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HOW IT ALL STARTED
OUR STORY
More than ten years ago now, I made my first trip to Haiti, as part of a mission team from our church. We spent two weeks and it was an experience I knew I would never forget. What I didn’t realize when I came home from that trip was that I had left my heart behind.
Over the next few years I returned to Haiti several times and fell in love with the people.
There was Pastor Justin, whose church had been only a foundation for eight years because there was never enough money to continue to build it. They held their services in a small dark room behind another building.
I met Monique, a woman with a heart as big as Haiti itself. She worked tirelessly to provide for her family and everyone else who came along. She would have several stray children in her home at any given time and was always petitioning us to help someone (always someone else, never herself)
We met the members of the O.P.K.P. An organization of Countrymen, who had been struggling for twenty years trying to start programs for the children, elderly and sick, trying to start businesses and programs to help the community work and prosper themselves. Wonderful ideas that just lacked funding to get off the ground.
We met Constant, a brilliant engineer, who, against the odds, had completed his education, and found no jobs to be had in his part of Haiti.
His brother, Benardin, a contractor and pillar of his church, who was thinking of leaving his home to go to the city to find work to support his wife and brand new baby.
The doctor, Rubin, who had been kidnapped and beaten and threatened because he does not have the right medicines to treat people and save their lives. And Alphonse, the father of seven children, who suffers from severe headaches because of malnutrition, because he makes sure his family eat first, and there is never enough.
And on....and on.....and on......
People who loved the Lord and worked hard and just needed our help.
I came home and read everything I could find about Haiti and my heart was broken
We had to do something.....
"I saw what I saw and I can't forget it...I heard what I heard and I can't go back...
I know what i know and I can't deny it...
Something on the road cut me to my soul"
~~ Sara Groves
"Show mercy and kindness and tender compassion, every man to his brother."
( Zecharaiah 7:9 )
In November 2003, my husband and I formed an Independant, Non Profit,
Charitable Corporation called Beacon Ministries (Foreign Missions in Haiti) Inc.
Beacon Ministries raises money here in the U.S. and takes it to Haiti a couple of times a year to purchase food, clothing, building materials and medical supplies. We also send monthly "support" to keep things going between trips. One hundred percent of the money raised or donated is spent in Haiti and any team members pay all of our own administrative and travel expenses for each trip.
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In March 2007 we put Constant Chery officially in place as our Representative in Haiti. He is our Coordinator, Project Director and Advisor, Engineer, Interpreter, Driver and friend. But most importantly he is an evangelist who desires that all Haitian people come to know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
Constant was married in December 2008. He and his wife Noncy make their home in Les Ceyes, much closer to his home village of Moline, where our Headquarters is located. On February 1, 2011 their first child, Jovany, was born.
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Beacon Ministries Inc.
Neil and Barbara Yates
P.O. Box 433
Cape Vincent, NY 13618
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