“Men Anpil …”
Dear brothers and sisters,
Greetings to you in the name of Our Lord: JESUS!
You may rightly wonder, “Men anpil”, what is that? They are the first two words of a heavily used Haitian proverb: “Men anpil chay pa lou.” Which literally means “Many hands, no heavy load.” So a heavy load should not be a problem. The problem would actually be a lack of hands. Therefore, this Creole proverb may actually assign us the task to recruit many hands, as many as possible depending on the size of the load in front of us.
As Living Water Christian Mission is growing, we need many, many hands. Women and men of integrity and who are competent to do jobs related to their talents, gifts and skills. We need way more women and men in leadership positions in the church as we work toward maintaining both the physical and the spiritual growth.
We should target the whole aspect of the ministry in recruiting these people for childrens ministry, church administration, youth group, small groups, prayer ministry, evangelism, teaching, preaching, music, worship and general services. We definitely need many more elders and deacons.
This situation calls for a lot of prayer and motivation of the people to answer God’s call of serving in various capacities. As I am writing this, Luke and Monexant have an important meeting with the Sunday School teachers. If they were not on Haitian Standard Time (HST) they would have started 2 minutes ago.
We want to increase the number of teachers, strengthen those who have been in service for several years, and give additional training to both groups. Next month I will have similar meetings with people who preach in our various meetings and services. We need your prayers for the success of these efforts. We believe that the Haitian saying is right, “Men anpil, chay pa lou,” With many hands, there is no load too heavy to bear.
You probably realize that we also need many hands to train those kinds of people. When it comes to teaching at Living Water, we don’t limit our training to church ministry, though this is very high on our list.
We train the youngsters into godliness to become visionaries, agents of lasting and positive changes. We train youth and adults to learn a profession and to train the trainers. This is the only way we can continue to grow the ministry in a healthy manner. I want you to realize that the job is vast. The opportunity to change the country for the best is now. It is something that we need to join our hands to do now for the glory of God.
We have just had 8 men with us who have joined their hands with ours to carry the heavy load. They were from two different churches, both from the Cincinnati area: Miamitown Church of Christ (5 men) and Whitewater Crossing Church of Christ (3 men). These men invested their days working toward fostering a better future in the realm of training people. Each did it in a different way. It is beautiful to see how God uses each one of them to do just that.
We, at Living Water, serve an awesome God! I (Salonique) am humbled by what God has done during the past 14 years. I still remember 16 years ago when Living Water was just a project, with no name picking for it yet. I remember that my first and primary concern was finding a piece of ground.
I shamefully had a very puny vision then. I found a piece of ground that might have been a third of an acre. I wanted to buy it, but I had no money, and no one would loan me money. The owner would not call it “deal” until I payed him in full (roughly 5,000 USD).
I remember being depressed the day I was leaving Haiti to return to the USA to resume classes at Central Christian College. I was defeated. My wife was even mad with me for being so down because I could not secure the land. She had to tell me the time was not right. But I was so consumed by my desire to have the piece of ground for the ministry that her words fell like water on hard rock.
What about today? Impressive God! Awesome God! Powerful God! Beautiful God! He has brought what was then a project to a flourishing ministry. Today we have a total of more than 250 acres in multiple locations. We have beautiful infrastructures that are used daily for His glory. There are classrooms, schools, churches and church buildings, health clinic and building, and many other facilities of a beauty and a quality of the shade of Our God. Again, brothers and sisters, I am humbled.
He does those things using many hands and many hearts. Oh! how can I thank Him in a meaningful and significant manner! How can I express my gratitude to: little kids in churches and church camps all over, youth groups, Sunday school classes, young couples (physically and the young couples at heart), widows and the widowers, families, business owners, missionary teams who have visited Living Water. Some of our helpers are already home in glory and are now part of our cloud of witnesses. There are so many individuals who have joined their hands with ours to carry this seemingly heavy load! I can only say “Thank you”.
I realize that this newsletter is getting very long. Sorry! But allow me to say that we will need many more hands/hearts. I pray that you will have the earnest desire to be those hands and hearts.
One of our needs right now is for a generator at the church. It is a challenge each time we have services because we cannot count on city power. Unlike the school campus, the church campus has no solar panels. We have been transporting the generator from my home back and forth to the church. However we sometimes have a shortage of power in both places. In those instances we have to do everything in the dark at the house. We need $20,000 USD for a generator in order to be ready for additional things which require electrical power (Radio station among them).
We need a couple water wells at the farm to irrigate the crops. This year our crops failed due to a lack of rain. The drilling is $10,000 USD for each well.
We still need to purchase the land at Highland. We have the funds for that one. We will continue to negotiate the purchase. They are now ready, but there are issues to solve. I met with them early this week. Pray for the University project.
Pray for Living Water workers who are working on both sides of the ocean. Pray specifically for people like Brian, Bonnie, Doug, Gary Hinkle, Priscilla and Cory, Ken Croll, Harold Engel, and James Hansee.
Pray for me. I need a big dose of wisdom at this point. Pray for my family. Pray for Living Water as a whole.
Yes, we need many hands.
Yours in Christ,
Salonique Adolphe and team.