For our last story, we travel with Tony and Edna Jones, who are mission workers in the mountain region of Haiti, associated with MSC Canada. Tony shares this beautiful story of how God pursues us with His love and grace throughout our lives.
It’s never too late to witness to someone.
One Saturday during the summer of 2014, I was sitting on my front porch when I was approached by two men from the mountains. Because we are the only ministry in our area working in the mountains the mountain people always come to me for help.
The two men asked if I would come see this elderly woman that was not feeling well. I got on my motorcycle and went with them to see her. The house was a typical mountain shanty and, when I went inside, I could not believe my eyes – there, laying on the ground, was Joseph Jean Gina Louise. She had been lying on a mat on the ground for one and a half years and had never left the house during that whole time. She was very old and frail and instantly our Lord put on my heart to want to help this dear soul.
On Monday I went back to her place with a new bed and got her off the ground, I then brought up a team of American doctors who were in our town on a medical mission trip. They checked her over and thought that she may be in the early stages of pneumonia. If so, in her condition, she would die.
It’s never too late to witness to someone.
Joseph Jean could see, hear and talk so we started to witness to her about Christ, I took her hand and said in Creole that ‘Jesus loves her’ but she pulled her hand away from me. I then found out from the local village people that she was a voodoo practitioner all her life and therefore did not believe in God.
The next day I took her the last ‘Proclaimer’ I had ( A recording of the New Testament in her own Creole language), placed it beside her head and played it to her. As the Scriptures are read, they are combined with soft music in the background and she really liked it. That Thursday, the two mountain people were back at my house telling me that Joseph Jean was having trouble breathing, I went to the doctors and they said there was nothing they could do.
I jumped on my motorcycle and went to see her immediately. As I approached the house, I could hear humming and I thought it was a villager in the room with Joseph Jean.
When I stepped into the room, I felt this peace I had never felt before during my previous visits there. The mountain people told me they had noticed something different with Joseph Jean’s demeanour. They said she had been singing to herself, which she had never done during the one and a half years spent in that house. When I approached her, there was a glow about her, her face just shone when I looked at her. This time, when I took her hand and looked down on her, she looked up at me and said in Creole ‘Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me’. I couldn’t believe what I heard and I started to cry; my tears were running down my arm onto hers as I held her hand. She was so happy!
Joseph Jean Gina Louise died that night and was buried that Saturday. After her funeral I found out that Joseph Jean Gina Louise was over 100. God loved her so much that he pursued her for so many years and sent me up there the last week of her earthly life. Now she is forever with our Saviour.
Pray for Haiti:
- that people, like Joseph Jean, trapped by witchcraft and voodoo would be freed by the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
- that the country would be released from extreme poverty, corruption and violence
- that believers would reach out to the lost and broken with the gospel.
