My Pilgrimage to Missions: Part Four
This is article four of a series on the missions heart of the late J. Herbert Walker, Jr., former director of Church of God World Missions.
We arrived with only three suitcases. We were hungry, not having eaten since the day before, and we were in a country where neither of us knew the language. Fortunately, we did find a taxi driver at the airport who said he knew where the Kluzits, Church of God missionaries, lived. Getting into his car, we proceeded through the capital of Port-au-Prince and up the mountain to a little village called Petionville.
True to his promise, the driver did take us to the house where the Kluzits had lived. We tried to make the cook and the yard boy understand that we were hungry. They understood us, but they could not get us to understand that they needed money to buy some food at the market. The cook then ran two blocks to the home of an Assembly of God missionary. There she aptly expressed our situation when she blurted out, “The new missionaries have come, and they don’t know anything.”
Haiti was a big assignment, and God did help us to learn. We immediately began French lessons, and in February I conducted a workers’ conference. The following summer I preached my first sermon in French. When we arrived in Haiti, the Church of God there consisted of 106 churches with 4,300 members, an orphanage with 32 children and 25 grammar schools.
Two-thirds of the churches could be reached only by horseback. We drove the four-wheel jeep as far as possible and then took horses back up into the mountains to the churches. Air mattresses on church benches were often our beds. With Lucille as my constant companion we had a wonderful five-year honeymoon. Our two daughters, Dianne and Crystal, were both born in Haiti.
J. Herbert Walker, Jr.
Taken from The Pentecostal Minister written in 1987.
For more articles like this visit the new World Missions Centennial web site, www.wmcentennial.org.
© 2009 Church of God World Missions
