(Photo courtesy For Haiti With Love)
Haiti (FHWL/MNN) — For close to a month, Haiti was in a leadership vacuum.
Former president Marcel Martelly completed his term and stepped down
February 7 without a successor, which put the already unstable country
into a constitutional crisis.
Haiti’s Parliament appointed Jocelerme Privert as an interim
president for the next 120 days. Under his leadership, the new
provisional government is supposed to hold Haiti’s twice-postponed
presidential and partial legislative runoffs.
Privert inherits not only a country with an electoral crisis but one
also facing its worst food and drought crisis in 15 years. At a time
with political upheaval, the country’s second-largest city, Cap-Haitien,
was hit by terrible floods.
(Photo courtesy For Haiti With Love)
For Haiti With Love
has its headquarters in Cap Haitien. Their most recent newsletter
described three days of unrelenting rains in early February that got
trapped by debris and dirt in the city. With rising water, people packed
up their belongings and headed for higher ground. Eva DeHart with For
Haiti noted that the insecure situation was not dampened by the rains.
In fact, she wrote, “For one of the first times I can recall, there were
actually manifestations in the rain. God can usually dampen those
ideas, but not this time.”
Coupled with those disturbances, there’s another aspect challenging For Haiti. Rice and beans make up the primary diet for Haitians.
They’re dried, not canned. DeHart explains that “with wet charcoal,
rain, and flooding everywhere, they can’t cook and therefore cannot eat.
We are talking about some folks who don’t eat every day normally, so
this becomes very serious very fast.”
(Photo courtesy For Haiti With Love)
For Haiti with Love helped relieve some of the suffering by
distributing dry clothing to folks who had lost everything as well as
increasing the food program to help those who were either street people
or had lost all of their food.
DeHart also points out that these heavy damaging rains and flooding
will have a long-term effect on the future food supply. The rains came
at a critical time for the fruit and citrus crops; many of the gardens
that were planted have likely been washed away. Until those crops can be
replaced, there will be a food shortage. In short, DeHart issues this
plea: “Please pray for Haiti, they need lots of help. If you can spare
any extra, we could use more funding to be able to help them.”
For Haiti with Love
shows God’s love by following the Lord’s commands in Matthew 25:35-40
to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and shelter the
homeless. The ministry gives freely of God’s love and gifts to help make
life better for the poorest of the poor in Northern Haiti. Medical
teams are welcome to serve in the For Haiti 24-hour emergency medical
clinic as well as construction volunteers for building homes or village
marketplaces.
Source: Mission Network
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