First. I need to say that we don’t start talking about the meat of this episode until it’s brought up in conversation at around 15 minutes. So if you’re here to hear how to help the community that Krista and her family are in, please fast forward to about 15 minutes into this conversation to hear what’s going on around them. In the beginning, we do a lot of catching up. My husband and I met Krista and her family a couple of years ago while visiting Haiti Bible Mission in Jeremie, Haiti. HBM is an organization we love an...
First. I need to say that we don’t start talking about the meat of this episode until it’s brought up in conversation at around 15 minutes. So if you’re here to hear how to help the community that Krista and her family are in, please fast forward to about 15 minutes into this conversation to hear what’s going on around them. In the beginning, we do a lot of catching up. My husband and I met Krista and her family a couple of years ago while visiting Haiti Bible Mission in Jeremie, Haiti. HBM is an organization we love and support!! ❤️
Krista Parada Germeil, her husband Mark, and their two children live in Jeremie, Haiti. Mark is from Haiti and Krista moved there about 8 years ago. She is from Virginia. Recently, the couple celebrated their 6th wedding anniversary.
At the same time, they're celebrating another year of marriage, they’re also experiencing a massive need around them. According to Krista and her team, people in their community are going multiple days without food because they are in a 5-month drought and the prices of food have gone up. Instead of locals being able to eat beans (which is what they would be growing, harvesting, and eating), they’re only eating things like spaghetti (noodles) and white rice. She says people in their community on average make about $5 a week and a can of beans in American dollars is about $1. In the podcast, she talks about one of her team members who says he knows of several families who are going a couple of days without food, due to the drought, and the price of food has gone up.
Right now, Krista says that she and her family are providing food packs for families with beans, which are a big deal to the people around them. She says there is also a church helping them out by matching $1,500 to go to food packs. She wrote in an email after recording the podcast that -- “We are actually in the midst of a $1,500 matching grant being raised for food packs. We have $1,000 raised and are $500 away from reaching our goal!"
Krista says they're requesting money for food packs through Jeremie Christian Mission — under the category of food outreach. She says one food pack is $30. She tells us in the food packs are a 50-pound bag of rice, 11 cups of beans, 29 packs of spaghetti, and a gallon of oil.
Link to give for food packs - https://www.givelify.com/givenow/1.0/MTA0NjU=/selection
Connect with Krista and her family:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/the_vilaj_ansanm/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/krista.parada
On this podcast, giving a voice to the voiceless is a BIG DEAL and a massive priority. Proverbs 31:8-9 (MSG) says “Speak up for the people who have no voice, for the rights of all the down-and-outers. Speak out for justice! Stand up for the poor and destitute!” That's one of my prayers for this podcast overall and this episode.
The verse Krista shares that's helping her get through this season is Ephesians 2:4-19 (NIV):
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
THANK YOU for listening and sharing!
