Thursday, September 16, 2010

Tweets Meet the Miriam Center



Paster Shaun was in Haiti at the Mission while we were there. Check out the original post about this here.

Tweets Meet the Miriam Center

Wednesday, September 15, 2010 — Several years ago, a man named Pastor Andy worked as a preacher for Northwest Haiti Christian Mission in Saint-Louis du Nord, a small city on Haiti’s northern coast. His wife, Emanulla, worked as a nurse in the mission’s birthing center. When it came time for Emanulla to give birth to their first son, Ralph, the baby was born with his umbilical cord around his neck. In desperation, the nurses tried to deliver the boy and save his life. It took CPR to revive him, but in many ways it was too late. Having been starved of oxygen, Ralph suffered permanent brain damage.

Andy and Emanulla did their best to take care of baby Ralph as their faith was put on display before a watching community. Many other families in Haiti would have let Ralph starve, washing their hands of a disabled child. In Haiti there is no place to go, no help for “the least of these” in a country that is “the least of these.” But despite the best efforts of his parents, baby Ralph soon died.

Mike and Leah Warner, an American couple, were traveling on a short-term missions trip to Haiti when they heard Ralph’s story. Leah’s eyes filled with tears as she recalled her own daughter, Miriam. Leah had been pregnant with Miriam when she found out the baby was not forming correctly. The doctors suggested an abortion, and Leah refused, trusting that God was in control. When Miriam was born, the baby girl lived only a few hours. Moved by the two tragic deaths, NWHCM and the Warners founded in 2001 what would become the Miriam Center. It was originally dubbed Heaven’s Waiting Room, a place where severely disabled children could wait in comfort for their turn to enter Heaven.

To our great delight today, however, most children at the center are growing and thriving. Many of them may well live long lives under the mission’s care. There are currently 31 children in the program and some of these children came to us after the earthquake after being orphaned in Port-au-Prince. The hope is to grow the program by launching a new Bonneau Miriam Center Campus, which will provide for over 100 special-needs children in a one-of-a-kind home and therapy facility.

In an effort to see the new Miriam Center grow and provide for as many special-needs children as possible, Northwest Haiti Christian Mission reached out to build partnerships with the Christian charities Orphan’s Promise, Kimmy’s House, and A Home in Haiti, among others. Each stepped up to the plate to raise funds to help Northwest move forward with this amazing opportunity.

Sometimes, a fundraiser is so unique that it begins to take on a life of its own. TwitChange, an initiative of A Home in Haiti, is one such fundraiser. It began when Shaun King, pastor at Courageous Church in Atlanta and the man behind A Home in Haiti, had an idea. What if he could utilize Twitter to raise money to help people in Haiti? That idea grew into TwitChange, a celebrity tweet auction that launched today.

In TwitChange, bidders compete for the chance to have any of over 150 celebrities follow them, retweet them, or mention them on Twitter (some lucky winners will even get all three).

All proceeds go to A Home in Haiti to help Northwest Haiti Christian Mission build a new Miriam Center in Bonneau, Haiti.

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