A Dream in Missouri awakens a Christian school in Haiti

“You are to be a missionary,” Iva Presberry was told in a vision she ignored for decades.

Hope for Caribbean Kids Christian School is nestled in the southern mountains of Haiti where poverty rages like a lion, rain and drought are constant companions and nearly all transportation falls prey to dangerous terrain and unnavigable roadways.

Yet, its founders, Dr. Richard Presberry and his wife, Iva, gladly share statistics that show an average of 325 children – often more – are daily fed, sometimes clothed and always taught the Haitian curriculum along with Christian principles in the Holy Bible. The Presberrys live in Jefferson City, Missouri and describe themselves as “distant founders” who have operated the Christian not-for-profit organization Hope for Caribbean Kids, Inc. for 23 years and soon will celebrate the 20^th anniversary of its incorporation.

“It was strictly being obedient to God is how I see it,” Iva explained during a Zoom interview with WOW when asked how two life-long Missouri residents could take on the arduous challenge of supporting a school in the poorest and most “food insecure” country in the Western Hemisphere.

Richard added, “It’s a perfect example of stepping out on faith or having the willingness. Once you have the willingness to do what God tells you to do then He usually don’t show you two or three steps ahead, maybe one step at a time. Once you take the step, it’s sort of walking by faith. That’s what it’s been like.”

CHRISTIAN SCHOOL FILLS A GREAT NEED

The school is in Marre Blanche, 5,300 feet above sea level and about 92 miles from the country’s capital of Port-au-Prince. The location is a natural barrier from the roaming violent gangs, raging cholera, HIV and AIDS infections, illegal drugs and political turmoil that worsened with the July 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president.

In the mountains, the sprawling school campus consists of a church, Assemblee’ de Dieu de Corail Lamothe Commune Bell-Anse, and a multipurpose building that was built in 2014 for classroom space, a large under-floor cistern and a storage room to stock up and protect supplies. The six-room school building was completed in 2018.

School Director Jean Thony Perime is also pastor of the 600-member church that was established long before the school. The church building is used for additional classrooms and lunch space. Plans for a kitchen and a guest house for visiting missionaries have been tabled for now because of recent hurricane damage and Haiti’s descent into anarchy, the Presberrys said.

“We are not able to keep up with the growth and what’s needed there to provide for the children,” Iva explained, noting that even simple things like additional student desks and file cabinets are a desperate need.

And as far as construction, she added, “If we can get supplies up the mountain, there would be workers to build the kitchen and dining room. We are still waiting on that kitchen to be built.”

The 325 students are educated by Perime and 10 Haitian teachers who follow the curriculum set by the Haitian Department of Education. The staff also consists of 12 manual workers who prepare food, gather wood for outdoor cooking and perform a variety of other essential tasks. In addition, there is one young man who works as a construction trainee. Once a week, the school has chapel where everyone comes together for a worship service.

“So, we are not having to teach the children. We’ve never learned the language. We always use translators,” Iva said. “I was thinking ‘Oh isn’t that terrible’ for a while but then I got to thinking ‘if I thought I knew the language I would never really understand and grasp the culture’ because I’ve always had to have a Haitian there with me to do the communication, to help me understand what is being said to me and then to weigh that with what we are able to do  and then to go back and forth with the wisdom of how we can approach them in their culture and based upon their culture.”

While the school’s isolation is a blessing, there are drawbacks. The mountain’s rugged terrain wreaks havoc on all transportation. A motorcycle purchased in 2012 for the director was quickly demolished. Trucks rented for delivery of food and supplies are left in such poor condition the ministry is saddled with repair bills in the thousands.

The feet have been the most reliable source of transportation for the mountain dwellers. The school director and others usually walk 30 miles in four to five hours to catch public transportation into Jacmel, a larger city, to do banking and to make purchases. Rarely can they afford to pay the $20 to $30 for a motorcycle taxi. Sometimes on this journey, they encounter firsthand the pandemonium cited in news reports.

Since December 2019, the Presberrys also have been supporting an orphanage in Port-au-Prince owned and directed by Pastor Calixte Aladin. After the August 2021 earthquake, the organization raised funds to build a new building but the violence in Haiti stopped the construction.

“Hope for Caribbean Kids, that ministry is God’s ministry,” Pastor Wisny Exima said in a WhatsApp phone conversation with WOW. Exima acts as Hope’s facilitator or site manager although he also operates his own school of about 300 students in the northern part of the mountain.

“That school is the only school that they have” and the children in the area never had an opportunity for education “until they have that school there,” Exima said, adding that Hope pays for medical treatment when children “can’t get good care in the mountain” and a feeding program.

“Usually, the children will come to school without eating,” he said. “This ministry is feeding a lot of children in the school. That is a big impact that helps the children to learn well in the school and make good grades. So that ministry makes a lot of impact in the community.”

ORGANIZATION CAUTIOUSLY PREPARES FOR THE FUTURE

The crisis in Haiti is known worldwide. After the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry took the helm in July 2021 and the people are not pleased. Hospitals, schools, food outlets, banks and water supplies are difficult to reach. The United Nations, United States, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other groups are stymied about ways to help.

“I know the United States is helping a lot in the country,” said Exima, officially described as the representative in Haiti for Hope for Caribbean Kids, Inc.

However, Exima explained that U.S. dollars tend to fall in the wrong hands and seldom benefit the truly needy in Haiti.

“So roughly, we need to go directly to the Christian leaders; the ones who have heart,” he concluded. “If we do not touch the Christian leaders, those who are in the field, those who know where the needs are,” conditions will not improve.

The Presberrys are able to raise money for the school through a variety of campaigns that include local, state, and national efforts. In addition, Hope for Caribbean Kids sponsors fundraising dinners in Jefferson City, and offer child and general sponsorships as well as ministry partnerships. Donations are heartily welcomed because the laundry list of needs is extensive.

The Presberrys are at a crossroad too as they look to the future. Both are in their early 70s and have begun to search for major donors who would help support young fulltime leaders of their organization.

When asked if they ever thought of giving up the work, especially now, Richard responded contemplatively.

“I have probably been at that point, I don’t think Iva has, from time to time,” he said. “When it’s like no matter what you do, it doesn’t seem like things are getting better. But I know we serve a mighty God. And I know that as bad as Haiti seems that He can do things no matter how far they are or how impossible. I know that he is all powerful. So that is why we stuck with it.

He continued, “It’s like before we didn’t know what was going to happen. But by faith, we just kept walking and things always turned out good, positive, and God blessed it. If you look at it rationally, yeah, it seems an impossible task, but God does the impossible all the time.”

A YOUNG HAYTI WOMAN IS CALLED TO HAITI

Iva’s concern for Haiti started in 1971 with a vision shortly after she married Richard while they both were completing their four years at Lincoln University in Jefferson City. The couple are natives of Southeast Missouri; Iva grew up in Hayti and Richard lived about five miles away in Caruthersville, both part of what is known as the bootheel of the state.

“With this vision that came to me the first year Richard and I were married was nothing that I was looking for, was planning, or suspecting,” Iva explained. “It came completely unexpected in the middle of the night, and it really frightened me. Oh, my goodness, it was so scary.”

In the night vision, Iva said she saw a person who stood at the foot of their bed and said, “You are to be a missionary.”

“What does this mean?” Iva said was her initial response. “I didn’t even hardly know what a missionary was. I didn’t even know what missionaries did. So, for this image to tell me that I ‘was to be a missionary,’ I was like ‘WHAT’S THAT!’”

The Presberrys eventually talked to the director at the Baptist Student Center on Lincoln’s campus and was assured, “don’t worry about it. All Christians are called to be missionaries.”

“So, I tried not to worry about it,” Iva said, noting they both finished college and moved to St. Louis where they enjoyed their careers while raising a family and faithfully serving at Antioch Baptist Church. They completed advanced degrees in education and administration.

“But it never left me,” she said. “It never left me … It was always present at work, in my car. If I were awake, there was always that image. I couldn’t look up and see it, but I was aware that it was there. It was a reminder that ‘you are called to be a missionary.’”

Finally, in 1994, after raising their son and daughter, Iva “was willing to summit my life” to the calling that came in 1971.

A “two-part” dream in 1995 not only defined the focus of the ministry but described the location. In the first part, Iva said, “The place was rural, with brown vegetation and dark-skinned people sitting on top of a short structure with their legs hanging over the side.” She prayed, “Oh Lord, show me what this place is. Please show me what this place is.”

When she went back to sleep, the exact scene reappeared, she said. Only this time written across the sky in wavy heat-ray style letters was the name HAITI. As with the first dream, someone shook her awake. She prayed: “Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!”

The same year of Iva’s vision, miraculously the Marre Blanche school started. In 1999, the school temporarily closed. During that year, the Presberrys took their first trip to Haiti, serving in a short-term mission trip with The New Missions ministry. Hope for Caribbean Kids also was established that year.

The New Missions ministry has been serving in Haiti since 1983, growing from 12 to more than 10,000 students. The Presberrys worked with them about 10 years, observing ways to conduct ministry and learning other strategies needed to work with the Haitians. Typically, the Presberrys worked during the year to raise money for planned projects in different parts of the country and then traveled to Haiti during the summer months to help with implementation. For example, they purchased water tanks, a purification system and built two houses.

Through door-to-door village evangelism with various teams, they helped lead a number of people to Christ. They became sponsors of two Haitian boys and signed up sponsors for more than 100 children over the course of their 10-year affiliation with New Missions.

Throughout these years, Iva continued to inquire about the places in her dream.

In 2002, the Marre Blanche school started again. Iva retired to devote her life to the ministry. One year later, on Jan. 7, 2003, Hope for Caribbean Kids was incorporated. Nearly a month later, the Presberrys were licensed as ministers/missionaries. And about a year after that, on March 11, 2004, the group became a 501©3 not-for-profit organization.

During these years of developing both the organization and strengthening their own spiritual walk, the Presberrys left their comfort zone in the Baptist denomination and joined the First Assembly of God in February 2005.

Iva vividly remembers that on Jan. 11, 2010, their team worked tirelessly on the next Haitian project, outlining times, dates, and locations.

“The next day was the earthquake of 2010,” said Iva, almost certain “our ministry had ended” because New Missions needed health care and construction workers, not missionaries and evangelists.

The Presberrys resorted to peripheral work, contributing money to other missionaries journeying to Haiti and organizations working to feed residents.

FINDING THE RIGHT LOCATION

Iva traveled to Port-au-Prince in 2010 without her husband and worked with Grace Evangelistic Ministry of Warrenburg, Missouri to help survivors of the earthquake. She met Pastor Wisny Exima who eventually became the representative in Haiti for Hope for Caribbean Kids, Inc. Even today he serves as the group’s translator, trip planner, and oversight coordinator.

During a 2011 trip, the Presberrys took the first journey up the mountain to the Baie d’Orange area and visited the Church of God. Their main guide, Jean Thony Perime, would eventually become the pastor of Assemblee’ de Dieu de Corail Lamothe Commune Bell-Anse, an Assembly of God congregation that perfectly aligned with the denomination the Lord led the Presberrys to join in 2005, First Assembly of God in Jefferson City.

Finally, near the end of a 2012 trip to Haiti further up the southern mountain, the Presberrys stumbled upon the place of Iva’s dream. Children were sitting on a crypt that held the bodies of a senior pastor and an assistant pastor. Thony was now pastor.

“This is it,” she said, breathlessly recounting the moment. “It was my dream… then we knew that’s where we would serve our time. We would be serving the people on that mountain as hard as it is to get to them.”

She added, “God has a sense of humor – putting them on a mountain, making us come back every year and be able to serve from a distance. That’s how it was in the dream. I never saw myself. I knew I was there. So, I said ‘I was serving from a distance.’ Because I was serving from a distance, I think we were able to do more, as far as economically.”

Written by TMCH