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PAMPA The First Baptist Church in Pampa has done mission work in Haiti for years.
“Our church has been involved with a ministry called Back to Life that helps to support an orphanage, school and church in Gilbert, Haiti,” said Kathy Cavalier, a church and mission team member at First Baptist Church.
Most recently, a mission team of 17, including 12 adults and five youth, went to the country to work.
“We’ve had a Vacation Bible School for anywhere from 400-600 children from the surrounding area,” said Cavalier. “There are only 20 at the orphanage itself, but the children come from all over.”
However, when a part of the group went to another region to help another church, they got caught in roadblocks after protesters took to the streets following a government-ordered fuel price hike.
“We had gone out to be a part of a new church plant that had taken place in a village a couple of hours away from where we were staying,” said Zackary Greer, associate pastor of missions and administration. “On the way back, we encountered some roadblocks, it was a pretty volatile situation.”
During the intense situation, Greer says the Haitian people, in turn, helped them.
“When we got trapped by one of the roadblocks, we went back into a town and the people were gracious and took us in,” said Greer.
The team was originally set to return earlier but because of the roadblocks in capital Port-au-Prince and a U.S. Embassy shelter-in-place notice, they were not able to fly home until July 13.
Greer says the experience has inspired them to go back to the country even sooner to work.
“We’ve come to a point where we are more excited and have more urgency and have more desire to go back and work with the Haitian people than we ever have and we’re excited about that,” said Greer. “We had some young team members, we had some teenagers, and they are so excited about their opportunity in the future to go back and work with the Haitian people.”
Greer later told the TEXAN, “Because of the way things went down, we stayed another five days.” He spoke of the chaos during the night as the group heard gunshots and individuals trying to disassemble cars to break through the roadblocks.
“Those were the times when the group drew closest to the Lord,” Greer said. “The Bible studies, prayer and fasting were extremely powerful. God strips us of things sometimes to speak to us.”
This article is reprinted with permission from KFDA-TV’s online report by Jami Seymour with additional reporting by the TEXAN in the closing paragraphs.
