On our final full day in Haiti we visited a fourth Compassion Project, hosted by the John Wesley Free Methodist Church of Solino, a desperately crowded and poor suburb of Port Au Prince. The unemployment rate in Solino runs at 80%. It is a community marked by political and gang violence, and where the population suffers multiple health problems, including regular cholera outbreaks, malaria and gastro-intestinal diseases.
August in Haiti is hot – really, really hot; sweat running down your back and legs, drink lots of water hot. Our minibus drove down narrow, pot-holed streets into the oppressively wind-less heart of Solino where we found the Free Methodist Church. Before the January, 2010 earthquake this faith community numbered 200. Two and a half years later, 500 cram in for church every Sunday morning (they are about to go to a second service) and 160 people attend weekly ‘new Christian’ classes. Revival is sweeping through the John Wesley Free Methodist Church of Solino. More on that in another post (Haitian Heroes: Pastor Gary).
True to its Wesleyan heritage, the church is engaged in a number of community development projects, including a reverse-osmosis clean water system that provides desperately needed clean, cheap and accessible drinking water for families. Perhaps the most impressive ministry of this incredible church is the Restavek Intervention Program. Haiti’s population is made up predominantly of the descendants of slaves who gained a form of emancipation and independence in 1804. Tragically, a spirit of slavery still afflicts the nation. For as long as anyone can remember a form of child slavery has existed whereby impoverished families send their young children, often to the city, to stay with relatives or friends they perceive can support them. These children, as young as 5 or 6 and more often than not girls, become domestic servants who are usually physically, emotionally and/or sexually abused. Most are not given the option by their ‘hosts’ to school. They do not eat with their host family, and nor when they do, do they eat the same food, but scraps. Overwhelmingly they are malnourished and suffer a range of health issues over and above those encountered by the rest of the community. Restavek is Creole for ‘to stay with’. It is estimated there are currently 225,000 young children living as restaveks in Haiti. They are domestic slaves.
With the support of Compassion International, the John Wesley Free Methodist Church of Solino runs an intervention programs to support for almost 300 restavek children. They receive food, education and a pathway out of poverty. It is the simple things you notice. Restavek children often are dressed in rags, but at the project they receive and wear new school uniforms. They receive the dignity they deserve. The church community becomes the family that provides love and nurture otherwise missing in their lives. Effectively orphaned lives are being transformed one precious soul at a time.
I was moved and inspired by the work of the John Wesley Free Methodist Church of Solino. Never was the use of John Wesley’s name on a church more apt. The spiritual revival that Wesley sparked in 18th century Britain spilled over into the political, economic and social spheres. It inspired members of the so-called Clapham sect and others to work for justice, including factory and education reform and of course, the abolition of slavery. More than 200 years later in a nation unknown to those first reformers the same gospel work is being carried out. Praise God.
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