This morning was a “miracle day,” as the Haiti Air Ambulance, operated by David Ellis, landed their helicopter on our Love A Child School property with our four Haitian children inside… Lovely, Roselyne, Fabienne, and Pistache. As the doors swung open, our entire orphanage and all our workers let out praises and screams of joy and “lots of tears!”

“Free at Last” after two weeks of being kidnapped, separated, and “scared to death!” Everyone was crying, praising God, and trying to get through the crowd of kids to get a hug! It was the best thing that has happened to us since we moved to Haiti in 1991.

It was two weeks ago that our white pick-up truck and one other Love A Child truck left in the afternoon to take four of our older children back to college in Port-au-Prince and to take 14 others home, including a doctor from the Kris Pour Tous Clinic. Unfortunately, one of the two gangs on the main road held up our two vehicles and kidnapped our four children and 14 other workers who had climbed onto our trucks. Our Haitian Director, Nelio, began negotiating with the gang to free our children and workers.

Each day was so stressful because we would hear that “they were going to release them,” and then that would fall through. They were allowed a phone call to someone, and one of our workers from our Jesus Healing Center was allowed to talk to a relative. One of our female workers, Sophonie-Bien, who works at our lab in our Jesus Healing Center, had been “extremely distraught.” She told her husband she was going to die. (We believe she may have had health problems, also.) But on Tuesday, she gave up and died. It was crushing to everyone who knew and loved her…

When the children and workers were let go, our people took them to our Petionville Haiti Office. We did not know how to get them from the Petionville Office to Love A Child through the gangs… but a miracle happened.

David Ellis and Haiti Air Ambulance did a great thing for us. They took our children in their armored vehicle to their home base of Haiti Air Ambulance in Port-au-Prince. From there, they provided drinks and pizza for the children, clean clothes, and a hot bath! (They even washed all their dirty clothes from those two weeks!) This morning, the folks from Haiti Air Ambulance fixed the children all breakfast, and then at 7:30 am, they brought the kids by Ambulance to our Love A Child property!

What a roar of cheers and tears!!! Special thanks to Nelio Barthelemy, our Haitian Director, for all the hard work negotiating for two weeks!!! We want to give God all the Thanks, and all the Praise for this miracle!!! We want to thank you, our friends and partners, Churches and Pastors, and everyone who has been praying since they were kidnapped! With tears in our eyes, we can say, “They are free, at last!”

All our love,
Bobby and Sherry

PS… Tomorrow the children will open all their Christmas presents! Tomorrow evening will be the big Christmas and New Year dinner combined! Wow… More on this later!