I am a country boy at heart, the very personification of the saying, “You can take a boy out of the country, but not the country out of the boy.” It was exciting to leave Haiti while still a teenager to attend college and then seminary in the United States. But through it all, the burning desire to return to my native home never faded.

I was born and raised in a small rural town in central Haiti, the fifth child (second son) of a family of seven girls and five boys. It can only be the result of divine grace that all twelve children of a poor Baptist minister were able to get a quality classical education at a time when illiteracy was at 80% in Haiti, and that all of them could travel abroad to study and succeed. I know there is no merit in me to deserve the blessings I've received from God's hand. Therefore, I've attributed it to inherited righteousness; as David said, “I was young, I've become old. I've never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.”

At Home with the Poor has been many years in the making. It is my hope that through its pages you will get to know us better and share our triumphs and struggles. You will meet my wife, Joy, an Oregonian and George Fox University graduate whom I met while we both served at Voice of Calvary Ministries in Jackson, Mississippi. Our three sons—Lémec, Jacques, Josiah—were born and raised right here in this small rural town in southern Haiti where we've been ministering for the past 20 years. You will also meet some of our coworkers in Fond-des-Blancs who are just as responsible for the impact of the Haiti Christian Development Fund on this region of Haiti.

I hope At Home with the Poor will inspire you as much as it has encouraged us as we set out to communicate to you the amazing power of God's grace as manifested in the lives of the people he loves most—the poor.

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