Above, Pastor/Evangelist Thony Jean Louis is one of our Living Stone Network partners. He invited us to conduct a "Shepherd's Staff Seminar" with a group of Pastors and Church leaders in the small city of Arcahaie about one hour north of Port-au-Prince.
The event took place in the Church of God sanctuary.
Liz shared her message entitled, "Don't be afraid but fear the Lord." We feel the "Fear of the Lord" is lacking in many leaders. To the right of Liz, Magalie Boyer interpreted during Liz's teaching time. Magalie is from Haiti. She and her American husband Bobby are the pastors of Quisqueya Chapel in Port-au-Prince. After Liz shared, Dan also shared a message about the difference between "authority" and "responsibility." Dan exhorted the leaders to look for workers who were hungry to take responsibility rather than those who are hungry for authority.
More than 250 leaders packed out the small church. They were very excited to receive God's Word as well as to receive a personal copy of what we call "A Bible School in a Book" entitled: "The Shepherd's Staff."
After lunch, the books were passed out to each leader. The goal is that each recipient will utilize their book to teach and train 100 other people how to have a deeper personal relationship with the Lord Jesus as well as discover practical ways to evangelize the lost and make them into disciples for Christ.
Leaders were very happy to receive the book!
Group shot of leader's holding their new books.

Liz invited all the ladies from her weekly Spanish Bible study group to come to our house with their husbands and kids. She baked pizza and the other ladies brought a variety of other tasty dishes.
Above, Dominican Missionary Miguel Ovalle conducts a brief devotional before dessert.
Everyone had a great time together with plenty of food, fun and fellowship!

The week between Christmas and New Year's we joined three other families driving to Cap-Haitien to sight see and visit an old Haitian fort called "The Citadel." Above, Joey stands outside the entrance to the fort with some old canons.
Located high in the mountains and overlooking Cap-Haitien and the ocean, we enjoyed spectacular 360 degree views without safety rails. Yipes! Above, all the missionary kids lay out over the edge of the fort's wall to take in the view far, far below. The fort was built 200 years ago to be a place of refuge just in case Haiti was ever re-invaded by France or Spain.
All four missionary families pictured together at the Citadel. All together their were 19 of us traveling together. It was a great 4 day road trip with great memories!

On December 19th, we hosted a Living Stone Ministries Christmas Fellowship at a local guest house for all our active ministry partners. Above, Liz speaks to the group about the importance of growing in "The Fear of the Lord."
After praying, singing, lot's of good food and fellowship, we posed for a quick group shot before heading back to our homes.
Liz also shared her "Fear of the Lord" message with the Assemblies of God pastor's wives at their annual Christmas luncheon.
All the ladies received a personal copy of Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven Life" book in French.

We were delighted to have Pastor John Morrow (above right) from Lincoln, Nebraska with us for a full week of leadership training conferences featuring his anointed teaching as well as the distribution of complimentary copies of a very powerful Bible Training manual entitled: "The Shepherd's Staff." John's interpreter was Pastor Jean St. Cyr. (above left)
Above, Pastor John shares with a group of 300 leaders in the Port-au-Prince conference. He also conducted large conferences in Les Cayes in Southern Haiti as well as the city of Gonaives to the North.
Pastor John has a strong anointing to teach pastors to see themselves as Spiritual Fathers. Other topics included in his series were "The Authority of the Believer," "The Power of the Blood of Jesus" and "The Power of Words." At the end of the full day, Pastors and Leaders were invited to pray and make spiritual proclamations together. (above)
At the end of each seminar every attending leader received a copy of "The Shepherd's Staff" in the French Language. Above, an attending leader reads his "Shepherd's Staff" Bible Training Manual.

Children all around Haiti are participating in many special activities while they are on summer vacation from school. Several of our Living Stone ministry partners regularly conduct VBS (Vacation Bible School) during the summer months to give children opportunities to grow in their relationship with God and with one another. The kids also of course have lot's of fun! (Top) Children were given Creole New Testament Bibles courtesy of the Haitian Bible Society and encouraged to read them everyday. (Middle) Craft projects are always a great way to teach children spiritual lessons as well as creativity while they learn how to work with their hands. (Above) Clement, Mona, Sheila, and Vionel worked together on this recent VBS conducted near Port-au-Prince. They are pictured from left 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th respectively.

We've been in Omaha, NE since mid June taking time to rest, connect with family and friends, and speak at partner church congregations. Joey has enjoyed spending time with his cousin James (top) going swimming, playing video games, and shooting airsoft guns. (Above) On the 4th of July we took a family picture with Dan's two brothers and their beautiful families. Lord willing, we will return to Haiti at the end of August.

This beautiful little girl from "H.I.S. Home for Children" is one of numerous recipients of pillow case dresses created by ladies from Omaha, Glad Tidings and Benson Baptist Church. The dresses were brought and delivered with lots of love by the Glad Tidings team when they came to work with us in Haiti in early June.

Several of our Living Stone network partners conducted a community awareness seminar to introduce members of a Port-au-Prince Church to the principles and methods of CHE (Community Health Evangelism) These partners were some of the same ones who had completed the TOT1 (Training of Trainers) course back in March. (Top) Mona facilitates a discussion about community health/spiritual topics. (Above) Volcy participates in a small group as they brain storm for answers to various community related questions. The goal of CHE is to empower local believers to utilize the teaching and promotion of basic preventive health care practices as a platform to begin forming relationships with non-believers in their communities and build a bridge to introduce them to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
The next step is for the church members to decide when they are ready to form a committee with other key leaders in their community and then receive more in depth training so they can begin implementing CHE in their community.

We were given a very unique opportunity to provide training for a group of leaders from 10 rural communities in a very arid, almost dessert like area of Haiti known as Fond Parisien. The event was hosted by Pastor Rod Baker and his leaders from Victory Church, Tulsa OK. The goal was to introduce Children's workers to simple ministry tools they could use to host weekly Kid's Clubs in their communities. (Top) Clement gives a demonstration of how to use a picture book to tell children Bible Stories. (Above) Group poses for a picture during their 3 days of training. After the training, the leaders were encouraged to go back to their communities to begin utilizing their new techniques and materials with children in their communities. There are future plans to provide more in depth training to key leaders in each of the communities utilizing CEF (Child Evangelism Fellowship) training courses.

While Chris Bedzyk from One Hope was here working on the Haiti Book inventory at the Bible Society, we decided to take a half day and climb the mountain immediately across the ravine from our house. (Top picture Chris on the left and Miguel our tour guide on the right) We call it the "Belo Hike." It was Friday and Joey had the day off from school so he went with us. We had a great time and wore ourselves out getting to the top. Liz came to rescue us and gave us a ride back to our house in the pick up. We affectionately refer to Liz as the captain of the "Search and Rescue Team."

One day, while visiting our new missionary friend Lee from South Korea, she offered us some incredible tasting sea food snacks that look like sushi wrapped in sea weed. (Above pictured on the left is MAF missionary friend Julie White from Broken Bow, NE and South Korean Missionary Lee who made the yummy sushi snacks) As we talked about "CHE" (Community Health Evangelism) and ate these treats, I suddenly realized that as a "Nebraska Boy" this wasn't the type of food I was accustomed to growing up.

Dan was asked by the Elders of Port-au-Prince Fellowship to conduct classes to prepare young believers for baptism. After 4 weeks of instruction during Sunday School hour, 21 young men and young ladies followed the Lord Jesus in Water Baptism. Dan and Roger Clark teamed up to baptize the candidates together. (top picture) Some of the newly baptized young ladies dry off as they watch their friends being baptized. Special thanks to Pastor Bobby Boyer and the saints from Quisqueya Chapel for offering us the use of their baptism pool. Also, special thanks to Mackenson Eustache and Moise Medor for helping with conducting the Baptism classes. We actually had several of the candidates come to Christ during the Baptism Instruction. Praise the Lord!

Our ministry network partners were among almost 30 participants in a CHE training at Quisqueya Chapel in Port-au-Prince. CHE is short for "Community Health Evangelism" and is a method of holistic health care / community transformation that puts an emphasis on ministering to people body, soul and spirit. First developed by Stan Roland and Campus Crusade back in the eighties, today CHE is being utilized around the world to mobilize believers in underdeveloped countries to reach out to their communities with both practical health training and spiritual training. We were very privileged to host the CHE training team from Northern Haiti for a full week course called TOT1 (Training of Trainers 1). Pictured from left to right (top) is Evelyn, Osse, and American missionary Dr. Liz Flemming. This dynamic trio kept us on our toes utilizing large group presentation, small group discussions, group problem solving, role playing and team presentations to help participants learn how to interact and think in a way that will help them work with community leaders. The next step is for participants to choose a neighborhood they feel CHE could make a good impact and then begin working with people in each community to form committees that will define important needs and recruit and train CHE's. (Community Health Evangelists) It is the CHE's who will begin to go door to door visiting their neighbors and ministering to them holistically. Lord willing, once these initial steps have been completed, there will be another one week course that will give us more details on how to begin training the committees and CHE's in each community. We and our partners are very excited and are beginning to investigate several communities where we think the Lord would enable us to use CHE as an effective ministry tool.

For a more detailed description of CHE please visit the following web site:

http://chenetwork.org/whatische.php

On Monday, January 24th, about 65 under served children were able to begin afternoon classes at Pastor St. Cyr's primary school (above 3 pictures) located near the tent camp called "Petionville Club." Many of these children had attended school before the January, 2010 earthquake. However, since that time many of their parents have not been able to find employment or restart their small vending businesses which had been lost after the disaster. We would like to thank the Lord for providing funds through many of your hands when you sent "earthquake relief" as well as Arlington A/G from Jacksonville, FL who joined in to provide the needed resources to help "jump start" these young people's education once again. Lord willing, through small business loans being made to some of these children's parents to help them acquire inventory for their small, mobile vending businesses, their families will once again soon be able to help participate in the expense of their education. In the mean time, we feel quite blessed to be able to be in a place and time like this to share the Lord's provision with these precious kids and families. Please pray for the children to adjust quickly to school and for their parents to be able to once again soon find employment or restart their small vending businesses. Also, please pray for the skill training needed to equip many young men and women to prepare them for the work place as economic transformation opportunities begin to be presented to Haiti.

The one year anniversary of the earthquake was marked with many memorial services throughout Haiti. We were privileged to be a small part of a very special, joyful event entitled: "Celebration of Life" The event took place across the street from the ruins of the National Palace and was hosted by a large group of Haitian Churches in partnership with numerous American organizations including "Churches Helping Churches," "YWAM," and long time Haiti veteran missionaries Joel and Yvonne Trimble of "Haiti for Christ." The day began at 6AM with many Haitian pastors, choirs and several international speakers who encouraged the people to continue to trust the Lord and grow in their faith and expectation of God's plan to bring all Haitians into relationship with Him through Christ. Late morning, the popular Haitian Christian Worship Band "Alabanza" (top two pictures) led by Carly Joseph took the stage to lead the people in many well known praise and worship songs. By noon, when the 6 hour event ended, there were an estimated 100,000 people in attendance (bottom picture looking back from near the front of the stage.) Also, at the end of the event, the gospel was preached and people were assisted by Christians in attendance to learn how they could be saved by faith in Jesus Christ.

We participated with about a half dozen of our ministry partners in setting up and tearing down some of the platforms both at the morning outreach as well as a late afternoon presentation that took place in Leogoane, the epicenter of the 2010 earthquake that claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people. It was a great day of remembrance and opportunities to preach the gospel. Many of our missionary friends attending other outreach events also told us stories of many people coming to accept the Lord! Please pray for the new believers that came into God's kingdom on January 12, 2011.

Wow what a Christmas celebration! To think that just a few months ago Sheila, Gelia and Onese (top picture) had little or no experience ministering to children. At Pastor St. Cyr's request, our national coordinator Clement Jean Benoit started a kid's club at the pastor's house last summer and soon recruited 3 shy young ladies to help. Soon after attending a two week CEF (Child Evangelism Fellowship) training seminar, the girl's confidence level took off and Clement stepped aside to let them take over full time leadership. We were all amazed when we returned to watch the three young ladies conduct their weekly Kid's club now conducted in Pastor St. Cyr's tent. We were doubly blessed to be present at their special Christmas presentation. As the three leaders directed and watched, their Kid's club children ministered to one another and several hundred guests through singing, dancing, comedy, and sketches including an almost completely memorized scriptural reenactment of "Jesus and the Samaritan Woman."(bottom picture)

At the tail end of Pastor St. Cyr's Kid's Club Christmas Party, all the regular attending children received gifts along with their invited guests. The boys received "J-316" Soccer Balls provided by "One Hope" and the girls received dolls provided by Living Stone Ministries. The soccer balls are significant because they are made up of the same colors as the Jesus Bracelet and tell the story of God's love for man.