Bill (6.4.08)

Bill lives down the road and runs a boys' orphanage. Today, after a delicious lunch at the MacEpi with Pastor Brian and 4 of my students (they cleaned the house in return for lunch), Pastor Brian and I decided to stop by Bill's orphanage on the way back to the Vision Center.

At first glance, the scar above Bill's left eye catches your attention. He looks much like a retired ship captain; he looks like he could spend hours recounting days out at sea battling pirates and sea monsters. Even the orphanage itself displays remnants of an adventurous past: run down bikes, rusted cars, various pieces of rubber, two cats, and a giant black St. Bernard. During those short 2 hours that Pastor Brian and I spent there, he did recount fascinating stories of his past; not stories of days out at sea, but stories of what his life was like during the past 12 years he spent in Haiti.

He recounted those first few days he spent in Haiti, when a band of Haitians came to his house to murder him. Led by the Spirit, he had left his comfortable life in West Palms, FL to take over a countryside mission center that had somehow, before Bill's arrival, gained the utmost animosity of the people. Soon after his arrival, the mission center closed, and he moved on to Santos, Haiti, to open a boys' orphanage.

There he ran into a slew of other misfortunes. He caught one of his older orphans in bed with a short term missionary; a teenage Caucasian girl sent as a representative from a Michigan church that sponsored Bill. Upon approaching the church about the incident, the church believed the girl as she denied any wrong doing, and immediately stopped supporting Bill ( it was obvious that the girl hadn't been raped but rather, that she had been the seductress). Bill would find out later that another female missionary, appointed later on, was molesting the youngest of his boys - that female missionary still works in Haiti.

Finally, the Haitian government collapsed under corruption, forcing Bill to hire a guard and take up arms to defend, each night for months, his orphanage from invaders.

"Did you shoot anyone?" "Yes."

After successfully defending his orphanage from the chimeres, he discovered that many of his supporters in the States disagreed with his taking up arms to defend himself. "You did not trust fully in Jesus Christ", they said, and he lost more financial support. Eventually, he would leave the city of Santos with 15 of his boys and settle for a much smaller house in Tabarre, where he is today. Currently, the majority of the support for the boys and himself comes from the $230 he receives every month for having served in the U.S. military. His insulin shots are free.

And yet he continues to proclaim Christ, taking his troubles "on the chin with a grin" (that phrase was in a TOEFL essay we read today in class).

"Hey, we should have dinner sometime" - Bill

"Definitely." Me and Pastor Brian.