Dispersion of 200 churches in Haiti.

Yonsei Central Baptist Church has “Building 1,000 Churches in the World Project”. 200 churches in Haiti were completed in five years and two months. The church in Haiti started with the construction of the 1st church in December 2013. (city sole area, 11 × 17m, 200 people capacity) It took enormous effort to finish 200th church. (Sodo area, 8 × 13m, 80 people) 141 churches are in the western provinces incruding the capital of Port-au-Prince, 16 in Grandans, 15 in Latibonit, 11 in Sidès, 5 in Sid, 1 in Nip and 1 in Northwestern Province among 200 churches are located in 8 states among 10 states in Haiti. Each church is a modern building, attracting local residents and being used as a school during the day. This help developing the community. Some churches used as school have 30 to 200 students. They teach the Bible and offer the regular school curriculum.

There are news of revival in each Haiti church where construction is completed. The 10th church in Port-au-Prince region (Senior pastor Pededona) has revived from 80 to 120 in just a few months after the completion of the church in July 2014. In October of that year, after the 2nd conference with pastor Seok-Jeon Yoon, his church members increased upto 200. When the church was narrowed, the saints gave an offering and extended the church the double. The 16th church in Canaan 2 area in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, has also extended the church from 100m2 to 200m2. 36th church (Senior pastor Onell) and 42th church (Senior pastor Dojeja) have also been revived that they extended from 100m2 to 150m2. 

It took about four months to build a church in Haiti, and the cost of the building was $ 7,000 per church. The missionary had to go around to find building materials store and bought materials at the cheapest price. He also reduced the cost of purchasing materials by improving existing construction methods. All pastors and saints participated in the process except for the areas requiring advanced technology such as rebar fabrication and concrete work, helping civil engineering work and helping to reduce labor costs and construction costs. When choosing the church to be built, the missionary appointed a pastor who had attended the prayer meeting for 2 or 3 hours every Tuesday for the local pastor. Yonsei Central Church explained the purpose of building 200 churches in Haiti and the need for voluntary participation of selected church members and prayed together for two hours. The missionary entrusted the church which was built with the pastor who had attended the prayer meeting for three months steadily.

There was no easy task, 

but everything was done 

by the Lord

The missionary has recalled the past five years that he had "no easy parts" until he built 200 churches. It was because of difficulty in various aspects such as terrain, building manpower, local political situation. Haiti is made up of rocky mountains, which is hard to find any trees except the north. People were living near the top of the mountains in the far distant province, so when they built the church there, they could not get up to the place by car, so they had to go on a motorcycle and walk again. Security was also not very safe and administrative treatment was disrupted, and the nationality of the locals also added difficulties. In such an environment, the completion of the 200 churches is "the grace of the Lord," the missionary said, commenting on completion.

Reporter Jeong-hyun Oh

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