Graduate helped bring physical and spiritual living water to Haitian community

Before Pastor Wilfrid Michel was even 10 years old, he walked 20 kilometers (approximately 12.5 miles) regularly from his hometown in Haiti to get drinking water for his family. Little did he know that he would alleviate this issue for others later in his life.

Wilfrid says studying at the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Port-au-Prince (STEP), Haiti, prepared him to work with people in his community. His eyes were opened to global spiritual needs when he went on an Operation Mobilization mission trip, reaching ethnic communities in Canada. After graduating from STEP in 1991 with his Diploma of Theology, he was invited to La Baie des Moustiques in northwest Haiti to lead a mission project that included a church, school and water project.

Three short years later, the water project was inaugurated. Previously, the people in La Baie had to walk 16 kilometers (nearly 10 miles) for clean water. Now a 53 kilometer network of underground pipes carries water from a capped spring, and public fountains are within 10 minutes of most homes. Wilfrid says the water project has had a profound impact on the community of 30,000. There are fewer water-borne and skin diseases; green trees grow near the fountains now; and the peasants can raise their cattle without having to take them far away.

Church leaders involved in the water project have taken the opportunity to evangelize around the theme of living water as the only true source of satisfaction and protection, which has reduced voodoo’s hold on the hearts and minds of the people. The La Baie church now has around 200 members, and the elementary school has grown to 260 students with a strong child development project in partnership with Compassion International. Eighteen years later, Wilfrid says his greatest joy is the water project, and he is planning to stay and serve in the La Baie community until the Lord directs him and his family elsewhere.

John 4:10, 13-14 (NIV) – “Jesus answered [the Samaritan woman], ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water…Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’”