Romans 8:28 is one of those Bible verses that is easier to believe when life is going well. But when tragedy comes our way, that’s when we really need to hear that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him.”

Moise Vaval (center) and Cross International Catholic Outreach Projects Officer Claudio Merisio (right) have worked together to organize aid distribution in Haiti.

This verse was a recent focus of our morning devotions here at Cross Catholic, and a very relevant one in light of the suffering we’ve been encountering in Haiti. God doesn’t promise us a carefree life, but he gives us hope in the midst of hardship and strengthens us to do everything to his glory.

It’s hard to stand among the ruins of the Port-au-Prince cathedral and see signs of God’s providence. But as Christ once told his disciples, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” One person who has displayed this supernatural hope is Moise Vaval, a Haitian pastor and friend of Cross Catholic. Moise lost his son Jean-Marc to the earthquake when a school building collapsed on top of him. Moise spent two full days digging through the rubble to find Jean-Marc, who was just short of his ninth birthday, but to no avail.

It would have been easy to succumb to despair, but instead Moise jumped into the disaster relief effort, all the while thanking God for sparing his other three children who had been in the same school. Moise’s volunteer service was crucial to our work, as he tirelessly coordinated the distribution of Cross Catholic emergency supplies to mission partners and refugee camps throughout the country.

God’s people very often shine brightest when times are darkest. Moise, like so many other compassionate people who are working alongside Cross Catholic, has been an inspiration to all of us. We can approach the difficult task of long-term recovery with cheerful hearts, knowing there is real hope for Haiti and for all who seek refuge in Christ.

In Proverbs 17:22 we are reminded that “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine…” Over the last several months we have been overwhelmed with images of sadness and despair from Haiti and, more recently, Chile. Sometimes it is nice to be reminded that the poor smile. Below are recent photos from the field of some of the individuals who we’ve helped through the generosity of American Catholics. Remember God’s promise from Psalm 30:5: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”

Vietnam

Bolivia

Uganda

Nicaragua

Cross International Catholic Outreach President Jim Cavnar and several staff members recently returned from a trip to Haiti. During their time in the earthquake-devastated country, they visited several of the ministries we are helping during this time of recovery.

In their first few hours on the ground the staff was struck by the empty streets of Port-au-Prince, which before the earthquake were teaming hundreds of vendors, children, cars, and animals.

Jim Cavnar, president of Cross International Catholic Outreach, surveys the damage in Leogane where nearly all of the houses were destroyed by the quake. Cross Catholic is supporting an IDP camp of about 200 people who lost their homes there.

“It was like being in a ghost town on the set of a Hollywood movie — it was unreal,” Jim said.

Michele Sagarino, vice president of development, added, “The lack of life in the streets and knowing what that means was very hard to process.”

The group from Cross Catholic met with Gladys Thomas, who runs an orphanage and Christian school we support just outside the capital, to survey the damage her ministry sustained. She told them that they’ll have to completely replace one of their buildings and rebuild the tall cement wall that protects their property from trespassers. She also said that her ministry has taken in 20 new children since the earthquake.

Jim and the staff from Cross Catholic also visited an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp we are supporting in Leogane, which was at the epicenter of the deadly earthquake. Despite the extensive destruction, there was hope among the people in camp. They had just received another shipment of rice when the group from Cross Catholic arrived.

With tents and supplies from Cross International Catholic Outreach, Project Medishare was able to set up a makeshift hospital that is helping hundreds of earthquake victims in Port-au-Prince.

After visiting a few other ministries we support, assessing damage, and planning an approach to help, the team from Cross Catholic stopped by Project Medishare’s tent hospital. Jim and the staff were very impressed by the work being done there — work that has been going on since the first day after the quake. Cross Catholic provided tents and supplies to the ministry, which were of great use when the ministry set up makeshift surgical and exam rooms, an infirmary, a lab, and a pharmacy.

Overall the group was impressed by the work we’ve accomplished together with our ministry partners to help those suffering in Haiti. “Our partners are showing tremendous courage and faith in the wake of this disaster,” Jim said. “Though it was difficult to see the suffering, we were glad to also find hope among the people as we met with our partners. We feel blessed to be a part of the recovery efforts that are bringing relief to those hurting in Haiti.”

Click here to learn more about our relief efforts in Haiti.

We received some good news from Mike Henry, our projects officer who has been coordinating relief in Haiti since the earthquake. He and one of our partner organizations were able to get medical supplies to a hospital we support near Port-au-Prince. Below is an excerpt from his field notes a few days ago:

With the road cleared, I was able to get further into the field to do some more work — work that will have a true positive impact on people’s lives.

The staff and volunteers at Hospital Espoir offer a prayer of thanks as the medical supplies from Cross International Catholic Outreach arrive.

I got started early by heading over to the office of a ministry we’ve partnered with during this crisis to pick up some medical supplies to deliver to Hospital Espoir, which is run by one of our long-time ministry partners.

As I drove through Delmas and down Rue Freres, I couldn’t believe how many down homes and buildings were out there. There were only a limited number of cars on the road, but people were walking in every direction, many carrying their belongings.

Dr. Antoine Fadoul, one of my contacts on Haiti, had agreed to provide us with enough supplies to keep Hospital Espoir functioning while we worked on getting supplies to them through the Dominican Republic. By 8:30 a.m., we were able to supply the hospital with a truck-load of items such as gloves, syringes, antibiotics, and pain killers.

Gladys Thomas, the director of the hospital Espoir, was on her way home from India, so her daughter, Natalie, had been left to coordinate activities. Natalie had been overwhelmed by emotions for the past couple of days. I could see it in her eyes. The hospital had all but shut down a few days after the earthquake as they had quickly run out of supplies needed to care for trauma patients.

I was happy to be able to deliver the supplies, and she was relieved to receive the help. Her eyes lit up a bit. Hospital Espoir would now have enough materials to open back up to the public. More importantly, Cross International Catholic Outreach had a lot more help on the way.

Cross Catholic has since provided Gladys with funds to buy more medicines and supplies from the Dominican Republic to keep Hospital Espoir up and running. Please continue to pray for them and all of our other ministry partners in Haiti as we continue to support them in this time of crisis.

Two more staff members will be traveling to Port-au-Prince Wednesday to help with our relief efforts being coordinated from our office in Haiti. They will meet up with Project Officer Mike Henry, who has been working diligently from the devastated country since the earthquake hit Tuesday.

The victims of Haiti's massive 7.2-magnitude earthquake are still desperate for help.

“We will be doing whatever we can to help our partners. We plan to visit some of them as long as we have access to fuel,” said Claudio Merisio, our Latin America projects officer who just returned from Guatemala and postponed his trip to visit partners in Peru in order to go to Haiti.

Mike Wilson, our International Projects Director who several years of experience living and working in Haiti, is flying back early from visiting our partners in the Philippines to travel with Claudio. Both plan to stay in Haiti at least a week.

Since the airport in Port-au-Prince is still closed to commercial traffic, Mike Wilson and Claudio plan to fly into the Dominican Republic and take a bus across the boarder and on to Port-au-Prince. From there they will meet up with Mike Henry at our Haiti office.

Please pray for Mike Wilson and Claudio as they make their way to Haiti, and continue to pray for Mike Henry as he works from our office in Port-au-Prince! We covet your prayers and support.

Deborah, one of our staff members who usually works at a desk in our Florida headquarters, recently went to Haiti for the first time to see some projects we support in a remote village. Here are some of her raw reflections from day one:

When you have no electricity, you go to bed with the sun and get up with the sun.  As a matter of fact, I am writing this in the dark and hope I can read it in the light of day.

I have more in my backpack than most have in their homes—including food. I didn’t see any stores of food in any homes I visited. In fact, I didn’t see plates or cups or pots to cook with in many of the homes.  Even the animals looked hungry—you could see the ribs on the dogs and livestock.

In a remote village in Central Haiti, Cross Catholic staff member Deborah approaches the mud home of an impoverished resident she is about to visit.

We visited an elderly man who had cut his leg while using a hoe in his garden. It was a classic example of how even simple things like a cut affect the lives of the poor. The cut was near his ankle. His leg, foot, and toes were swollen. We asked him to remove the rag he used to wrap the cut. When he did there was a leaf covering the cut. The cut was oozing puss. He told us it hurt so bad he couldn’t sleep the night before. We told him to elevate his leg and moved a chair closer to him to show him. We sent back band aids that had antibiotic ointment on them that I had brought, and some hydrogen peroxide. You and I, we would have those things in our First Aid kit and never would have needed a leaf to cover a cut. I sent a Power Bar back for him to eat.  And while that would not cure his undernourished body or his cut, surely the 23g of protein could fill his belly for today.  I hope he could sleep last night.

On a good note, I learned he is getting a house through a project we support in Central Haiti. It will be a thousand-percent improvement over the crumbling mud house he lives in now.

CLICK HERE to learn more about the Cross Catholic-sponsored housing project Deborah visited.

Last year charitable giving in the U.S. declined $6.42 billion — the largest drop recorded since Giving USA starting keeping track of America’s donations in 1987.

Since the focus of our ministry is to meet the most urgent needs of the poor, we often add extra expenses to our budget mid-year — such as the extra disaster aid we provided to Haiti after last year’s violent hurricane season. We feared that the economic downturn and subsequent nationwide drop in giving would affect our ability to meet these urgent needs this year. But God had other plans.

Not only have we been able to continue supporting all of our projects in the field, last week we were also able to meet the very urgent need of one of our mission partners in southwest Haiti.

The new Land Cruiser HHF will soon buy with the funds we provided will look similar to this. The vehicle will be used to transport staff members, medicine, and expectant mothers needing care over the rough terrain of Jeremie and the surrounding mountain communities HHF serves.

A few weeks ago we received heartbreaking news from the Haitian Health Foundation (HHF) that two of their staff and a young child were killed when a truck carrying 14 staff members returning from a rural village health clinic careened off the road and fell 50-feet into a river. To help HHF as they recovered from the loss, we agreed to buy them a new stretch-body Land Cruiser to replace the vehicle that was destroyed in the horrific accident.

Michael Wilson, our international projects director, shared with our staff an e-mail he received from HHF Executive Director Marilyn Lowney expressing her gratitude over the new truck. Below is what he shared with us:

Marilyn Lowney, executive director of HHF

Dear Cross Catholic Family,

As most of you may recall, our friends at the Haitian Health Foundation (HHF) suffered the tragedy of losing employees/friends last week in an automobile accident. While we can’t bring back the ones they love and lost, we can help them through this ordeal.  Jim [Cavnar, president of Cross Catholic] has authorized the purchase of a vehicle to replace the one destroyed in the accident.  When I called this morning to tell them, Marilyn cried and said, “All of you folks at Cross Catholic are such good friends to HHF.  Please know how much we appreciate it.” I thought it was worth sharing this with you as proof positive that what we do matters.  Thanks.

- Michael

The fact that we were able to meet this urgent need in the middle of a depressed economy is a true testament to God’s ability to provide in spite of our earthly circumstance. Just as God multiplied the widow of Zarephath’s oil and flour after she gave what she had left to Elijah (1 Kings 17:8-16), the Lord provided us with the means to help one of our mission partners in great need. We serve a great God!

One of our project officers, Jim Kline, recently returned from a several-week trip to Africa to visit some of the projects we support. In Mozambique, he spent some time at the Reencontro orphan project, which provides care to about 7,000 orphans and vulnerable children in Maputo. That’s where he met Zeinabo, a 15-year-old double AIDS orphan who overcame some pretty difficult circumstances and started her own successful sewing business with the help of Reencontro.

Zeinabo, a 15-year-old double AIDS orphan, started her own sewing business with training and equipment she received from Reencontro, a ministry we support in Maputo, Mozambique.

Zeinabo, who moved in with her aunt after her parents died, split her day between a vocational tailoring program at Reencontro and her many chores at home. Her aunt became angry that she was spending so much time at the training program — time she could have spend doing chores. One day in a rage, she poured hot water on Zeinabo’s feet, thinking it would prevent her from making the long walk to Reencontro. But what was intended for evil, God turned to good!

Social workers from Reencontro came and spoke to Zeinabo’s aunt, and convinced her to let her niece finish the tailoring program. They also gave Zeinabo a sewing machine so she could start a business once she graduated. Now in 10^th grade, Zeinabo is able to make a comfortable living from her sewing business and still attend school.

“What is really neat about this story is that Zeinabo’s feet [which her aunt tried to hurt to keep her from going to the vocational training] now power her manual sewing machine and in essence her career,” Jim said. “That’s definitely a God thing.”

Zeinabo uses her feet to power her manual sewing machine and, in essence, her business.