(map is from www.freeworldmaps.net)
In the spotlight of the Media, the far west end of Haiti has a coastal city named Jeremie. Scattered in the vicinity of this town we have a handful of congregations. There are roughly 200 members in that immediate area. This portion of our church has been through hurricanes and tragedy before and deserves our attention in their present plight. Around 1993, there was a ferry accident that took the lives of 29 of our church people. This undoubtedly affected those congregations to this day. The ferry was carrying staff and youth going to a conference; a lot of leadership and future were tragically lost. Upwards of 1,700 lives also perished on that same ferry and affected many in the community at large. Today we hear about a great calamity striking the West End in the form of Hurricane Matthew 2016. We pray that God would uphold them in this new test..In the middle of the peninsula there are another 200 members in the hard to reach area of Terrre Rouge. That would also include Jacmel and Villa. These congregations take a little more effort to visit so they would have a tendency to a little more isolated from the mainstream flow of visitors and church life in the central part of the country around Port. The peninsula is a rugged mountain range that jets out towards Jamaica. Port-au-Prince is in the middle of the country over on the top side of the range. So transportation is a time consuming effort in good times, not to imagine now. You have to cross the range come down to the southern coast and travel around to reach Jeremie. It is about just as convenient to take a ferry between Port and Jeremie along the north end of the peninsula.
The West End is one of the greenest areas of Haiti; less populated and a little more isolated from the capital and the rest of Haiti. So in the coming months it may be a challenge to open back up this region. May we pray for those people, because we know they were greatly affected by this hurricane.
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