(The photo above was one of my favorites from our last Haiti trip – a young boy and his little sister, sitting outside the St Michel church building)
HAITI UPDATES
One important new development – and definitely worth praying about! A group of 400 elite Kenyan police officers arrived in Haiti this morning as the first contingent of a Multi-National Security Support Mission, authorized by the United Nations and funded largely by the United States and Canada. This is one of those things that could end up being really good, or really bad, or a complete stalemate – please be praying that this will be the first step toward turning the tide of terror that the Haitian gangs have been inflicting on the population for years now.
Haiti is still in the grip of extreme famine. The UN issued a statement yesterday saying, “The situation in Haiti is alarming. The country is at a crisis point, with devastating consequences for the population. Haiti is one of only 5 countries globally where more than 10% of the population – 1.6 million people – are in an emergency situation, with very high levels of acute malnutrition leading to death.”
Feeding the children at the St Michel Orphanage: Thanks to all of you who’ve continued helping out with this, we now have enough funding commitments in place to cover the cost of food for 30 of the 36 children who live there full time. Additionally, we’ve been able to help out periodically with other needs for the children, such as clothing, shoes, backpacks, school supplies, truck repairs, and continued improvements on the new orphanage facilities.
Several of you have been asking about trips. After a brief pause to make sure security conditions have returned to normal, we are now about to start working on our trip planning again. Our hope and prayer is to be able to conduct a couple more trips in 2024 – as always, I’ll definitely keep you posted on opportunities as our planning starts coming together.
That’s it for the moment – thanks again for everything!
