Starving for Jesus

Lost in my own world, running errands in a Port-au-Prince market, I suddenly wake up to poverty smacking me in the face. She is a beautiful young girl who appears to be about fourteen and looks very lost. Sensing her panic and urgency I approach her to see if she is ok. Upon asking what she is looking for, I am shocked to learn she is shopping for supplies for her four-year-old daughter. I later learn she is twenty-three, but nothing about her hints at her age. Her body is painfully skinny. I wonder how she stays alive with such a skeletal frame. The dark circles around her eyes reveal wounds of a troubled life and sadness seems to pour from her eyes. Years of poverty have taken its toll on this woman. As she speaks to me, I soon learn the four-year-old is not the only daughter she is concerned about. She also has another daughter who is only eight months old. This is when the real story begins to unfold. Her youngest daughter has terrible diarrhea. She is quite ill and the woman is unsure if her daughter will survive. They have no money to buy diapers or see a doctor. As she is wandering about in a state of sheer desperation, we know the Lord brought this woman to us. After talking a few more minutes, I tell her to come to Lifeline and we will help her. I can only pray she will come quickly.

The next day, after having walked more than an hour to the mission, I am thrilled to see her arrive. Unable to afford even the cheapest means of transportation, a tap-tap, blisters bulged on her feet from her walk towards hope. We joyfully provide her with medicine for her child, toys, formula, diapers, and other goodies. After blessing her with much needed supplies, we seek more information to insure the safety of her children and her. Asking questions about what kind of water she gives her two little girls, we learn she gives them any water she can find – even if it risks giving her children Cholera. She tells us she has no money for clean water, nor does she have money to buy charcoal to boil dirty water. She is a single mother with no income. After pressing her for more information, she shamefully admits she sometimes resorts to having sex for money. She does not like to do it, and only does it when she feels she has no other choice; but when her children are starving, she feels she has no other choice. Seeing the shame and sadness permeate throughout entire body, we know her story is true. It is a story told by many in this poverty stricken country.

Brought to tears from this woman’s sad story, we know we can offer her hope. We tell her she never has to resort to selling her body again. We explain to her that all she needs to do is trust in the saving power of Jesus and He will provide. Seeing the slightest hint of a sparkle in her dark lifeless eyes, we share the Gospel and invite her to continue to seek help from us and from the Lord. After providing her with money to get home by tap-tap and to buy food and for her and her girls, we ask her to bring her family back to Lifeline the next day. Promising to supply her with enough rice and beans to feed her family, the young woman leaves extremely grateful and ready for a new life. As we continue to pray for Jesus to enter her heart, our only desire is to see Christ work in her life and bring salvation to the Haitian people – one poverty-stricken life at a time.