Haiti has a past steeped in darkness. A colony of black slaves owned by France and desiring liberation, the people made a pact with Satan for their independence. They vowed to kill all of the white French and to serve and worship Satan with animal sacrifices. Voodoo is still a huge part of the culture. There is a voodoo university in Port Au Prince and we often heard the drums from their ceremonies being played around the city where we lived. You can actually feel the darkness and oppression around you.
Haitian Christians prayed that God would do something to shake the nation and the people out of their devil worship and corruption…basically, they prayed for the earthquake. Although the devastation was awful and the country still hasn’t recovered, Christians here are rising up and saying no more will this be a pagan nation, a nation of voodoo and Satan. Everywhere in the streets are cars, buses, tap taps, painted with words speaking of the goodness of God or Bible verses or pictures of Jesus. Yes, the darkness is present, but God is waking this country up and it is beautiful to see the light coming through.
We went out to a village to pray over the place where one of Pastor’s family members is putting a clinic. It is a small little village and there are no other health facilities. It had a lot of damage, but the people were so sweet and so happy to see us. We learned that this little place was actually the epicenter of the earthquake. It made me think…out of the epicenter God cased a ripple effect to spread through this land. With God brokenness always comes before healing. Jesus was an epicenter and out of His body being broken, a ripple effect has spread out to us and allowed us in turn to be broken down and raised to life with Him.
Right now God is in the process of breaking us. He is breaking us of being comfortable, selfish, not sharing ourselves and our gifts, He is breaking off lies inside of us. It’s not a lot of fun in the moment, but we have to first be changed before we can change the world. We have to be broken before we can truly live for God and not ourselves. I want to be an epicenter that ripples out Jesus to everyone and everything around me. And for that I have to lose myself to me and find myself in Him.
