Wilbert and Meg Merzilus, Living Hope Mission
Wilbert and Meg Merzilus were married in 1987, while Wilbert was office manager for Mission Aviation Fellowship in Cap Haitien, and Meg was serving in various capacities in the mission community. Wilbert is a native of Haiti, and Meg is from the state of Ohio. In 1993, Living Hope Mission was founded, with a vision for supporting local evangelical churches in evangelism, Bible distribution, and other resources. Since its establishment, LHM has grown to include several other aspects of community outreach.
In March of 2000, LHM established The Hope Center as a meeting place for various outreach efforts. The Hope Center is used to house short-term missionary work teams, host seminars and prayer groups, offer agricultural training classes, and provide a library resource center. There are both indoor and outdoor facilities for groups, as well as a large plot of land for teaching gardening and other agricultural skills.
One of the critical needs in Haiti is clean, safe water for drinking and cooking. LHM has responded to this need by partnering with North American churches to provide funds to dig new wells and to provide necessary equipment repairs to existing wells. Since a new well will cost $2,000-5,000, the $100-250 necessary to fix a broken well pump is well worth the effort. Short-term work teams, working alongside local Haitians, are often deployed to out-lying communities to repair out-of-service wells, providing these small villages with this basic necessity which so many of us take for granted.
In the past two years, LHM has begun a new project, called The Center of Hope. The goal of The Center is to minister to malnourished children in the surrounding communities. The Center serves 50 children per month with balanced meals, Bible classes, and lessons in such topics as nutrition, general hygiene, gardening, and goat raising. The children are weighed monthly, and are released at the end of the six months if they have achieved a normal weight. Those children who are still underweight are kept in the program for another six months. During their time there, they are also given needed dental care and hygiene instruction. Parents of these children are required to volunteer at the clinic and also attend classes on nutrition and meal-planning.
Living Hope Mission is deeply concerned about the education of Haitian children and adults. Through its Scholarship Program, LHM helps local schools to be able to meet their budgets, and offers tuition assistance for children who are unable to pay all or part of their tuition. Since 2000, The Scholarship Program has also helped promising young adults to attend college.
The Agricultural Development Project got underway three years ago, providing radio broadcasting, village training, animal training, and a veterinary pharmacy. The vision of this project is to teach those in the rural areas how to better provide food for their families and local communities. Met Jacques, the Agricultural Director, broadcasts his agricultural program twice a week on Radio 4VEH. He also meets with groups, helps them to formulate a working plan, and then provides training and follow up. Other aspects of this project include veterinary technician training and a small farm resource center, which provides vegetable seeds, gardening tools, and instructional reading materials.
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