Amid Turmoil, Haiti Finds Hope
By Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra • Esaïe Etienne, TGC.
Last week, 400 police officers from Kenya landed in Haiti, the first move in a United Nations–backed operation to try to stabilize the country. Over the last 18 months, Haitian gangs have kidnapped hundreds, killed thousands, and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.
In February, while then prime minister Ariel Henry was out of the country asking the Kenyans for international help, gangs stormed Haiti’s two largest prisons and released more than 4,000 inmates. They attacked the international airport in Port-au-Prince, grounding flights for nearly three months. And they looted the port, effectively blocking the capital from its last source of international aid.
The U.S. began airlifting Americans out of the country.
“Most missionaries left then,” said Mission to the World missionary Esaïe Etienne. A Haitian himself, he moved to the U.S. with his family in 1991. Two years later, he met a Haitian pastor planting a Presbyterian Church in America congregation.
“That’s how I learned my Westminster Confession of Faith,” he said. After graduating from Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, he began ministering to Haitians in Florida, then moved back to Haiti. He and his wife now live in the Dominican Republic and make regular visits back to their homeland.
“I’m not sure how many missionaries are left now,” he said. Two who opted to stay were shot by gangs last month.
“Especially since February, things have escalated to a different level,” Etienne said.
The Gospel Coalition asked him why Haiti is struggling, how its churches are doing, and how he prays for his country these days.
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