Retired Church of God missionary Dr. James Beaty has presented a burden of his heart to establish a library fund for the earthquake ravaged country of Haiti.
Dr. Beaty tells his story: “The Lord recently laid on my heart a new project called the Haiti Library Fund. The Church of God World Missions Board asked me to go to Haiti in 1946. I had just finished college and one year of my seminary education; and I was twenty-one. I was there one year. Then I returned to finish seminary at Vanderbilt, got married, and was sent to the Dominican Republic, where I served from 1949 to 1952, when the World Missions Board asked me to return to Haiti to start a Bible School. In 1952 we moved to Haiti.
Soon I located property for the school and the Board bought it. Brother Wayne Heil was sent as overseer to help me build the buildings for the school, including three missionary residences. This was completed in 1956 and the school opened that fall.
In the middle of the 1990s two things happened that greatly affected the school. First, there was a fire that destroyed the office-library wing of the seminary, along with the small collection of about 3,000 volumes. Second, the Department of Religion (of the government of Haiti) issued a decree to govern all schools run by the Protestant churches. This decree specified that 80 percent of the teachers who taught in what we would call a Bible college that gave what we would call a bachelors degree, would have to have a Master’s degree in religious studies. Although our teachers were well educated in other areas, no one had a Master’s degree in theology. So our Theological Seminary in Cleveland made arrangements for a group of nineteen, including all their teachers and several prospective teachers. They began in 1998 and finished in 2001.
The following year they processed all the paperwork with the government and were approved as a seminary operating at a Bible College level. They are now in the process of beginning a Master’s level program and need to improve their library, both by expanding it—making a new addition—and by greatly increasing their holding in French theological books.
There is a great need for buying books in French for our seminary in Haiti. Most of such books will have to be bought in Europe (France, Switzerland and Belgium) although some may be found in Canada and the USA. The money in Europe is the Euro, which is worth about $1.33. Then there is shipping. For example, the latest (Protestant) Introduction to the Old Testament is selling for $102.50 and that does not including shipping. We will not use it as a text, but it should be in the library.
The Haiti Library Fund Project Number 750-0070 has been set up with Church of God World Missions. This is an appeal, not for money, but for prayer. Prayer for this project, prayer for the seminary, and prayer for the work of the Church of God in Haiti, as well as prayer for Haiti as a country.”
© 2012 Church of God World Missions