Outside the gates of Lazarus Academy, life in Haiti remains incredibly difficult. Families continue to face deep poverty, food insecurity, and ongoing political instability. Yet every morning, parents make tremendous sacrifices to send their children to school because they believe education offers their children the opportunity for a different future.

This fall, Ludwil Joseph will begin her sophomore year at Abilene Christian University, where she is studying engineering. We are inviting the Mission Lazarus family to help provide the remaining $20,000 needed for her sophomore year.

Six-year-old Bervens Exavier is the youngest child in a single parent family living in extreme poverty in Haiti. Since enrolling at Lazarus Academy Haiti in 2023, he has found something every child deserves, a safe place where he is loved, welcomed, and given the opportunity to learn. For Bervens, Lazarus Academy Haiti provides more than a classroom. It is a refuge. It is family. It is hope.

Grace is easiest to admire from a distance. It is harder—and holier—to recognize when it wears dust on its feet and hunger in its stomach.

In Fort-Liberté, Haiti, I saw despair and dignity standing side by side. Poverty that constricts opportunity. Hunger that lingers longer than it should. Uncertainty that presses on families daily. And yet, in the middle of it all, I witnessed something the world often misses: not mere endurance, but life being lived with intention and faith.

When people talk about Haiti, the headlines are heavy - violence, instability, uncertainty. But on the ground, another story is unfolding. One that is quiet, courageous, and deeply hopeful. In just a few weeks, something extraordinary will happen.

As we close out 2025, my heart is full of gratitude for the ways God has worked through Mission Lazarus over nearly 25 years. What began as a simple desire to serve has grown into a ministry where students learn with dignity, families find hope, and communities encounter the Good News of Jesus.

Seven years ago, Shednaylove Honoré entered Lazarus Academy Haiti as a quiet, uncertain child. At just 3 years old, she lost her mother when she passed away suddenly. Without a father in her life, Shednaylove was taken in by her grandmother, who already had a full household to care for.

I believe in the words of Christ, when he said, “I have come so that they may have life, and a life in abundance.” Abundance does not mean wealth, abundance in its most basic sense can mean that I have left-overs from supper tonight. If I truly believe that I am His ambassador of Christ, then as his representative I’m called to ensure that his words are made real to all people. Abundance is an abundance on all levels, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, it’s not partially abundant, it’s not a qualified abundance, it is abundance.

Imagine walking for three years through foreign lands with different languages and different cultures. You’re not part of a reality show nor part of a forced foreign military campaign, but you were indeed forced into this journey, you are traveling against your will, as if you’d fallen in a raging river, a river of poverty, and you’re being swept downstream.

Haiti is many things, but one thing it is NOT, a lost cause. For every American who looks a lot like me and who has a similar ancestry as I do, our ancestors likely played a small role in stacking the deck against this small Caribbean island. But all of our families’ small roles cabined had an enormous impact.