We at CrossFields believe in giving as a way of life and that the more we are blessed, the more we get to be a blessing. Thanks to you, CrossFields has had a blessed year and an exciting opportunity has come to us to give back this Christmas.
Did you know that, after the land has been purchased, a house in Haiti costs only $1500 to build? And, it can save a family!
The Chiropractic offices we have helped to build will allow us to help build a House for a family in Haiti!
One of our employees, Sheila Lynch (many of you talked to her), has decided to go back into her work with sustainability and education in developing countries. We are sad to see her go, but we know it has presented us a big opportunity to help others. And, we believe it could be the start of many more.
Here’s Sheila’s story in her own words
The best way I know how to explain the work I do in Haiti is “layers of complicated” meaning most solutions have multiple answers. Sometimes you need to fix a handful of things to fix the first problem you intended to fix in the beginning.
Let me explain…
When we started our sewing school in Haiti in November 2007 our goal was simple; keep mothers and children together so that children wouldn’t be raised in orphanages. Here is how the layers unfolded.
Step one: Give women an education, teaching them to read, write and sew. This would create the ability to provide for their families. When the first class graduated, we very quickly found that Haiti had little to offer in employment.
Step two: Find jobs for the graduates. We would create products (first purses) for visiting mission groups to purchase when they came to visit Haiti. We opened a small on-site store for folks to purchase purses which our ladies had made from donated fabric. This quickly grew into teams wanting to take out suitcases full of products to sell at home shopping parties. With the greater demand we could launch a website for on-line sales.
Some of these layers had to do with the growth we experienced as our work expanded, which was great! The other kind of layer came from getting to know the ladies we work with and their life struggles. It also comes from learning the ebb and flow of the day-to-day unspoken challenges of poverty and dealing with life in a developing country such as Haiti.
I am still amazed at the things I learn on this journey of sustainability for women and children and the things I take for granted. Have you ever thought about your front door and what life would look like if someone could just come and take off your front door? Let’s say you rented your house and the Landlord came to say he wanted more money and until he got more money he would take the front door. You couldn’t go to the police. They won’t help and you didn’t think to get a contract with your landlord. No one told you that you needed one. You just paid the landlord money so you would have a place to live. Really, it is just a tiny cinderblock house with three rooms consisting of a tiny kitchen, a sitting area and a space for one bed shared by your whole family. You don’t have a husband, you have small children and you are alone every single night with no one to watch over you. Thieves come to steal and can do unthinkable things to you, or worse, your children.
But, what if the door to the house was your door because the house was your house? Now that would be a whole different matter.
Yes, this is the next layer to wanting mothers and children to stay together.
They need a place they can call home, a place they are safe, a place they can lay their heads at night in peace. A place they can lock the door.
Everyone, I would like for you to meet Vadette. She graduated from our first sewing school in 2008 and has worked for us as a seamstress for the past seven years. She has always had the goal of having her own house.
While in Haiti at the end of October this year, I learned that her teenage daughter had experienced some of those unspeakable things I mentioned. As I sat in the office at CrossFields, I shared my heart with the team, telling them I felt like I was to return to the work I had been doing in Haiti for this very reason. There was still work that needed to be done and our ladies still needed help, but this time in a different way.
The team at CrossFields talked about what would it look like to help the ladies in the sewing program to be safe. During these conversations, some brainstorming and prayer led to CrossFields giving a house for Christmas.
God’s Plumbline is thrilled to partner with CrossFields to help Vedette complete her very own home. After all of her hard work over the years and many, many prayers for a way to build her house, she is going to be able to do just that…finish building her own house. Yes, and lock her door too!
You can track Vedette’s progress online at https://godsplumblineministries.blogspot.com. If you would like to partner with us to help build home for others like Vedette, please visit godsplumbline.org. And mark your donation “Houses for Haiti” to go specifically to this fund.
