Seeing the Fruit of Two of HAFF’s Community Education Programs

Thank you to Carla Wilson for the story and to the Ada, MI team members for the photos.

    HAFF's Project Healthy Family works with groups that meet in 24 communities. These health groups meet a couple times a week to learn how to prevent or to care for various health issues in Haiti like typhoid, malaria, diabetes and high blood pressure. People are especially interested in how to make homemade oral re-hydration serum for those who get cholera and how to treat water to prevent such diseases. Members of the group help their neighbors and church families become better informed about these issues, too, and encourage them not to go to the local witch doctor but consult trained health professionals in the community.

Members of the Project Healthy Family group in Monac.

Visitors to HAFF enjoy the occasional opportunity to visit one of the Project Healthy Family Groups. Members of the group explain how Project Healthy Family has touched their lives. They often mention how thankful they are for this program as well as HAFF’s ambulance service. HAFF's vehicles and drivers are available to drive people to the hospital in Pignon in case of emergency.

"How many of you do not have a Bible in your home?"

The recent work/study team from Ada, Michigan visited the group, pictured at left, which meets in Monac, about ¾ of a mile south east of HAFF. Members of the group were asked to raise their hands if there was no Bible in their home. The team was amazed to see that most of the people in the group raised their hands. 

2011-2012 Godly Woman Class graduate. The bottle and
bag she is holding contain oil, rice and beans -- a gift
from the visitors.

 While the visitors were in Monac, they visited and prayed with people who live close to where the Project Healthy Family group meets. In the course of those visits, they prayed with the oldest daughter of a family of eight children. The visitors were saddened to hear that this young girl had had to quit her schooling at HAFF in her sophomore year in order to take care of the family. Her mother is disabled with a severe mental illness that causes her to wander from home. So, this young girl is the one who cooks, cleans and gets the younger children ready for school.
    Then the visitors were gladdened to hear that the girl had been part of our Godly Woman, 9-month home making class last year. Everyone admired the creative decorating she had done in her home on limited funds. It was clear that the class had given her a confidence and hope that helped her make peace with not getting to complete her schooling at this time. Please pray that her mother can be restored to sanity and that this young woman can take up her studies again.

2012-2013 Godly Woman Class student shelling Congo
peas for her family.

The visitors were surprised to meet another young woman that same day who is enrolled in this year’s Godly Woman Class. She is one of 10 children of the pastor who coordinates the local Project Healthy Family group and shows a lot of leadership potential herself.

Showing visitors how God is using HAFF's Community Education programs to strengthen families and improve the lives of people in the communities surrounding HAFF is one of the goals of the HAFF Work/Study Friendship Team program.

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;

 but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

 Honor her for all that her hands have done,

 and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.”

 Proverbs 31: 30-31