with paid actors who shouted their healings as the front man fleeced naïve attendees. At first, I thought the show sacrilegious; after all Catholics of…
Read MoreThe Frog
After service, we returned to our concrete house protected from thieves by the red grillwork patterning the ocean view in hearts.Clammy with sweat, I stepped through the shower’s plank door and pulled the plastic curtain shut. In the unlit shower, a milky colored tree frog hung from the wall. His suction cup toes spread wide…
Read MoreWhere’s the Ladies Room?
In 1978, we were newlyweds in Haiti. Joel took me to a primitive province to show me where he lived before he met me. Madame Francine’s small blue block house in San Rafael contained a gritty room with a dust crusted sheet on a single cot. Before we lay down, I tried to shake out…
Read MoreProvision: walking with the God of miracles
An excerpt from an unpublished memoir about our first ten years in Haiti Walking with the God of Miracles. A true miracle that included lots of laughter! I panicked. “My God, what are we going to do? We do not have enough money for gasoline to get to Richmond!” Suddenly a credit card seemed smart…
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