Cassandra Celestin, a Special Events Coordinator at Food For The Poor, shares her experience upon returning to her home country of Haiti for the first time in nearly 16 years. Yesterday, we shared part one of Cassandra’s Journey Home to Haiti.
Finally I understood why those who leave the provinces to come to Port-au-Prince often say in Creole “map cheche la vie” which means, “I am looking for life.” It now made sense! The bareness, the pain, and the poverty suffocates them as though they are not even breathing, not even living. And so they head out to look for life. They send their eight-year-old children out on the streets “to look for life.”
Yet in the midst of all of that destitution and bareness, God impressed one thing very strongly on my heart; He is present and He is sovereign. As I witnessed food being served at the Food For The Poor feeding center, smiles on faces of families that received homes, the joy of children who had been taken off the street and placed in a Food For The Poor orphanage, I had no doubt that God is in the midst of the people of Haiti. It is in His sovereignty and as part of His plan that He gave the vision, “To be God’s instrument to help the materially poor and to renew the poor in spirit” to Food For The Poor’s founding members 35 years ago. It was part of God’s plan to provide for the poor of Haiti and elsewhere. He is the one behind it all, He is the one orchestrating it. He has done it through the generosity and faithfulness of donors and supporters like you.
After going back to Haiti, I now have a better understanding of the state of my country; I now know the depths of the poverty and pain many Haitians suffer from. And yet, after going back to Haiti, I am now filled with an even deeper faith that God has not forgotten about the poor, I am filled with hope! God has accomplished amazing things for the poor in Haiti and He will continue to remain a faithful provider. What a privilege, what an honor, what a grace, what a blessing, that He will provide for them through you!