Greetings Dear Friends, Family and Churches,
We are so thankful for your love, support and prayers for our family and the ministries our Lord has blessed us to serve. We are a few months away from celebrating God’s faithfulness as we begin our tenth year of serving in and with Haiti. We would like to share an overdue update of what has transpired both in Haiti and with our family this past year. We have sat down to write this letter time and again, yet the ground keeps shifting under our feet and it has been difficult to find or often accept these words.
The past year we attempted to take a planned furlough away from Haiti in order to help our now adult daughters’ transition to life in America (after living in Haiti their entire lives) as well as allow our boys to have education and recreational opportunities stateside. Our beloved Haiti has suffered immensely since political, economic and social unrest has torn the country asunder– far beyond the normal 3rd world issues– since July of 2018. We have experienced numerous, violent, country wide shut-downs that block roads and supply routes. Some of our children were unable to finish school in 2018 and 2019 due to the closures so we had hoped for a different outcome this year. However, it seems country wide shut-downs followed us to America with the Coronavirus pandemic. Quarantining for weeks or months at a time has been a way of life for our family the past three years; reminding us to hold loosely to our plans and trust God’s sovereignty in deeper ways.
Though we had planned to be on furlough for the school year during August-May (living with Elisabeth’s parents in Virginia), we were/are still working remotely and made multiple trips back and forth to Haiti. Elisabeth went for two weeks in September and barely made it out by God’s grace as the political turmoil ramped up again. Eric was due to go with our Heart of God Haiti Director in November, but Haiti was closed down again (meaning they would not have been able to get much beyond the airport safely) so we spent that time at our mission board headquarters in New York. It was during those meetings that the board voted to name Eric the Director for Global Development for Heart of God International Ministries. This officially expands Eric’s role and responsibilities beyond Haiti.
We traveled to Illinois in December to visit Eric’s side of the family and three of our supporting churches in that area. Eric made a successful trip to Haiti in January with our oldest daughter Elita. The kids stayed with grandparents while Eric and Elisabeth traveled together to Haiti in March for the yearly, large Haitian Pastor’s conference and other meetings with our indigenous leaders and international church. We are so very encouraged by the servant hearts of the Haitian leaders we are blessed to partner in ministry who have faithfully carried out and continued the work in our physical absence. This is a mark of a fruitful ministry and also a good sign that God is moving us onward. We returned from Haiti two days prior to the Coronavirus beginning to shut down America. Soon after, Haiti closed its borders and we have been unable to return with our family as planned this summer.
In between the January and March trips to Haiti, Elisabeth traveled to Texas twice for the unexpected funerals of her dear Aunt Babs and a dear friend who lost her husband to Leukemia. February also found us driving from Virginia to Pennsylvania with our youngest son Evan for a long-awaited appointment with world renown mitochondria specialists at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dozens of doctors and specialist visits over the past three years to figure out how to help our son finally led us to an official diagnosis of a serious, rare and progressive mitochondria disease called Kearnes-Sayre Syndrome (KSS). Evan’s official diagnosis came in April after genetic testing results confirmed that he has a deletion in his mitochondria DNA along with the primary symptoms of KSS. Mitochondria are the “powerhouse of the cell” and affect nearly every cell in our bodies. Therefore, a deficiency in mitochondria can wreck the entire body’s ability to function properly. Evan is currently stable and doing pretty well as we work hard to manage the progression of his condition. We praise God that we finally have a wonderful medical team who understand his condition and how best to help us.
We had a big scare with Evan’s health during the entire time we were away from him in Haiti and the week after we returned. Due to his recent health crisis, mounting medical bills and needing to be closer to the doctors in Texas where Evan is able to receive some Medicaid help (just not always for the doctors and mountain of supplements he actually needs to help him), we made a very fast decision to head to Texas at the end of March, prematurely ending our time in Virginia.
While we lamented that our time in Virginia was cut short, we are thankful for the time God gave us and the new friendships formed there. All of our children went through individual and/or family counseling while in Virginia due to trauma and transitions coming off the mission field. We were unable to finish due to COVID closings and ask for prayer for continued healing, wisdom in finding new Christian therapists and the finances necessary to continue counseling sessions at some point in the near future.
We now know that one of the reasons God placed us in Virginia for those months was to be able to find help for our oldest daughter. Elita also faces some difficult diagnoses that stem primarily from excessive childhood trauma prior to adoption. Through seeking help for her while in Virginia, the Lord led us in finding a unique vocational and rehabilitation school there that Elita has been accepted to attend and where she will live during her individualized program. She was scheduled to start in April but the campus has been closed since March due to COVID so we are waiting, hoping and praying this will still work out for her in the near future. We have found an amazing doctor in Austin, Texas who is treating both Evan and Elita with their various health needs and they are both making positive strides. However, it is very expensive and so far not covered or reimbursed by Evan’s Medicaid nor our family sharing plan.
Our early exit from Virginia brought us to San Marcos, Texas. The Lord blessed us with the ability to purchase a good bones-fixer upper house last December located next door to property Elisabeth’s parents inherited from her grandmother. This will be our home base stateside from here on out. Our new house sits on the hill where Elisabeth spent childhood summers chasing butterflies and visiting her grandparents so it is special place where we have always felt at home.
Since we moved in at the onset of COVID closings, finding essentials fast wasn’t easy. God sent an angel neighbor who came bearing mattresses, folding chairs, a picnic table and kitchen utensils until we could manage to pull some of our own items out of the family storage container. So, the end of March and half of April was largely spent in quarantined cleaning and construction mode that we joked only living in Haiti could have prepared us for. After two months, we are excited to finally be sleeping on beds in bedrooms and are very thankful for this house on our family hill. Staying with family and friends during our stateside travels the past nine years has been one of life’s greatest blessings and grandest adventures. However, to be very honest, the packing and unpacking of suitcases for six people takes its toll and our family really needed our own place. Our kids are older now and we need to be able to travel without them at times. Buying this house right next door to family (Elisabeth’s sister Erin’s family is moving next door in mid -July) will provide a way for us to be able to travel without all our kids as they are in the process of adulting. May was filled with more specialist visits for Evan’s health needs, do-it- yourself repairs to house (still a long way to go on that), and figuring out what to do when the announcement was made that Haiti would be closed through July.
Even though we have been back in our former stomping grounds of Texas since late March, COVID has greatly limited our social and church visits as we have two very high-risk kids. Our nineteen-year old daughter Esmée had previously planned to spend her summer with us in Haiti but when Haiti closed the airport, she decided to serve a third summer at Alto Frio Camp a few hours away from us in Leakey, Texas. Our sixteen year old son Ethan was re-hired at the same place he worked as a lifeguard last summer once they re-opened their facility but he has not actually started working yet due to COVID delays and restrictions. He is also taking two college online classes this summer which are keeping him busy along with learning to drive so he can get his license soon.
After a few weeks of quarantine at the house with no end in sight and out of financial necessity, Eric took a temporary contract job at an Amazon warehouse here in San Marcos, working twelve-hour night shifts three-five days per week. We are thankful for the ability and provision of this extra work that is helping our family financially get through this time while we continue to communicate daily with our Haiti team and work remotely. We would like for our financial supporters to know that the money we have raised in missions support is still going toward our Haiti home rent, water and electricity that our Haitian ministry leaders are using in our absence, Haitian employee salaries, travels back and forth and the specific needs for projects and people supported through the ministries there. Eric’s overtime hours at Amazon and our parents help to pay for our new Texas house is currently keeping us afloat stateside.
Sadly, we haven’t had much of a “furlough” so we don’t know what to call this anymore. Most of the foreigners who lived in Haiti full time like us have had to leave this year for long periods of time as the conditions have dramatically worsened and with COVID closing down the airport. Between grieving all of the atrocities happening in Haiti the past few years, travels to Haiti and many doctors, the difficult diagnoses for two of our children, and lack of sufficient finances to cover the medical needs –well—all this has left us very tired and drained. However, we are not tired of being missionaries and long to return to the field. We miss Haiti very much. We have been praying over how this is going to work moving forward and will continue to pray and press onward. This is what we know for now.
We have very recently learned that one of the prohibitive issues with Evan’s condition is that he needs to “avoid excessive heat”. This was not initially discussed in the doctor’s appointments because the doctors had not imagined (even though we told them we live in Haiti) that we live in constant excessive heat with no air conditioning. When we inquired about these stipulations, we were told that Evan’s body does not regulate temperature properly and if his body is trying too hard to sweat, this causes his mitochondria levels to drop. This could have been one of the triggers along with him contracting the Zika virus in Haiti that have caused the negative progression in Evan’s body the past three years. We have been told that the next seven years are vitally crucial to keeping Evan’s mitochondrial levels up while his body is trying hard to grow. He is finally growing again as we have put the new protocols into place after three years of not growing. Evan’s condition is considered rare. Most doctors had never heard of or seen his symptoms in a child with no prior health issues. It has taken us three years to find doctors who even know about Kearnes-Sayre Syndrome in the US. There are no doctors in Haiti who would be able to help Evan. Evan currently does not have the heart condition that typically accompanies Kearnes-Sayre Syndrome, but this usually occurs before the age of twenty as a child’s body is trying hard to grow into adulthood requiring surplus mitochondria. Evan needs to see a slew of specialist doctors (Cardiologist, Endocrinologist, Retinologist, Opthamologist, Geneticist, Physical Therapist, and Neurologist) every few months and travel to Philadelphia at least once a year. He has compounded prescriptions filled every two weeks and desperately needs another eye surgery. He currently cannot see well without physically using his hands to hold open his eyelids. Did you know that 60% of the energy used to open your eyelids comes directly from your mitochondria? We didn’t know that before either. This medical stuff is a whole new world for us, at first unwelcomed, but trusting that God will use these circumstances for our good and His glory.
What does this news mean for us returning to Haiti? Well, under the circumstances of medical constraints for our son, we have been praying through these things (among others that concern our other three children and the continued high-risk situation in Haiti) currently affecting our ability to return to Haiti in a full-time capacity. Eric has been working toward and has always dreamed of being able to work more in the area of unreached and unengaged people groups around the world. Our mission’s board would like for Eric to be available to travel more to other countries Heart of God International Ministries is involved in as well as new territories. It has been difficult for Eric to travel while leaving his family in Haiti (especially with all the violent unrest the past few years) for weeks at a time. We have been praying for open doors for Eric to travel more now that the kids are older. Haiti is not unreached although there are unreached people groups within Haiti and the gospel is all too often skewed to suit preferences or due to lack of Biblical education. Eric will continue to train and equip pastors in Haiti and around the world and is currently still communicating in the Creole language with many of the Pastor’s he has worked with over the years in Haiti. Our Haitian leaders have proven they are able and trustworthy to continue the ministries. Elisabeth will continue to work with and encourage the Haitian leaders who help us in the orphan prevention ministries that help keep families together and are a tool for building relationships and evangelism. She will continue to raise school sponsorships (this alone typically takes three months of full time work each year) for Haitian children and the support needed for the KOFAEL Haiti women’s ministry. We plan to travel as often as possible to Haiti and keep a home presence there. Our next-door Haiti neighbors who are also expats have not been able to return full time for the past two years due to all of the unrest. They recently contacted us asking if we would like to share their rented home that is much larger than ours. We have mutually agreed that would be financially beneficial to both families and will work toward combining our Haiti households as soon as its possible for us to return. We are hoping to return to Haiti for a few weeks in August and are waiting through this Coronavirus epidemic that has hit Haiti hard. We are continuing to work for and through our mission, Heart of God International Ministries/Heart of God Haiti, to carry out the responsibilities of the ministries in Haiti as well as new developing ministries in other countries. We are excited to see what God has in store! We ask for your continued prayers and financial support as we make these transitions in the near future. We don’t always understand God’s plans but we know that He is good and we are trusting and following His plans moving forward.
* Photos taken from the top of our family hill at our new Texas house. We don’t have goats (yet) but we do have deer and a lovely view that reminds us daily of all God’s blessings!
This is the truth I’m standing on
Even when all my strength is gone
You are faithful forever
And I know You’ll never
Let me fall
Right now I’m choosing to believe
Someday soon I’ll look back and see
All the pain had a purpose
Your plan was perfect all along
This is the truth I’m standing on
Good, I believe You’re still good
Even when life’s not good
I will not lose this hope
The God who parts the sea
Promises He’s gonna
Make a way for me
This is the truth I’m standing on…
Excerpt from the song Truth I’m Standing On by Leanna Crawford
Evan’s name means “God is good”. We are choosing to believe that God allowed this chronic illness so that we will rely on Him more, to fellowship in His sufferings, to be able to minister to others in deeper ways, to move us exactly where He wants us. God is good even when we do not understand and ask why. We are no longer asking why but how. How do you want us to walk through this Lord in a way that glorifies You and points others to You? We want to thank you for walking with us over the years in our struggles and joys and allowing us to share in yours. We give thanks to the Lord for you, for all He has done and will continue to do as we longingly wait for the return of our Savior and the redemption of all things!
“Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.” -Lamentations 3:32-33
Bondye Konnen, Bondye Bon,
Eric and Elisabeth Ream
*We do have a personal need for finances to help with all the uncovered medical bills that have maxed us and indebted us this past year. In all our years in Haiti, we always made it a priority to stay out of debt so that all personal financial support could be used to keep us on the mission field and for the intended ministries. The physical and mental health help our family needs is a direct result of our years on the mission field and traumas we have endured. We know we need to be healthy in order to bring health to others and we need to ask for help at this time. Our doctor and hospital social worker suggested we set up a personal GO FUND ME page for this purpose. If anyone would like to give specifically toward our medical fund, here is the GO FUND ME LINK for that.
If you need a tax-deductible donation you can also give through our mission specifically to our family through THIS LINK.