Precious Pearl News & Updates
7 March 2011I am sitting in the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti waiting for my flight home. What a successful crusade! Saint Marc is a colonial port city with 160,000 inhabitants and our crusade was right in the center of it. Each night we had about 20,000 people. But last night, Sunday, it was packed, packed, packed so that people could not move. Our speakers are piled up 18 feet high, our stage is 36 feet wide and decorated with colorful clothes, balloons, and ribbons. We are on three radio stations and the local television station. The crowd is so receptive and well behaved that all the evangelists present rated Saint Marc the best behaved city that any of us have ever held a crusade in. Each night the music was fantastic, the word was preached, people were healed, people were delivered, souls were saved, and people came forward to give healing testimonies. One young man got saved, then the next day shaved off his dreadlocks, then on Sunday morning he was in church where he got filled with the Holy Ghost. After eight days over 500 people have been saved, and last night no one could move so I just asked people to raise their hands and we prayed the sinner’s prayer where they were standing. On Saturday the crowd begged us to stay. They stayed with us from 6 PM until midnight, no chairs, no water, no bathroom and then they begged us to stay. Pastor Eddy told me the next morning, “If Paul the apostle was here he would stay for two or three months.” So we decided to extend the crusade for another week. We just got a phone call that the mayor was angry that we were staying another week. So all the pastors went to the mayor and declared that, “Our people need God, we need this crusade to continue for another week.” So the mayor said, “OK but close the meetings at 10, no staying until midnight.” We are happy to do that. Why was the peace of God present in such great measure? Saint Marc has a reputation as a wicked city. The presence of God descended on the city of Saint Marc. The prayers of the Prayer Center of Carrefour and your prayers brought the victory. We won the victory in the heavens, and the victory on earth followed as we preached and ministered in the power of the gospel. This morning we rented a house in Saint Marc to start a prayer center. It is located in a quiet neighborhood across the street from the court and the police station. The owner is a lady who is a prayer warrior and who used to be active in the Prayer Center of Carrefour. The only problem is the house is haunted, and her son is demon possessed and won’t let anyone in the house. Those are problems for others, for us it is an opportunity. It has 13 rooms, three baths, parking for six vehicles, a beautiful patio and it will be a fantastic base of prayer in the city of Saint Marc. I am grateful for everyone who prayed. Prayer changes things. Prayer changed Saint Marc this week and we are expecting more of the same next week. Love in Christ,
23 December 2010
Merry Christmas everyone. I just returned from Haiti Monday night, December 20. We are having revival there.
On Saturday, Dec. 18, I attended a baptism service and we baptized 33 people; the month before they baptized 55 people, and the month before that 147.
We have started a new church in Titus, Carrefour, the location of our previous crusade in October. Our crusade this time was at the same location. One of the deacons of the church has been made pastor of the new church. They have services there during the week, and on Sunday everyone comes to the main church.
We have served over 225,000 meals from two kitchens since the earthquake. We are sending 53 children to school. We have rebuilt the second floor of an orphanage (that was destroyed in the earthquake.) The orphanage has grown from 30 children to 60 children since we began giving them regular support.
We are sending 21 young leaders to bible school, and they are so happy, they are devouring the lessons.
I saw more houses being rebuilt this trip than any time since the earthquake. Also, plywood houses have been constructed to help people move out of tents. It is almost a year since the quake, but I am happy to report progress is happening generally in the population. It is much too little, but it is more than before.
Our crusade had fantastic music, anointed preaching, salvations, healings, and one night everyone got filled with the Holy Ghost and prayed in tongues. We are rejoicing. Praise the Lord, God is great!
5 October 2010
What a great crusade in Haiti! I am on the plane home with my wife, Anne, This week we had a crusade in a home-made soccer field in the neighborhood of Titus, Carrefour. No one else came with us, so I preached Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. The praise and worship band was fantastic, the singers were great, and people came and danced. I prayed for the sick individually, and with mass prayers. One young man had a hernia, he came for prayer and it disappeared instantly. The next night we spoke to his mother and learned that he had the hernia since he was born, eleven years. She was planning an operation, but the hernia is gone now.
Sunday night we prayed for the whole crowd to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Many were jumping and praising God in their heavenly language. Then we prayed for healing. One athlete came forward and testified that he had had a stomach ache for a year and a half. Many doctors had failed to cure it. But during the mass prayer he felt something touching his stomach and now he is healed and he wants to serve Jesus Christ. There were many more healings. Every night many young men came forward for salvation, perhaps 70 people gave their hearts to Christ during the four nights.
Our meal kitchen is now more organized. The cooks wear hats, there is a new roof. With your help our meal kitchen has served over 150,000 meals since the earthquake, mostly to children and families. It is terrible to report, but people are still living in tents. A million poor people are living in serious poverty and little is being done. The international aid is not flowing. We have spent all the money we received. All the money we receive is spent promptly helping poor people in Haiti.
We also visited a poor doctor, Dr. Elvira Malebranche, who has taken in 30 orphans. She supports them with the meager income from her medical practice. In the earthquake she lost the top floor of her house. Now she and the thirty orphans are sleeping on the floor downstairs. For $6,248 we can rebuild the second floor of her house. She is a real saint.
Your brother in
Christ, March 30th, 2010 Hi from Mac, Update 3/01/10 From Mac: UPDATE - 2/25/10 - We are feeding 600 meals a day at the kitchen at his house. At the other kitchen we are serving 150 meals a day. Pastor Eddy said, "Mac, if it was not for this food, we would have dead children in my back yard." Food Drive 2/3/10 Pastor Pascual filled a school bus with food and wood and tarps and drove from his town in the Dominican Republic to Pastor Eddy's "house" in Carrefour. He carried Adam LiVecchi from NJ and a PA system for Pastor Eddy. They picked up Marlene Francois at the airport in Santo Domingo. Also, there were four Dominican Doctors on the bus. Pascual reports that they had a great victory today. When the four Dominican Doctors started a clinic, four American doctors appeared, so they all were running a clinic and each doctor saw 50 to 60 people. They left the food and supplies and drove home tonight. Pastor Pascual was heartbroken to see everyone living on the ground, old people, children living outside with nothing to protect them from rain or sun. He wants to go back and help again. Haiti Quake update, 1/24/2010 3:00PM Steve Lovell and I just had two conference calls with our pastor friends in Haiti. This is the first time that we have had good communications. It was so good to hear their voices. We spoke first with Pastor Ernst Joseph, senior pastor of the L’Eglise de la Derniere Heure (Church of the Final Hour.) The church has the same physical building as the school that we support and our school meal program. Then we spoke with Pastor Eddy Francois, founder of L’Eglise de la Derniere Heure (which Ernst now pastors) and founder of the new L’Eglise de la Derniere Heure (which he started 1 year ago and now has 2,000 people meeting in the basketball stadium. The old L’Eglise de la Derniere Heure building is totally down. The basketball stadium is still standing, but no one will go into it. This is the first day without tremors, no one wants to go inside any building. They received with gratitude the food that Pastor Pascual brought last Wednesday from the Dominican Republic. They have been feeding several hundred people a day, but there are thousands that want to eat. Their plan now is to take the cash that we sent recently, and drive to the Dominican Republic and buy food and return and start up a second kitchen. This will mean that they are serving meals in two locations. As far as food from international aid, they report that only injured people are being fed by international aid programs. There is no food available for people who are healthy. They say that what they need the most is prayer that it does not rain, and tents and tarps. People and children are living in the open. If it rains many are sick, and will get worse, plus many buildings are unstable and they fear that rain will cause walls and houses to fall. Pastor Eddy said that this morning they had one of the best church services ever. He encouraged Steve and me by saying, “We have nothing, but we have hope. We are not discouraged. We know that God is taking care of us and that we are in good hands. We each have a few dead people in our churches, but we are praising the Lord.” Tonight Pastor Eddy is organizing security for the city of Carrefour. Pastor Eddy says that they have about a thousand young men and women, and that with the permission of the Mayor of Carrefour they are organizing to take over security for the city. He says that there are some gangs that do not want order, but that they must organize the city and secure order for the benefit of all the people. We have also sent cash to Pastor Pascual and he will drive again to Carrefour with a load of supplies. Eddy and Pascual will discuss what needs to be purchased and who can get what. There is a big need for plywood and tarps to build tent shelters. Also, Pastor Eddy needs a generator and a PA system to address the crowds. He says that all our equipment is under the wreckage of his house, but that it is too dangerous to go inside and pull it out. If another earthquake strikes when someone is inside the house, it could kill them. Pastor Eddy’s daughter Eunice Francois was injured in the quake. Her little toe was crushed, and the skin on her foot was opened to the bone. It was stitched up at the local hospital the night of the quake. Monday, 7 days later, she reached Miami and a surgeon opened the wound and cleaned out cement, dirt, and rotten flesh. He declared that it was so bad that amputation might be the only solution. Thank God for answered prayer. Eunice is now in another hospital, and the doctors are not talking about amputation, but about rebuilding her foot. The director of the hospital even came to Eunice to say, “I could not sleep last night, thinking of your situation.” So we know that they will take good care of her. We need to pray for all the injured in Haiti. Only one week and a serious cut can become a life threatening case of gangrene requiring amputation, or else blood poisoning and death results. From the little we see on television there must be many people with treatable wounds that may die in the days ahead if they do not get proper attention. So please pray for the wounded to get medical help. Pray for good weather until tents and shelters can be constructed. And continue to pray that God will feed the people who have nothing. We are happy that we are serving meals again. I told Pastor Eddy, “Spend all the money on food and serve as many people as you can, and buy tents and tarps. When the money is spent we will send more.” Thank you to everyone who is sending donations. This is what is happening and this is how your donations are being spent. We have been working with Pastor Eddy and Pastor Ernst for over five years and we have a team of about 100 Haitians who get the job done when we serve the poor meals, or preach a mass crusade. Our 24 person crusade security team will no doubt be the nucleus of the new city-wide security team. This is not foreign aid; this is brothers and sisters working together. We do what we can do here in North America and our Haitian brothers and sisters do what they can in Haiti. God bless you for your part in this ministry. Before the quake we had 2 kitchens each serving 150 meals a day, now we will be serving many more meals, and for a long time. All my love in Christ, Mac |