A missionary to one of the poorest countries in the world says he has found that poverty and persecution increase people's hunger for the gospel of Jesus Christ. David Heady, who more than 20 years ago began work as a missionary to Haiti, now serves that needy nation through a Tupelo, Mississippi-based ministry called Global Outreach International.
Heady oversees a conference center, a burn care center, and other ministries on a 66-acre headquarters site near the capital of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He says the rampant poverty and a culture steeped in voodoo offer a Christian missionary many challenges and opportunities for ministry.
"Nobody in America can ever imagine the poverty that's in Haiti," the Global Outreach missionary observes. "It's literally a bottomless pit of no hope," he says, "and I have been proclaiming that message of 'no hope apart from Jesus Christ' for 23 years."
In late April of 2003, Haiti's President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former Catholic priest, declared voodoo an officially recognized religion, giving it status equal with Christianity. According to a Compass news report, some Haitians, particularly evangelical Christians, were concerned that official recognition of voodoo would threaten their freedom of worship and even their personal safety, and that rising tensions between the competing beliefs would result in a showdown between voodoo and Christianity.
In August 1998, just such a showdown occurred between Christian missionaries and voodoo leaders over an annual open-air evangelistic crusade in Cap-Haitien, a self-proclaimed "voodoo capital of the world." That year, when local officials learned of plans to hold the Christian meeting, they ordered organizers to cancel the event. The missionaries' lives were even threatened if they proceeded with the crusade. However, the Christians proceeded to hold the event and the main organizer and two associate pastors were arrested by the local authorities.
Such government favoritism toward voodoo and incidents of intimidation by voodoo leaders and supporters are increasingly common challenges faced by believers in Haiti. The nation has suffered under the bondage of that folk religion for more than 200 years, and the ensuing economic and spiritual poverty have, along with prolonged political instability, continued to plague the people of Haiti and increased their suffering.
In a place where human despair can run so deep, Heady notes, people's response to the gospel can be dramatic. "I don't believe I have ever preached a message on the atoning blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that there wasn't an open manifestation in the service -- wailing, screaming, contortions, beating their head against the wall," he says. "I find that the greater the persecution, the greater the response."
The United Nations has classified Haiti as a Fifth World nation. Although the majority of Haitians practice the State religion, Roman Catholicism, many Haitians practice voodoo, either exclusively or alongside their Catholic observances. An estimated 20 percent of the population of Haiti is Protestant.
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