Pastor Octavien Henriquez prays with a woman who lived in a cardboard shelter after Haiti’s earthquake, before Baptist workers built her a home in Gressier. Photo by Ken Touchton/Florida Baptist Convention
As the earth began to buckle Jan. 12, 2010, Youdel Azor recalled, “The ground was moving like someone bouncing on a trampoline.”
In 35 seconds on that scary, sad and dreadful day in Haiti five years ago, more than 230,000 people were dead from the earthquake measuring 7.0 magnitude on the Richter scale. People trapped by massive slabs of concrete cried for relief, said Azor and a group of Haitian Baptist pastors meeting in Port-au-Prince this past December.
Some of the injured even begged for a machete to cut off their own limbs holding them captive under the weight of the fallen debris. Total strangers helped each other. People from every social strata spent that night under the stars in fear of falling debris.
“Everyone was calling the name of Jesus,” said Azor, volunteer teams coordinator for the Confraternite Missionaire Baptiste de Haiti (CMBH).
In the ensuing days, a spiritual revival broke out as they cried out to God for deliverance.
Now five years later, many Baptist leaders believe the earthquake became a catalyst for spiritual development.
CMBH pastors and other Christians seized that time to loudly proclaim the Gospel of Christ, holding crusades and outdoor worship for the next two weeks.
As a result of this flourishing evangelistic fervor in the country, Haiti’s evangelical pastors estimate 225,000 persons came to know Christ as their Savior in the days following the earthquake. Still to this day, five years later, week-long crusades are held in remembrance of this event.
The CMBH churches reported about 9,500 professions of faith in the year after the earthquake and as a result, planted 426 new churches in the 18 months following.
God called Pastor Frankie Jean Louis from his urban church, where he served as an associate pastor, to plant a church in a remote area outside of Jeremy after the quake. “The first Sunday we had 73 attending,” the pastor said. “We are still alive today, growing, baptizing, discipling. The earthquake birthed many opportunities for Jesus sharing. Many have become new creatures in Jesus.”
In almost every measurable way, the Florida Baptist Convention-affiliated CMBH churches alone doubled during the past five years. From 2009 to 2014, the number of churches increased from 890 to 1,704; baptisms from 9,244 to 29,754; members from 59,588 to 153,212; and church attendance from 56,964 to 292,723.
A three-year seminary program provided by a partnership between the Florida Baptist Convention and New Orleans Theological Seminary graduated 145 students in 2012; in September another 150 students will receive certificates.
In 2010, as the world watched the harrowing images from the devastated country in the aftermath of the earthquake, nations responded, as did Florida and Southern Baptists.
The world poured money into charities and government projects. Yet five years later, media reports indicate little of the money trickled down to the Haitian people, many of whom still live in tents and neighborhoods of rubble.
But according to Craig Culbreth, lead strategist for Florida Baptists’ missional support group, a new optimism exists in the country.
Culbreth, who in an earlier assignment served as the Convention’s partnership mission liaison, has been traveling to Haiti since 1995.
Part of the confidence, he said, has been an improved infrastructure in Haiti as ambulances, garbage trucks, road work and new construction are visible to the people along the streets.
“I can remember the looks on the faces of the CMBH staff as we arrived in the country just after the earthquake. I had never seen such sadness. I had never seen such loss of hope.”
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SOURCE: Baptist Press
Barbara Denman/Florida Baptist Convention
