Helping Cuba & Haiti in Their Hour of Need
Dear Friends,
It’s been a terrible season of natural worldwide calamity. With the disasters facing our own country brought by hurricanes Harvey and Irma, our attention and hearts are naturally drawn to help those closest to us. That good work must continue.
At the same time a great opportunity exists to help our brothers and sisters just beyond our borders with lifesaving and Gospel empowering help. These include our near neighbors in Cuba and Haiti. Given the bad news that we often receive out of these places, many Americans do not know about the great evangelistic work that is going on in these places. That work has been greatly magnified through the support of the wider body of Christ, needed now more than ever.
The recent hurricanes have taken a huge toll on property and livelihoods. Many pastors and evangelists have lost their homes and property. Three destroyed houses of believers in Cuba are pictured here. In Haiti, the sister of Pastor Clovis, a co-worker of our partner Cebien Alexis, was killed from flying debris at their church. The government in Cuba, which in past hurricanes has offered some aid to the victims is not doing so this time. They are just too overwhelmed. Even food distribution that was previously offered free of charge now comes with a price. There is significant risk of starvation and disease among the people.
Here is how one of the pastors described the situation, “The desolation is complete: There is no food, no shelter, no medicines. The few belongings of the population are ruined by the passage of the hurricane.”
Why is it especially important to help our brothers and sisters there get back on their feet? The humanitarian reason would be cause enough. They do not have social help networks, reserve funds or emergency relief systems. Their access to electricity, clean water and food supplies is dependent on outside sources. But even beyond that, this is a tremendous time for reaching these islanders for Christ. Our ministry partners in Cuba, for example, along with others in the Evangelism Network they are part of, set a target of sharing the Gospel with one million Cubans in 2017. This is a great goal on an island which is avowedly Communist with an overall population of just over eleven million.
And they are well on their way to doing that. Here is what has been accomplished in the first six months of 2017:
• 524,367 people evangelized
• 35,288 people saved
• 12,576 being discipled
• 580,360 tracts purchased and provided for use
• 3,200 Bibles, 2,800 New Testaments and 3,680 Gospels of St. John distributed.
At a recent crusade in Havana more than 68,000 heard the Gospel and over 2,000 of them came to receive Christ right there. In addition, the project has founded 103 new mission stations throughout the country. This is wonderful news.
In Haiti a great openness also exists for the Gospel. In our June visit there we saw church after church that has been opened up in countryside villages through the work of Cebien Alexis and his team. Now many of their church buildings stand without roofs as do the homes of pastors.
Will you help us stand in the gap for our island neighbors? The help that we send will go directly to those most affected, hand delivered by co-workers of our Cuban partner Pastor Ledesma and Pastor Cebien Alexis in Haiti. These gifts will help them deal with the damages to their properties and also with the provision of food and necessary supplies. They will also enable them to reach out to their neighbors who do not know Christ.
At times like this there is always a great openness to the Good News of a saving and loving God. To give online, go to the contribution page of our website, www.hope-builders.org, and click on Cuba or Haiti in the dropdown menu. To give by mail, you can send a contribution to us at Hope Builders International, PO Box 91359, Austin, TX 78709. Let’s help our brothers and sisters and keep the Gospel going forward in the Caribbean!
With love in Christ,
Lance & Christie Thollander
To call the road rutted would be an understatement. Better to say the deep ditch ahead looked daunting. But we had been driving on such roads for several days in our travels to see the work of Cebien Alexis and his ministry, Army of Ch rist, in Haiti. Our HBI team, consisting of Christie and me, and our longtime friends Jim & Ann Witkower and Mark Bodycombe was getting used to such conditions. 
We had almost reached our destination, the school in Robinette, where Hope Builders’ donors have helped fund a recently opened church building and is helping with school and agricultural development. Our hearts were stirred with excitement as only a few years before the only school structure here consisted of some wooden benches under a rusty tin roof held up by bamboo poles. Today we would serve lunch to 75 beautiful young school children, who meet in cinder block classrooms while a large school and agricultural training building are going up nearby. Their songs and words of devotion to the Lord brought smiles to our faces. Everywhere we went the believers greeted Cebien with hugs of joy. 
Thankfully, as time went on, the weight of glory began to shine through. We watched Cebien serve with joy in his natural environment, and met Kathy and Alice, his dedicated American co-workers who have served with him for 40 years. We saw the smiling faces of the children in their care and began to get a feel for the magnitude of their good work in the face of opposition, government instability and corruption, the deadly influence of voodoo, poverty and danger. Our spirits were lifted. We found the Lord and his Kingdom in the midst of the chaos. 
We attended lively church meetings and a pastoral training gathering of 70+ leaders. We met more of those that Cebien works with and through whose leadership the Gospel of Jesus Christ is being preached. We saw the grounds of the university where a nurse’s training program is housed and where very soon training in careers as an electrician or mechanic will be provided. As mentioned, we traveled four hours to bring lunch to children in the area of Robinette and meet their teachers and the local pastor in that area. The foundation for a large new school has been laid and the building waits for additional funding in order to be completed. The church is growing and the local people are encouraged. Agricultural land has been purchased here to train believers in effective farming techniques. The potential is evident. 
Another day’s journey took us over the top of a mountain from which we could see a large red tin roof, provided by HBI that covered a seemingly massive church building. Though construction is not finished on the inside, over 200 Haitians already meet to worship God there. We sat by the nearby river with local believers and were treated to some fine Haitian coffee, sweet and strong. We found out that this is one of the areas where goats will be provided to Haitian families that will enable them to earn income. Through the Lord’s mercy and your help, we have provided enough funds to give three goats to each of forty families at $200 per family. We look forward to sharing photos of some of those families with you as the goats are provided.
On top of all this, Cebien, who is also a doctor, continues to see upwards of 100 patients a day in his medical clinic, located on the school compound. Patients began lining up as early as 5:30 in the morning to receive his loving care. 
Haiti, with its ten million people, is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. To worsen things, in January 2010, a massive earthquake virtually destroyed the capital of Port-au-Prince, resulting in 300,000 deaths and leaving 1.5 million homeless. In October 2016, devastating Hurricane Matthew slammed into southwestern Haiti, affecting over 2.1 million people. Some of the damage is shown above. 
Cebien Alexis sees the gospel as the only answer to Haiti’s problems. And he knows how best to apply it. Cebien came to the Lord as a boy through a Baptist missionary’s vacation Bible school. When he told his family, his father kicked him out of the house. With help from relatives, he completed high school, and Bible school as well. The Bible school taught not only the fundamentals of preaching, church history, and theology, but also many practical skills. Cebien absorbed it all. Then he enrolled in a correspondence course with a Swiss seminary. Following more study in Switzerland and the Ivory Coast, Cebien received a Doctoral Degree in plant-based medicine in 1979. But most of that he did in his spare time. 
From that small beginning, Cebien’s ministry, EBAC, known in English as Army of Christ, has borne great fruit. Cebien and his co-workers have raised up more than 200 churches in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In the process many witch doctors have come to Christ. An orphanage has been founded which has transformed the lives of hundreds of children. Cebien conducts evangelistic crusades four times a year. When possible, EBAC helps provide buildings for thriving churches. His ministry includes elementary schools and school lunch programs, business start-up projects for church members, and disaster relief. Faith Christian University, started by Cebien, provides training to Christian men and women in agriculture, nursing, environmental protection, and disaster risk assessment. 
In June Christie and I and a small team will be visiting various ministry sites with Cebien in Haiti. It will be a great opportunity to see the work Cebien has been doing. HBI was blessed to send funds to aid in the relief work following Hurricane Matthew. We have sent funds for schools, building projects, pastoral support, economic development and the like. Now we will see first-hand how the funds have been utilized. We plan to bring funds with us that can be applied directly to the most urgent areas of need and opportunity. The more we can raise, the more we can directly support this excellent work. One current project Cebien is working on is the provision of 3 goats to families that lost everything in the hurricane. This will enable them to both earn income and provide sustenance to their families. By growing their flocks, they will be able to give young goats to other families. The cost is $200 per family. 
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The rice harvest is over. This year 5800 pounds of rice was harvested. Six acres of new
OFU’s Women’s Impact Network conducted Bible studies among the Mankidia ladies. It is encouraging to see how gladly the women participated. The Pre-school center is going on well. The number of children is growing steadily. 
Last year 3 medical camps were held and 600 patients were treated and given medicine.
After our recent terrible hurricane God has called me to be an ambassador for afflicted victims in Haiti. Because of the hurricane most of the Haitian people living in the hard hit areas are sleeping under the stars with their children because they have no shelter. They are exposed to serious diseases like pneumonia and malaria. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in terrible conditions.
