Missionary, Corbin church partner in effort to help start new Haitian Christian church

Seventeeth Street Christian Church elders Darrell Watson and Marvin Craig help load supplies into a shipping container while Haitian missionary Choubert Rémy waits. Rémy is partnering with the church to build a new church in a remote portion of Haiti.

A Haitian missionary is partnering with a Corbin church to send supplies to a remote portion of Haiti in order to start a new Christian church there.

Choubert Rémy worked alongside his wife, Bernadette, and members of Seventeenth Christian Church in Corbin last Friday to fill a shipping container with building supplies and other necessities.  Rémy, 59-year-old minister and native of Haiti, is the driving force behind Haiti Christian Mission of Kentucky, a non-profit organization based in Richmond, focused on spreading Christianity in the Caribbean nation. He is a cofounder of the organization.

The shipping container is slated to leave Corbin in the near future and will be taken to Louisville, where it will then be transported to New York, loaded onto a cargo ship and taken by seat to Haiti’s capital, Port-Au-Prince.

Ultimately, Rémy is hoping to get the contents of the container to Aumont, a remote, mountainous area about two and a half hours from his birthplace of Hinche.

“It is truly an underserved area,” Rémy said. “Not very much is going on there. Just people scattered around. No services, medicine, electricity or running water. There is great need.”

The foundation for a church has already been laid. Rémy said the goal now is to erect the building.

The church is well place, Rémy said, because it at an interception point that leads to a popular waterfall where thousands gather annually to worship. They worship the waterfall, he says, because they believe it contains a god.

“That part of Haiti is a bastion for voodoo … they worship the waterfall as a god and do magic there,” Rémy said. “Hopefully we will be able to get those people and let them have a snippet of the gospel while they go about their business. I’m sure that with the seed planted, it will eventually develop and bear fruit, even if it is only with one [person].”

“Many will resist and fight against me, but I believe in the end that God’s word will prevail.”

Though he is a native of Haiti, Rémy said there is danger. His wife was attacked while doing missionary work in Haiti in 2005 and had to be extricated from the country. Rémy said he’s received many threats in the past, but still goes back.

“I’m a Christian. I have a mandate to spread the gospel. I believe personally that my life is not worth anything unless I accomplish that,” he said. “Whatever I do, I might become rich or the most powerful man in the world, but if I do not preach the gospel, Christ said it is just for nothing.”

Rémy said people in Haiti often get partial or inaccurate versions of New Testament Christianity.

“I feel like people have the right to look at the truth from God’s word and make a decision on their own.”

Along with the church, Rémy is hoping to start a school in the area in order to take pressure off the overcrowded, underfunded government school.

Established in 1983, Haitian Christian Mission, through Rémy, has been successful in establishing a church in Galette, Goureau, about 45 minutes outside the capital Port-au-Prince, and an elementary school called Russell Christian School, named after the eastern Kentucky town. It has over 200 pupils.

Seventeenth Street Christian Church was instrumental in organizing the most recent effort. Members helped secure items necessary for the trip, including a significantly discounted generator from Whayne Supply Company, trucking services from DG Trucking, the shipping container, the equipment to load it from Owens Automotive and building supplies from Foundation Building Material Company.

Rémy, and his wife, are hoping to be on site in Haiti March 21 to begin work on the church.