Children’s home extends ministry from South Texas to Haiti

BEEVILLE—South Texas Children’s Home Ministries sent 100 boxes of food and provisions for children and families affected by the earthquake in Haiti.

The children’s home worked with Rudy de la Cruz, pastor of Quisqueyana Baptist Church in Santo Domingo and other partners in the Dominican Republic to deliver the supplies to churches in Haiti.

Rudy de la Cruz, pastor of Quisqueyana Baptist Church in Santo Domingo, delivers supplies from South Texas Children’s Home Ministries to Iglesia Tabernaculo de la Trinidad in Bouque, Haiti, for distribution to children and families affected by an earthquake.

As the Baptist workers traveled through the countryside, they were struck by the desperate situation of the Haitian people.

“It was the middle of the day, the time for preparing their main meal, but there was no smoke from charcoal fires—no smells of food in the air. Just hundreds of people walking, milling around, hopeless, hungry,” De la Cruz said. “They just stood around or moved slowly and aimlessly from place to place, and no one was working. None of the children seemed to be in school, but they didn’t laugh or play. They just stood, with sad eyes, and hunger stamped on their faces.”

The team planned to let Iglesia Tabernaculo de la Trinidad in Bouque, Haiti, quietly distribute food to families in its membership, but when the team arrived, more than 1,000 people had gathered as word had spread food supplies might be available.

To avoid a riot, the bus was parked a few inches from the church door, and the sealed boxes were passed through a window of the bus and taken directly into the church.

The church provided a safe haven for the supplies, in spite of the damage it sustained in January’s earthquake. Large cracks in the roof and walls have made it unsafe for worship, and the congregation now meets under tarps strung between tree-branch poles.

Sign up for our weekly edition and get all our headlines in your inbox on Thursdays Email Address An earthquake left large cracks in the roof and walls of Iglesia Tabernaculo de la Trinidad in Bouque, Haiti, making the building unsafe for worship, but the congregation continues to gather for worship under tarps strung between tree-branch poles.

After all the boxes were unloaded, the pastor of the Haitian church led a brief worship service and spoke words of encouragement to the gathered crowd. As the crowd disbursed, the team left in the bus so that the pastor could quietly distribute the boxes of food to individual families.

“If the provisions of food from around the world would have been distributed through the churches in Haiti, the churches could have delivered the food to their congregations and communities. The bottleneck that is preventing hungry people from receiving the food could have possibly been alleviated. So much food continues to be stored in huge warehouses and crates, and is even rotting on piers, while so many go hungry,” De la Cruz said.

South Texas Children’s Home Ministries has been involved in international ministry and humanitarian aid for several years, with much of its work centering in the Santo Domingo area of the Dominican Republic.

“We pray that these provisions will be an encouragement to these Haitian Christians and their pastor,” said Joanna Berry, vice president of family counseling and international ministry. “We want them to know that God and his people have not forgotten them in their distressing situation.”