In
January of 2010 Source of Life Ministries’ Safe Haven Children’s Home
located in Port au Prince Haiti lost its facilities to the 7.0
magnitude earthquake that struck the city. Safe Haven cares for
abandoned and orphaned children in the most impoverished nation in the
western hemisphere. In November of 2010 an acre tract of land
was
purchased in Gressier approx. 15 miles south west of Port au Prince
where a new facility for the children is planned.
Recently,
in an effort to assist Source of Life Ministries’ goal of raising
$70,000.00 for its new children’s safe home, Battery Warehouse in
Lancaster, PA has generously offered to match all financial gifts given
to the project between July 1st and August 19th up to a total of
$10,000.00.
Anyone
interested in making a financial gift for this much needed children’s
program and having their gift matched can make their tax deductible
contributions to Source of Life Ministries/TSM P O Box 96
Hanover, PA 17331 (be sure to mark your check Safe Haven Building
Project). Anyone wishing to make a donation by credit card can do so by
visiting our website www.source-of-life-ministries.org
and go to our
donate page.
Praise
the Lord! After 3 long months, we finally received the last
government signature, approving our purchase of the land in
Gressier. We were notified last Friday, that we could proceed
with the transfer. We
also received plans from our building designer last Wednesday and are
ready to proceed with the first phase of the construction. I
was
in Haiti from October 21-26 to oversee the surveying of our land and to
speak to a builder, to schedule the start date for
construction.
Please continue praying.
Thank you so much for
your support. We never could have done it without
you. I've
attached several drawings of the new facility and a photo of the land
we are buying. The photo of the land actually covers about 7
acres. We are purchasing 1.3 acres in the middle of the
photo,
alongside of the stream.
We've
just returned from a very productive trip to Haiti. As I
mentioned in my previous update, the government of Haiti has authorized
our purchase of the land in Gressier for our new Safe Home.
Part
of our agenda for this trip was to determine whether we would be able
to purchase the needed materials in Haiti to construct our new facility
to US building standards. As you are likely aware shipping
anything from the US to Haiti is a difficult undertaking often costing
thousands of dollars. We were pleased to find that we can
purchase everything that we will need in Haiti. We even found
a
recently opened Home Depot in Port au Prince. It was small
compared to the US version. We also completed the survey of our
property, found a supplier for machine formed concrete blocks (the
traditional Haitian variety of concrete block is made by hand in block
molds then air dried), and are now in the process of selecting a
builder to do the actual construction.
We
have half of the funds needed to complete the project and plan to
begin construction as soon as the builder is selected. We are
praying for an additional $20,000 to complete the home so we can move
the children out of Port au Prince. Would you please consider
contributing to either the Safe Home construction project OR becoming a
monthly supporter of the Children's Safe Home. It costs
$2100.00
per month to provide food, housing, and school tuition for our 12
children and to pay our staff of 4.
I'll continue to keep you updated on the progress of the construction.
Thank you for your prayers and support.
Jacques Merine
To
the article in the "Gettysburg Times" from Monday, November 8th, 2010 (PDF-file)
please
click HERE
