Every day we learn something new and I could see it again a few weeks ago. I have had the privilege of having traveled all over the world in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Orient. I have seen the need of the brothers in many of these places but I never expected to surprise me as much as in my last trip to Haiti last August.

I have seen a lot of poverty in my life, starting from the same Africa and I thought that I had already seen everything, but I was wrong with what I found on my last trip to Haiti. I went to Port-au-Prince and had the opportunity to give a seminar for pastors of different denominations. Just arriving, I could attest what I had heard and I think they fell short.

Amazing! As the lack of God in the towns produces lack of dignity. See people dying in the street like human trash but they are true treasures in the eyes of God. I saw a hopeless people coexisting with death, filth, and hunger, and I thought, How will stand be the heart of God?

Corruption of the human heart makes corruption at the social level go unnoticed. Because it is not for lack of humanitarian aid, since they are trillions of dollars those that were sent after the earthquake and nothing or almost nothing of this arrived in evident form to the town.

Meanwhile, we as a church walk without giving a concrete answer. On this trip I came with different eyes, wanting to create effective programs, different, transformers. I came with the desire to gather donors to bring Bibles and wanting to train the people because the Word of God is the only thing that can change this situation. There is no money or anything in this world that can change the heart of man except God. On the contrary, the thing of this world makes it more self-absorbed, selfish and proud.

Different to those who believe in God, because they find a hope, a better future, promised in the word. This makes the real difference for my brothers and for the country itself. That is what I want, that in the future we can flood Haiti with a new modern Creole translation, that is easy to read. In addition to many things there is illiteracy and many of our brothers converted and those who do not, do not know how to read. We can not reach you with an old version in French that you know is not the language of your heart. The language of the street is not the koiné that Jesus Christ spoke. When God pleases, he speaks to us the language of our heart, becoming close as he did incarnating in Jesus Christ.

I dream of a Bible for each of the Haitians. Not only in each of their homes, but also they can carry a personal Bible in their backpacks. May their bags have the word of God and be transformed by it. As happened with the reform. They asked Martin Luther what he had observed after the reform and replied that «I saw many changes, I even saw people dress better.»

I think the word change our whole life. This is the engine of my passion and the happiness of working as president of BIBLICA, that is to say the International Bible Society for Latin America. If I can from this place help transform Haiti, it will be something that will fill my heart but the most important thing is that it will fill the heart of God.

Esteban R. Fernández
President of Biblica Latin America and the ministry of training leaders «Our Strength»

Please write to esteban.fernandez@biblica.com. It will be nice to meet you.

This article appeared for the first time in Pastor Stephen’s blog. Feel free to spread it by citing the source. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.