meet Claudin!

Repost from Stacey's blog. 
27 June 2014

Confession. Apology. Clean Slate.

You are missing out.

And it is my fault.

I was sharing with you student testimonies every Tuesday that are so powerful and so personal and so insightful and inspiring!  We found fantastic people ready to partner with the first few without any problems, but as time went on, I heard nothing from anyone several students in a row.  I was so very busy with the end of the year, interest seemed to be waning, so I just stopped.  Discouraged.  

Quite unfaithfully, I discourage easily.

And this isn't a post to tell you that suddenly, we heard from 90 people and now all the students are covered.  

Nope.  

But as I was reading through more testimonies this afternoon, singling out a good one to share this Sunday at church, I was floored and challenged and blessed, once again, by the stories of our students.  Of our Brothers and Sisters.  

Louis, who enrolled himself in first grade at NINETEEN.  Jean, who seemed to be one in a hopeless million, but whom God choose.  Moliere, who was destined to be a witchdoctor and who is now attending seminary on behalf of the small group who has become his family.  Jorgia, who says Emmaus  has become the family who abandoned her.

God's hand is MIGHTY in their stories, His faithfulness FAITHFUL, His call and heart LOUD.  

And because we weren't seeing the "results" it felt like we really needed  to see, I just gave up.

How sad.  I am sorry.

I'm picking it right back up, even thought it's not Tuesday, NOT because we have to find friends and family for these men and women to help pay to feed and care for and train them--though we do.

I'm sharing their stories because they are HIS stories of HIS hand and He is worthy of praise for them.  The stories of God at work in peoples lives MUST be shared, not for a result, but for Him.

You can always check the page at the top, "Meet First Year!" to read about lots of students in our first year class.  If you are ever passionate to partner one of them, just email meand I'll get you going!  

But even if you're not, read on, and be touched by His hand in the life of Louis.

Student: Louis Claudin

Family: married, baby on the way

Ministry Focus: mountain ministry

Testimony Highlights:

I was born in St. Michel into a Catholic family who was very very poor.  They explained to me when I was still very small how I had been born into misery.  I was born after four daughters, and my family had always hoped for a boy so that they would have a child who could provide for them.

In my whole family, everyone had girls and girls and girls, so while my mom and dad were very happy to have a son, my extended family became jealous.

Many people in the family were cursing me and spending time at the voodoo temple, trying to lift the curses in their own families.

After weeks of this, I finally died, or that is what my family told me.  All night, they screamed and cried for me, but in the morning, they ran and got my mother, and told her, “He is playing!  He isn’t dead anymore!  Come see!”

So I was alive again, they said, and even when I was little, they always told me about this.  They always had me in the Haitian Catholic Church, and finally I asked my mom when I was small, “How did I live when I was dead?  Was it God?”

“Yes,” she told me, “But we've never seen anything like that, so I guess it was THE God.”

“Then, I guess I can’t stay in the Haitian Catholic Church anymore, because there are many gods there and it seems that there is only one true.”

I left the Catholic church, and all of my sisters and my brother, born after me, all thought my reasoning was very sound, and left the Haitian Catholic church together…everyone but my mom.

I was so used to being in church, that when we left the Catholic Church we all started going to the community Gospel church. The first time I heard the true Gospel, I wanted it, and went to the front, asked them to pray for me, and became a Christian. 

When I led the family away from our tradition, my parents put me out, and I moved to Port-au-Prince to live with my uncle, who was a Christian pastor there. 

I didn’t like life in Port-au-Prince.  Life was very harsh and ugly there, and I came back to Fort-St. Michel and moved in with another cousin who lived in Cap-Haitian, and found a little work. 

I’ve always been a simple person.  What I find to do, I do. 

I had never been to school.  Ever.  Never been sent, never had a chance.

So, when I was 19, and I found this small job to clean a school, I took every penny I made and sent myself to school at the same place. 

At nineteen, I started first grade. 

I put myself through a few years of school, and then the school where I worked went under, and I lost my job.  There was a missionary in Cap-Haitian at the time, Vanessa, and when she saw I lost my job but wanted to keep getting my education, she helped me pay my tuition so that I could continue. 

Everytime things got incredibly difficult for me, all my friends told me to leave church, to leave God.  But I couldn’t.  He had given me my life, and even if I didn’t have 5 pennies to ride to church, I would walk an hour to be there.  I started teaching a Sunday school group in my church, and was finally baptized.  

I finally finished my schooling in 2011. 

I asked God what I should do, and in a vision that night a group of people came to me and said, “You work.  God gave you back your life for a reason.  Go find those people and tell them.”

I came and shared that with my pastor, and he started praying with me for my future.

In September 2013 I got married, and that was the same month I started in the Seminary.  There was a group people who knew Vanessa, and when Cholera passed over Haiti, I was helping them, and they were helping people in Haiti with Ambassador Medical.

When I felt called to Seminary, it was them who helped me find Emmaus and helped me come to the Seminary.

I would really like to work in the mountains.  I have always been a timid and gentle spirited person, and the city is hard for me.  I have a big heart for people living simpler lives in the mountains, to share the Gospel with them. 

There have been many challenges I my life.  The little bit that I have found has been stolen.  The difficulties in my life are huge.  But God helps me to forget these things and stay focused on Him and on studying His Word.  My wife and I live in Cap-Haitian. 

My wife is five months pregnant, and we are in the church near our house, working there with Pastor St-Il Joseph.

Pray for my family.  Pray for my family who still does not know Jesus.  Pray for God to continue to make ways for me to provide for my wife and to help with my family.  My mom is still deeply engrained in the Haitian Catholic Church, and I keep sharing. 

Join LOUIS now

(with 365693 LOUIS as your project)