December 29, 2023 Hope In The Darkness

Esther

 

December 29, 2023

 

Hello, 

We wanted to share another story of Hope and thank you again for your faithful support this year.

This story is about a young girl named Esther. She came to our Life-Giving Church in Poteau about 2 years ago. Esther is 20 years old now.

When asked about her story, she said at that time her life was going nowhere. She spent a lot of time gambling for other people and dancing RaRa, (traveling voodoo street parties). She had dropped out of school because her mother died of a sickness and her father was a witch doctor, so she had no way to pay for school. 


After coming to the Life-Giving Church at Poteau, she said; "I never heard that Jesus loved me and died so that I could live."
She now attends our secondary school at Pass Rien and serves in the youth ministry. She says she loves her life now and is praying for the rest of her family to come to Jesus also.

Please keep Esther in your prayers. Pray for salvation for the rest of her family. We Hope her story blesses you.

Blessings and Happy New Year, Mike and Chris Leland

December 28, 2023 Happy New Year and Sharing A Little Light

Dorelus

 

December 28, 2023 Happy New Year and Sharing A Little Light

 Hello,

We want to thank you for your continued faithful support. We feel so blessed by your prayers and financial support. As I have said in the past, prayer support is so vital to our partnering with God. Finances are important, but when you are ministering to someone who is dying or blind or lame or needs to be delivered, it is the prayer support that is needed. When we are trying to discern what to do and need wisdom and guidance beyond what we humanly have, we desperately need your prayer support. So thank you so very much for your faithfulness. We pray that you have a Blessed New Year and the favor of God this year.

We would love to share a little light in the darkness as this year closes. A light that brings hope. We want to introduce you to Dorelus; She gave her life to Jesus during the earthquake of 2010 that left many of her friends and family dead. After years of abuse, she dedicated her life to teaching children the gospel of Jesus. She didn't want other children to grow up like she did. Because the conditions in Port-Au-Prince Haiti have gotten so bad thousands have fled or have been forced out of their homes by the gangs. Dorelos, her husband, and their 10-year-old son came to Gonaives searching for a better place to live and to serve God. After visiting several churches, They chose to settle in Dennonville and attend one of our churches. In Dorelus' words, "This community is being transformed by a Life-Giving Jesus. Jesus is bringing hope to the hopeless people of Haiti."
Dorelus is one of the many passionate leaders who are pouring themselves into children and families in Haiti through New Generation Ministeries. 

This is the beautiful fruit of a people desperate for a living God. Please continue to lift the people of Haiti up in your prayers.

Blessings, Chris and Mike

 Hello,

We wanted to ask for urgent prayer and also share something on the more positive side.

On the urgent side, Mike writes that the United Nations has just voted 5 to 2 to allow Kenya to lead a multi-national police force into Haiti to assist the Haitian National Police, to fight against the growing gangs and gang violence in the country starting immediately. They will attempt to establish peace, open roads, and transportation, and restore infrastructure once again in Haiti. 
They will be tasked with establishing an interim government and upcoming democratic elections soon.

They will be monitored closely against corruption, sexual abuse, and disease control. (Things that have been huge problems in past UN actions).
Most people close to Haiti feel as I do; We are pleased that something is finally being done to stem the problems that Haiti's poor face every day. But we are skeptical of the UN's terrible track record for this kind of action.

Please bring your most fervent prayers before the Lord, that the innocent poor people don't end up taking the brunt of this action, but are helped and given a voice and are heard by the world. Their very lives depend on it.......Thank you 

Mike 

 Eight of our students in our Pastors and Leaders school.

 Chris writes we so appreciate your prayers, support, and hearts for the people of Haiti. It is urgent in so many ways. The Dominican Republic shut off all sources of food and fuel going into Haiti on September 15th. The government had already confiscated all supplies of any kind coming into the ports and the gangs have raped the country of what was left in the country. So many innocent lives have been taken. We need everyone to pray for the people of Haiti.

Despite the evil that is taking place, the kingdom of God is breaking through. I wanted to share some positive moments that are happening in Haiti. We had 3 salvations, three nights ago, 4 salvations two nights ago, and 5 salvations last night.

We also had our first day of school for 13 of our Pastors and Leaders. We are so excited. It is the beginning of an intensive two years of schooling, bringing everyone to the same understanding of the bible. It will also cover basics like salvation, baptism, communion, and discipleship. The understanding of our identity in Christ and leadership skills.

The part that I am personally excited about is the teaching on worship, healing, hearing God, learning how to spend time in His presence, and learning how to renew their minds with declarations and His word. I am excited to see how God will move and renew the pastors and leaders. I am excited to see more of the kingdom bursting forth and bringing even more truth and light to those He so dearly loves.

We have the school set up for the Pastors and Leaders to live at the school for the first three days of the week and then return to their villages and walk out what they have learned for the following four days before returning to school. Please join us in lifting up the school, the teachers, and Mike as they walk out this first year of school. And thank you so much for your faithful prayers. 

Blessings, Chris

August 1, 2023

Pass Rein Church Celebration!

Some of the baptisims.

 

August 1, 2023

 Hello,

We wanted to share pictures with you (lots of them) from the celebrations happening in Pass Rein. We also wanted to share some of the fruit. It has been a very exciting time. There has been worship, teaching, celebration, honoring, prayer, and baptisms and there will be 28 weddings.

We had over 80 people choose to be baptized this past weekend, men, women, and older youth. I have included some pictures of a few of them. We will be sharing some of their stories in future prayer partners.

One of the more emotional events they called "Golden Age" honored those who are in the ministry who are over 70 years old. The average life expectancy in Haiti is 62 years old. So, reaching the age of 70 and still ministering is amazing. They honored each of them individually and spoke words of appreciation and encouragement over them. Then they presented each of them with a gift. 

We are thankful for everyone who attended the fundraiser this past weekend. It was good food and a lot of fun. And thanks to your faithful support, it was our most successful fundraiser to date.

We have been so blessed by your faithfulness.

Blessings, Chris

August 1, 2023 Honoring those in the ministry over 70 years old.

Honoring those in the ministry over 70 years old.
 

 The Haitian people love proverbs. One of the proverbs that really rings true is,

"Pa gen chenn anko sou ponye't mwen men yo toujou gen chenn nan lespri mwen." 
"There are no more chains on my wrists but they are still chains in my mind."

 Hello,

I was talking with one of our friends about our work in Haiti. He was asking what changes had or were taking place that were making a difference in the people we have been working with.

He knew many changes were easily seen but wondered what deeper changes had occurred. I wanted to share some of the amazing changes and some stories we have seen with you.

Many people entering new cultures prefer to do things themselves how they are used to or know how to do them. It is a less frustrating way to accomplish something. Doing it yourself is an easier way to get something done how you want it done and quickly. An example would be teaching your child how to clean a bathroom or balance a bank account. It is way faster to just do it for them. But it does not teach them life skills. We felt strongly that we were to come alongside the people of Haiti and help them to help themselves. To us, this meant to explain, model, teach and impart. It also meant not just having Haitians be workers but leaders. It meant helping them discover their skills and giftings. It meant changing how they think and see life.

A simple example of this is problem-solving. In school growing up I used to hate story problems in math. I see the value of them now. Haitian education does not include any type of problem-solving skills. Subjects are taught through lectures and rote memory. There is no reason for a government that is trying to oppress a population to teach people problem-solving skills. They do not want people to think out of the box. When I realized this we started implementing real-life situation story problems into our schools.

Early on as we were finishing our Children’s Village I asked one of the women who had been helping with the children, what they wanted to do in the village. She did not understand, so I said as an example, she could be a nanny, a cook, or a worship leader. She said to just tell her what she was supposed to do, she did not understand the concept of having a choice. Having a voice was new to her. So one of the things we model and teach is that women and children have value.

Some of the things that were frustrating in the beginning were easier to understand as we learned more about the culture. An example of this is why you would put oil in your car, gas makes it go. Oil costs money and doesn’t make the car run unless you understand how an engine works. Cars were mostly owned by the wealthy or foreigners when we first were in Haiti. Eventually, tap-taps and moto’s became more available and things changed.

Another area we experienced changed thinking needing to happen was in business principles among the poorer people. You may remember my telling the story of Kalano and his wife, Francesca. Kalano and his wife started asking questions about our family and our faith in Jesus. Mike answered the questions as they came and then one day he asked if they were interested in Jesus, why they did not go to church. Their answer was a common one, "everyone says we cannot go because we do not have any clothes nice enough for church". Mike told them that they could come to any of the churches in our ministry, no matter what clothes they had on. 

 

They shared that they each had a child from another relationship and that their youngest child was both of theirs. We assured them that God was a God of forgiveness and acceptance. They shared that they struggled to find jobs and that they felt their lives were a mess. Over the next day or two they decide that they wanted to give their lives to Jesus. Mike shared the life-giving gospel message with them. They accepted Christ into their lives and asked if they could go to church with us. They went with us the next Sunday and loved it. They came forward for prayer, and the healing started.

 

 The next thing they asked was if they could get married so that they would be right with God. They also started reading the bible. This is huge, as Kalano was not educated and could not read or write other than sign his name. But in his hunger and passion to know God more, God in his mercy allowed Kalano to read and understand the bible. He still couldn’t read anything else. 

 

God had also given Kalano a passion to learn and a sense of business. A little while later, Kalano asked if he could open the boutique that came with our house. It has been closed since we moved into the house. It was a room about 6 feet by 8 feet. There were two 500-gallon water tanks above the room, set up for a purified water business that had a window opening to the street to sell through. We decided to take a risk and invest in them to start a business selling food items, toiletries, and purified water. We taught them basic business principles, each evening they brought the money to us and we put it in different envelopes, for savings, reinvestment in products, and salary. After He and his wife had been running the shop for a month we gave them the envelope for their salary and Kalano said he could not take charity after all we had done for him. When we explained that he had earned it, this was their salary he started to cry with joy and unbelief. They were the first we taught business principles to, this is now done on a larger scale.

Minds are changed, which changes lives, which changes communities, which will change nations.

 When a people group is living a survival lifestyle, their focus rightly so, becomes living day-to-day, not long-term focused or big picture focused. So trying to get people to understand dreams and visions and how to get there is a foreign concept. It takes meeting their initial needs and then showing, teaching along with experiencing new things to help someone even entertain the possibilities that life holds.

When we first started ministering in Haiti Mike would hold pastors’ conferences and many would come, but we did not see fruit. We did not understand that they saw the conferences as a form of entertainment and status. They did not understand what was being shared was meant to be applied and taught in their churches. So we stopped holding the conferences for a few years.  Mike gathered 12 men and met with them, he taught them, modeled servanthood to them, refused to sit on stage in places of honor, and walked with them doing life together. One afternoon about three years into this time one of the men, Kael, came running to see Mike, you may remember reading about him in a prayer partner. Kael endeared himself to Mike early on in the ministry by being the one running to him and saying, "Pastor Mike, I can't believe that I have lived this long without understanding all that Jesus has done for me and that He wants to have a personal relationship with me, WITH ME; CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!" Kael was one of the first pastors to get it. He greatly helped the others to understand that truth. Not long after that Mike began holding pastors’ conferences again, and the fruit was and has been incredible.

We as first-world people versus third-world people mostly US, Canadian, and French have modeled over history that we come and give relief, we have the money and the resources, we are the givers, and the poor and needy are supposed to receive. This is an important first emergency response, but we need to move on from there. We need to help with rehabilitation and community development. When we continue in this relief stage it creates dependence and not independence. It takes away self-worth and identity. It does not create people who understand they have an identity, gifts, skills, and talents that are God-given.

We have been witness to the people we have invested in being transformed. We believe that following what Christ modeled to us, investing in a small group well is the most effective way to change a life, a family, a community, and a nation.

This fall we are hoping to open our school for pastors and leaders. We believe it will be another step in transforming the minds of pastors and leaders. It will be a bible school, but one that also teaches their identity in Christ, how to be in God’s presence, and how to hear Him. How to learn, understand and walk in their God-given giftings. Also, how to exhort, encourage and build each other up. The second year will build on this and will also teach leadership skills.

These are some of the deeper amazing changes we have been blessed to be a part of and we believe will change the people of Haiti. We are so thankful you have come alongside us and helped the people of Haiti.

Many Blessings,

 

 

Celebration in Perou

 

 Hello,

We wanted to thank you for all of your prayers for the revival of Perou and their 13th Anniversary celebration. We appreciated your coming alongside the people in the rural village of Perou.  There were an additional 15 salvations during the revival. God is moving in Perou. We are so excited to see Him move so powerfully in the villagers' lives. 

I am enclosing some photos of the celebration and baptisms please enjoy them and please continue to pray for the new believers.

Blessings,
Chris

Some of the people getting baptized.

Part of the celebration in Perou.

 

Our first school in Perou, almost thirteen years ago.

 Hello,

Spring is just around the corner. We pray this letter finds you well and fills you with hope as you read it. We wanted to share some news, request some prayers, share some testimonies, and thank you for your faithful prayers.

God has been moving in the village of Perou. There have been 10 salvations this week and over the past 4 weeks there have been over 30 additional salvations. This Sunday, March 12th, we will be celebrating 13 years of ministering in the rural village of Perou. We will be having a huge celebration, including a baptism of almost 30 people. They will also be holding a week of revival meetings starting this Sunday. We would appreciate your prayers for soft hearts and many more salvations. I have included many photos from our beginning years in Perou near the bottom of the page. I would like to share a couple of testimonies also.

The first testimony is from Oliamise. She has been a Christian for 5 or 6 months. She says she is about 60 years old. Before coming to our church in Perou she said that she used to go to a cold church. She would bring her crippled brother with her. But the church was so far away that it became too difficult to keep going there. So she started attending our Life-Giving Church Bon Berger in Perou. When asked if there is any difference in the churches, she exclaimed, "Oh absolutely! Since being part of this new church, I feel I have a burning fire inside of me. I feel solid when laying down on my bed, I have an appetite and I pray every night to push back the demons and the devil". She says she no longer does rara, or makes pilgrimages for satan and she does not go to the witch doctor anymore. She has been a widow for 21 years and has 5 children. She gardens for a living, cleans for her neighbor and sells small cans of charcoal. She has been baptized and received a bible. She says she knows some psalms to fight satan with. Please lift up Oliamise in prayer, as she grows in the Lord, and for her health, she says she has a lot of headaches and can not hear people even when they talk loudly.

Another testimony I would like to share is from Davidson. He is 23 years old. His father died when he was a small child. Before coming to Jesus he was involved in the wrong things. He went to witch doctors, smoked drugs, drank, gambled, and stole. He says now he no longer has a love for the world. He feels God's hand on him. He no longer steals, but gardens for other people as a living. He cannot read or write and asks for prayers for nightmares at night. He believes he will have victory. He says he has been given a bible and taught how to pray. Please lift up Davidson also, and pray for him to be able to learn to read and grow in the Lord.

We want to thank you for coming alongside the people of Haiti and faithfully praying.

Blessings, Chris

Oliamise

Davidson

One of the classrooms in our first school in Perou.

Typical home in Perou.

Making sugar cane syrup.
Donkeys or mules are tied to the long poles on the side. Then they walk around and around as sugar cane is put through the rollers.

Extracting the liquid from the sugar cane.

Where they boil the sugar cane to make syrup.

 

 Hello,

I want to share a vision with you and ask you to join us in prayer. We value your prayers and know they can move mountains.

It has been on our hearts for many years now to have an in-depth way to teach the pastors and leaders in Haiti the life-giving message of the Gospels. We would like to help them help their people understand the grace of God. The majority of churches in Haiti are very religious, requiring the people to follow the regulations and rules.  It took us a little over 3 years to have breakthrough in this area with our pastors and leaders.

As we plant new churches we are finding the need to go back to the beginning over and over. Mike has had the vision of a school for pastors and leaders so that we can impart to pastors and leaders life-giving teachings, along with biblical understanding. Ensuring that they are all building from the same foundation. Having a school like this would also allow for a greater depth of teaching than our once-a-month current teachings. 

We are in the process of creating a curriculum. We would greatly appreciate your prayers for this and also for the logistical part of starting a school for pastors and leaders.

Thank you so much and Blessings,
Chris

January 26, 2023

 Hello,

We want to thank you so much for all of your prayers for Izmaly. Some of you have been asking how Izmaly is doing. She has been released from the hospital and is happily back in the Children's Village. She no longer has a fever or infection. Prayer along with antibiotics and hydration by IV has her back and smiling again. Praise God! Thank you for partnering with us for Izmaly's healing.

Blessings, Chris and Mike

January 20,2023

Izmally in the hospital.

Hello

We need your prayers for Izmally one of the girls from our Children's Village. She is in the hospital and she is very dehydrated and has a fever. She also has an infection in her leg, but no external wound. Please keep her in your prayers.

Thank you and blessings, Chris and Mike

One of our nanny's with Izmally