The Haiti Dunamis pictures are nice, by themselves, but a few notes about what is happening there helps make the story more complete.

This view lets you know how beautiful the nation of Haiti can be! We are at the shore on the south side of the northern arm of Haiti. We are about two hours west of Port au Prince.

This is the main meeting area, on the right hand side on the lower level. Upstairs is where many men room and downstairs, to the left, is where most of the women room. You will notice some tents out front. Father Deravil obtained a number of tents after the Hurricane and they unpack them for those who would rather have the own space.

Here's the meeting area from an end shot. We meet on the lower level. You can also see this as one of the concrete, unreinforced block building that came down in the earthquake.

Our Haitian leaders! These are the three priests we have been working with for a number of years. From right to left, Father Sadoni, director of St. Vincents and priest at Epiphany Church in Port au Prince. Next is Father Deravil, the director of the retreat center where we are retreating, and the church in Montrouis (Mow - wee). On the left is Father Colbert. He is the priest in Les Cayes, located south and west of Port au Prince on the southern shore of the south arm. These three and Father Cedar comprise the Evangelism Committee of the Episcopal Church of Haiti.

This is most of our team. We are missing Gary Wybenga. From left to right, Margie Van Meter, Pastor John Werth, Jenny LeMahieu, Leanne Jansen, Marg Reckman, Pastor Jon, Butterfly's red hair, Pastor Dave Weemhof and Father Deravil.  We are in Father Deravil's living room. Most of stayed in Father Deravil's home. This was an evening "debriefing".

This is our teaching area and Pastor Dave is teaching. As well up front is translators and our prayer warriors, John Werth to the left and Marg Reckman to the right.

Pastor Jon is making a point. Father Deravil is translating.

Leanne Jansen gave a testimony of the Lord's work in her life.

When we are in Haiti, there is a lot of enegetic worship!  We start with an hour of prayer at 7 am every morning and ALL the Haitians are there! Regularly throughout the teaching, there are times when a praise song to Jesus is exactly what causes the evil spirits to flee. Much of Haitian worship emphasizes "body worship".

Not all the teaching is done in formal sessions! But it isn't easy dealing with the translations issues. But good conversation and learning goes on throughout the day.

This is a good picture of the Montrouis, St. Paul's Episcopal Church. We are looking from the front (the altar) toward the rear. The seating is across the back and then parallels the walls at the front. Here we are singing and rejoicing in the Lord!

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we held revival services in the Montrouis Church. The first night was focused on the call to salvation. The second night was on growing in our knowledge of Jesus Christ. The final night, Thursday, was focused on healing. On Thursday night, we had 11 prayer teams and each team prayed for at least ten persons. Father Sadoni is translating the message!

The first night we started small, with just several prayer teams. Here are some. Leanne and Marg are praying with a lady and Father Colbert is translating and praying.

Some of the greatest and most energetic worship happens after the prayer time is done! We are praising the Lord for his great goodness and power!

This is a picture of the people who attended our retreat from the Haitian Christian Reformed Church. There were six people, five pastors and a woman. We talked together and explored the possibility of having a Dunamis among the Haitian Christian Reformed Churches. Jenny is translating for Pastor Jon.

One of the great privileges of this retreat was the attendance of the entire Episcopal Seminary. Here is a picture of the seventeen seminarians at the seminary. The seminary closed classes so all could attend. What a privelege to teach these future leaders in the church!

We certainly ate well! Father Deravil's wife, Fenide, is the "chief cook" and she does a marvelous job or organizing and getting things together for 120 people!

They fill the plates! Rice and beans, chicken, beef or goat is usually added at dinner time, along with lettuce, tomatoes, beets, carrots and some sort of dessert! We ate well.

This is on the grounds of Camp Quisqueya, the retreat center. Off the shore is La Gonave, the big island in the middle of bay. Swimming and snorkeling can be done right out the door! It is a beautiful place and God was richly with us! We give thanks to him for a great week of learning and prayer.

Greetings from Saint Vincents, Port au Prince, Haiti!

I am so sorry that I was not able to add to this blog on this Haiti Dunamis! But we had to use the climic's internet and they were using in regularly. Then we could only use it during the day and most of the day we were teaching!

So, let me give you a summary since we are now back in Port au Prince and at Saint Vincents where they have wireless and it is working well.

Counting the eight team members, there were 116 people at the Dunamis. We were filled! The Episcopal seminary cancelled their classes so all 17 seminarians could join in the Dunamis. That was a special privilege for us. There were six Haitians from the Christian Reformed Church and Jennifer LeMahieu, a CRC missionary. The rest were Haitians.

The retreat and the teaching went very well. Gary Wybenga taught the Gateways on Monday night, one teaching session for the whole Gateways! Pastor Dave Weemhof and I (Pastor Jon) taught the rest of the Spiritual Warfare material. The teaching went well and we had lots of interesting questions.

Every evening we went to the Montrouis Episcopal Church to have a revival service. I preached every evening and every evening we had prayer at the conclusion of the service. On Thursday night, we had eleven prayer teams and we estimate that each prayer team prayed with about 10-12 people. So that give you a good idea of how many people were there and how many people came forward. A whole lot! It was a wonderful and powerful worship service with much praise and worship, in spite of the fire burning down the gazebo just as the service started.

I will post some additional pictures in the Haiti Dunamis Portfolio and I will try and post some here as well.

God has greatly blessed us and the people of Haiti in this powerful retreat!

The Haiti Dunamis has begun!  We are blessed with 109 registered this morning. All of the team has made it safely and the teaching has begun.

Please pray for us throughout this time, but especially we ask for your prayers for our evening services in the town of Montrouis. Tonight, Tuesday, we will have our first service. We will be asking people to receive Jesus and find salvation. We are asking Dunamis participants to go out into the streets of Montrouis (population of 54,000) and invite them to the service. Each night we are going to have a public worship service. Pray for us that there would be a fresh outpouring of God's Spirit.

There will be pictures coming later.

Pastor Jon

•  “We were so privileged to join you on this wonderful first Prayer Mission Trip.” 
•   “I was tremendously blessed by being part of the prayer mission trip to Haiti.  I came away with a strong sense of the Lord's moving in and among the Christians in Haiti.
• “I have always believed prayer is powerful and I knew God listens to us in all places and at all times.  Accordingly, I was somewhat apprehensive to travel long distances to do something I could do from home.  The PMI prayer mission trip to Haiti helped me realize that God wants our prayers to be specific and how can one be specific from several thousand miles away without sitting down with our brothers and sisters needing prayer.
• "I want to thank you for the great privilege of being a part of the prayer mission trip.  I have to admit, I did not really want to go at first when asked but the Lord kept prodding me-I am so glad He did.  It was an awesome experience.  The prayer times we had with Sousa Epswa and their partners were powerful.  I especially enjoyed the prayer times we had with the Haitian pastors in their homes and in the churches."
• "We had such a wonderful trip! I can't imagine any trip going better than this was. We got along well. We prayed powerfully. The Lord was very clearly with us and blessing us!"

We had a marvelous retreat with the Haitian team of Sous Espwa and friends! There were about 25 people who joined together, some with kids from infants to high school. Pastor Jon led the retreat for the adults. Tim LeMahieu led the youth while the other sessions were going on. Dave Bosch was with the adults as prayer support. Jean LeMahieu was prayer support and played the piano for our worship.

We began the retreat on Thursday afternoon and we had one long session then. Friday we had two sessions and one on Saturday morning with communion. The theme of the retreat was on growing in intimacy with God through prayer.

We had opportunities to pray with each other and spend some private time in prayer. There was free time, game time and wonderful meal times.

The retreat place was wonderful and we certainly enjoyed the swimming and some snorkeling, the sunsets, and the beauty of God's wonderful world. Here are a couple of pictures that give a taste of what we saw.

As with many retreats, there was also so much that happened outside the sessions: talking at meal times, sharing at the beach, conversations over a cup of coffee. God was surely with us and many expressions of his provisions and presence were shared.

On Saturday morning, we had our final session in a different room where we shared the Lord's Supper together. It was preceded by a meditation and message time and the Lord blessed us with great encouragement and deep gratitude for his death for us. Here is a couple of pictures of the last session.

Thank God with us for a great retreat! And remember to pray for Haiti!

Dave Bosch, Tim and Jean LeMahieu, and Pastor Jon leave for Detroit on Sunday early afternoon. Pray for a safe trip.

Tuesday started like most of our days, with a time of morning devotions where we sang, read Scripture, prayed for one of our team and prayed for the day.

Our first venture this morning took us to Sous Espwa, the office of the missionaries of the Christian Reformed Church. Here we met with the missionaries; the Kings, the VanDams, Ad de Bliej, and their Haitian administrator and their guard. After hearing about the work of Sous Espwa, we gathered to pray for them.

After prayer we headed to the Quiseya Christian School to meet with Tony DeKoter, a teacher and elementary principle. Tony gave us a tour of the school, spoke with us about the blessings and challenges and we spent time praying for the students, the teachers and the administration that God would use this school to impact future Haitian leaders for his Kingdom.

After lunch at school cafeteria, we headed out meet with CRECH, an organization started by the CRC to develop a Christian curriculum for the Christian schools in Haiti. 80% of the schools in Haiti are private and Christian schools. But before CRECH, there was no Christian curriculum in Haiti. As we prayed for this staff, we were very aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit and God's desire to bless and use this staff for his kingdom. As we were praying the Holy Spirit fell upon us powerfully! For me, (Jon) it was a powerful awareness of God's presence and desire to bless this group. Here we are praying for them.

Before we came to CRECH, Steve Van Zanen suddenly became very ill. He stayed in the car when we got there and came up later, but was still feeling horrible! While we were praying for CRECH, Steve was suddenly and completely healed!! We were praising God!

We left CRECH with great enthusiasm and went next to a guest house which had crafts for sale as remembrances. Most of us picked up a few things. Next stop was the grocery store and then we split up to various missionaries houses for dinner. We got back late and went to bed exhausted!

Wednesday morning we started with devotions together. This was our last devotions as a team, our last breakfast and our last team photo by our trusty vehicle.

Ben and Helen Jones and Cathy Vander Steen left this morning for their homes. The rest of the day is quite unplanned though a few ventures await.

Tomorrow, Steve VanZanen leaves us and Tim and Jean, Dave and I head to a spiritual retreat with about 25 people. I am leading the adults, Tim is leading the youth and Jean and Dave are our prayer people. Pray for us! I do not know when I will be able to add to this blog again. So, until then, we are a blessed team and we thank you all for your prayers!

We started our day with devotions as always. Then we joined the staff of the Ministry Center of the Haitian Christian Reformed Church for devotions at 8:30. We had a good devotion time and then we proceeded to have wonderful time of prayer with all of us praying outloud at the same time for all the diiferent needs in the group. It was a great time for all of us.

Then we began to meet with the various part of the Haitian Christian Reformed Church which minister out of the ministry center. We prayed for three different groups of people and had some wonderful times of prayer with these people.

Here is a picture of one side of the Ministry Center.

Here is a picture of our group in our devotion time with the ministry staff.

We spent a lot of time in prayer and here is one of the times in a picture.

Two more pictures from the ministry center.

We ate lunch with the whole staff and then left for prayer with a diaconal group that works with the various Haitian Churches across Haiti. Afterwards we made our way back to the ministry center for dinner and an evening off. We are looking forward to telling you about Tuesday!

We had a delightful stay at the Haitian Christian Children's Home, hosted by Sandra and Nixon. We had our devotions and then Sandra and Nixon supplied us with a marvelous breakfast of scrambled eggs, Haitian style and pancakes and juice. Here is the team at breakfast.

We left and headed to Monchil Church for worship on Sunday. One of our team, Jean LeMahieu, a Reformed Church pastor and Jenny's mom, brought a wonderful message on John 4. We had a wonderful time of worshipping with them. Here are a few of the pictures. Such great and wonderful kids!

After church we headed to Pastor Joel's house and there we had an extended time of prayer for Pastor Joel, his wife and their infant daughter who was in need of healing. The picture is of us in their "living room" of their two room house.

Lunch was at a seaside resort and we have to give you one picture of our view, facing south toward Venezuela. God made a beautiful world!

Then we were off back to Port au Prince. The three hour trip was uneventful, but the bumps were just about all we could handle as we arrived in town. Jenny had us all over for supper along with some friends, Tony and Mary DeKoter from the Christian school. After dinner, we found our way back to the Ministry Center for a good night's sleep.

Saturday began early with devotions at 6:30. After a quick breakfast we were on the road to Jacmel, a city south of Port au Prince, over the mountains and on the ocean on the southern coast.

Although it was early, there were plenty of people around. The market was full, and so were the buses!

God was with us on this trip though. We stopped for a restroom break in Leogane,just before getting to the mountains. We pulled in, got out, and one of the Haitian pointed out our tire was getting low. We saw it deflate before our eyes! That meant a change of tires, a stop at a tire repair place and on over the mountains. But not before we stopped to pray and bless the Haitian who helped us!

The drive over the mountain went well and we saw remarkable scenery. We sang together, "How Great Thou Art".

As we arrived in Jacmel, we stopped at the home of Pastor Eli of the Christian Reformed Church of Siloye. Most of his family were there and we had a wonderful prayer for them all. From there we traveled to Siloye Christian Reformed Church with Pastor Eli. There were several other people from the church who joined us because we were going to pray with him. Below is several pictures of the church, our prayer time, and the people we were praying for.

This was a powerful time of prayer! Our team spoke of this being one of the most powerful times of prayer together. There was a sense of the Holy Spirit's presence in the building before we started praying and he was certainly there when we prayed!

 Next we traveled to Cayes Jacmel Christian Reformed Church with Pastor Joseph's family.We had a wonderful and powerful time of prayer with Pastor Joseph's wife, five daughters and one son. One of the girls we prayed for had an eye problem so we spent an extended and wonderful time of prayer them. Pictures never tell the whole story, but these are some pictures of the church building and our prayer time there.

From there we headed for the ocean front to relax for a few minutes and enloy the shore. When we were there a short while, Pastor Joseph, whose family we had just prayed for at Cayes Jacmel CRC, joined us. While we were on the beach, we prayed Pastor Joesh and then left for the Haitian Christian Children's guest house. It was  very pleasant place to stay. Hopefully we will be able to share some picture tomorrow.

Every morning our team starts with devotions, usually around 7 a.m. A different person takes the devotions including a song, a scripture with a few thoughts, prayer for the day and prayer for one of the team. This is a picture of our team at the ministry center in our "living room" where we have devotions.

After our devotions we left for an Haitian development organization, the Center for Integrated Christian Development, which has a theological school that was  apart of this organization. Pastor Jon taught for several hours here to about 50 people, many of whom were pastors. Pastor Jon taught on the authority we have Christians have and its impact in spiritual authority. The teaching was very well received.

Afterwards we had the privilege of praying for the staff of the organization. These people sought the blessing of the Lord and we gladly spent a significant time bringing them before the Lord in prayer. All the staff got down on their knees on the cement floor! Not a common thing among the western church!

The afternoon was participating in a good by party for a staff person of the Back to God Ministries International. After cake and a few speeches we left for Zach and Sharon Seegar-King and a delightful dinner together. After the dinner we shared a great fellowship time and got in some preparations details for next week's spiritual retreat.

The trip back to the ministry center after dark is always a bit exciting and then we headed to bed for an early rise tomorrow!