‘Not Afraid … Not Alone’: God’s Protection for Haiti Missionary

Sherrie Fausey has experienced everything from earthquakes to gang violence in the 24 years since she followed God’s leading to become a missionary in Haiti. But she’s also witnessed people experience spiritual and physical healing. 

Hear Sherrie talk about how God has guided and protected her through the joys and challenges of her ministry on this episode of GPS: God. People. Stories.

Connect with us through email at gps@billygraham.org or on Billy Graham Radio on Facebook. 

Transcript

MUSIC STARTS

Sherrie Fausey:
00:00:01 I had a job I loved; there were no textbooks, no report cards, everybody loved me. And the Lord said, Quit that wonderful job and go to Haiti. And I’m so glad I did.

Jim Kirkland: And Sherrie Fausey was 52 years old. She left her teaching job, her family, her home all behind to start a tuition-free school in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. 

Sherrie:
00:00:21 I’m telling people, Guess what? I’m going to Haiti. I’m going to start a school. They said, “You’re crazy. You can’t do that. You’re too old. You don’t speak the language. You’re too old to learn languages. You can’t do that.”

Jim: Defying the opinions of others, Sherrie has spent the last 24 years as a missionary in Haiti. You’re going to hear stories of her experience, including God’s provision and protection in life-threatening situations. And you’ll hear it all here on GPS: God. People. Stories. It’s an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. I’m Jim Kirkland.

God has given Sherrie Fausey a deep love for the people in Haiti, and that kind of love is something Billy Graham often spoke about. 

Billy Graham:
00:01:03 And God loves every person in the whole world with a love that is beyond our comprehension. That’s the reason Jesus said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

Jim: You’ll hear more from Billy Graham about God’s incomprehensible love a little later in the program. If you’d like to know more about God’s love for you any time, visit us at this website—it’s worth jotting down: FindPeaceWithGod.net. That’s FindPeaceWithGod.net. And make sure you’re always receiving a sonic dose of hope every couple of weeks by GPS. Please make sure you are subscribed to the podcast. The full name is GPS: God. People. Stories.

Intro: GPS: God. People. Stories.

MUSIC TRANSITION

Sherrie:
00:01:56 I grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. It was a broken family. My father left when I was 4, and my oldest brother and sister moved with him when I was 5. So, we were a very small family, but we were happy. I went to the local public school and we started going to church when I was 6, mainly because I was so shy I would not talk to anyone.

Jim: As a child, Sherrie was very interested in God, and as a teenager she read her Bible. But she was in her 30s before she fully understood what it meant to be a born-again Christian. 

Sherrie:
00:02:33 I went to a Baptist church in Florida and they started talking about this.

Jim: After a revival meeting at that church, Sherrie went home and read the literature that she had gotten about being born again. It pointed her to the Bible verse, John chapter three, verse 16. So, at 2 o’clock in the morning Sherrie got on her knees and prayed. That was in 1984.

Sherrie:
00:02:58 At 36 years old, I accepted Jesus, and my life has never been the same. It totally flipped me around and set me in a different direction. I ended up getting ... fully involved with church activities, going out and telling other people about Jesus. I was a group leader with a group of ladies and just being very involved in the church and in evangelism.

Jim: Eventually, that passion for evangelism led Sherrie to go on two mission trips. Afterward, her pastor asked her to lead another trip.  

Sherrie:
00:03:31 I said, “Well, where do you want to go and what do you want to do?” 

Jim: The Jacksonville Baptist Association had an upcoming mission trip to Haiti. Sherrie planned the trip, but no one from her church could go.

Sherrie:
00:03:43 I ended up going by myself with a couple other churches.

Jim: Several months later, the same thing happened.
Sherrie:
00:03:50 I signed up for it, but nobody else, and so I went again the last week of July. And on that trip was when the Lord told me to come back to Haiti and build a school.

Jim: When Sherrie returned home to Jacksonville, she knew her future was about to drastically change. But first, she needed to fulfill her commitment as an elementary science teacher.

Sherrie:
00:04:12 I had a job I loved. There were no textbooks, no report cards, everybody loved me. And the Lord said, Quit that wonderful job and go to Haiti. And I’m so glad I did.

Jim: But leaving wasn’t exactly easy.

Sherrie:
00:04:26 I’m telling people, Guess what? I’m going to Haiti. I’m going to start a school. They said, “You’re crazy. You can’t do that. You’re too old. You don’t speak the language. You’re too old to learn languages. You can’t do that.” 

Jim: Sherrie was in her early 50s at the time and her husband had died just a couple years earlier. None of that, though, stopped her from following God’s leading. She moved to Haiti in 2000 to begin living as a missionary and to start a school. 

Sherrie:
00:04:53 I really had no idea how to do it. I didn’t know much about Haiti. I questioned, Why would God want me? I had gone to a seminary because I wanted to learn more of the Bible, but I did not have the skills that I felt were necessary to become a missionary.

Jim: Still, the Lord made a way for Sherrie.

Sherrie:
00:05:12 When I retired from the school system, I had over 180 sick days because I didn’t take off sick much, and I used that in Haiti to put money towards renting a house. And also, I bought a Toyota 4Runner for $5,000 out of this money that the school board gave. The Lord provided in ways I would have never expected.

Jim: During her first year in Port-au-Prince, Sherrie lived with a local Haitian woman and she homeschooled her children.

Sherrie:
00:05:44 And the second year I also started the school for Haitian children and started bringing them in.

Jim: But Sherrie felt like the walk to school from where most of the children lived was too far. 

Sherrie:
00:05:56 I was praying about getting a place closer to where the Lord had showed me to take the children. I was looking at a building, but the pastor that we were working with in that neighborhood said that I couldn’t have that building. There were people living in it.

Jim: That building was an 18-room house close to where most of her students lived. Within a couple of months the people who’d been living in it all moved out and Sherrie was able to start renting it.

Sherrie:
00:06:23 I realized, my first class, about 40% had learning disabilities. They would know their alphabet. They would begin reading in first grade. They would come back at the end of summer, and we’d have to start over with their alphabet. They had forgotten it all. And so, I wondered what that was.

Jim: Sherrie got her answer one day as she was walking through the ravine area where many of the children lived. She noticed about 80% of the children were malnourished. Their families were barely surviving and didn’t have enough to eat … on any given day.

Sherrie:
00:06:59 So we started the baby feeding program. We put them on vitamins at birth and as soon as they have enough teeth, they’re in the program to be fed five days a week.

Jim: Within a couple of years, most of the kids no longer had learning disabilities. 

Sherrie:
00:07:13 Feeding all of the children every day, we were getting healthy and strong children and smarter children in kindergarten because they did not become malnourished.

Jim: One of those children was named Dawinson. He was among the first in the baby feeding program.

Sherrie:
00:07:29 If we were not taking him, he might have gotten a couple years of school. He would never have gotten past sixth grade because the family had no money. 

Jim: Today, Dawinson is a high school graduate, and all grown up. 

Sherrie:
00:07:43 He is intellectually gifted. Whatever you want done, he can figure out how to do it. He’s a photographer; he’s school secretary; he’s our school technician; he is an electrician; and he’s only 22 years old. 

Jim: Dawinson is one of thousands of students who over the last 20 years have attended the school, learning a variety of languages and technical skills.

Sherrie:
00:08:08 We’ve had others who, because they speak French, English, Creole, Spanish, and sign language for the Deaf, that they were able to get other jobs with the airlines or over in the Dominican Republic, and now they are sponsoring their nieces and nephews and other children to school.

Jim: But the school has impacted more lives than just the children who attend it. 

Sherrie:
00:08:34 The whole neighborhood has changed. When we started, most of the people lived in little tin shacks with a tin roof that leaked and a dirt floor that got muddy, and now they are in concrete houses with a concrete floor, which is a big step up. They still don’t have electricity or running water, but they are actually in a much better situation.

Jim: And even more importantly, people’s lives have been changed by the Gospel.

Sherrie:
00:09:02 When we started, I’d say about 3% of the neighborhood was Christian. And a couple years ago, I did a little survey and just was asking parents how many of them were converted—which means they’ve left the Catholic-voodoo combination, following only Jesus—and it’s now about 45% in the neighborhood. It just makes a big difference when you’re working with the people.

Jim: Although the school teaches Bible every day, Sherrie doesn’t credit the school for the evangelism efforts, but rather the children.

Sherrie:
00:09:40 In teaching the children, we’ve got a couple hundred little evangelists going out into the neighborhood every day. We can walk around the neighborhood and there’s a group of children playing school and our children are usually the teacher and so the teacher then would be teaching the Bible story.

Jim: And the kids don’t stop there.

Sherrie:
00:10:01 What does a mother do when their child comes home from school? They say, Well, what did you learn in school today? And they tell Mama the Bible story and the Bible lessons.

Jim: Sherrie has tried going out and evangelizing herself in the community, but she’s found that the children are much more effective at it.


Sherrie:
00:10:19 Being a foreigner, they thought, Well, if I accept Jesus, I’ll get a gift. And that’s not why we accept Jesus, so I have found it’s much better to train these children and let them go home and tell people what they’ve learned. Some of our children are teaching Sunday school because they know their Bible.

Jim: The children’s acceptance of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior offered Sherrie an inexplicable comfort when a powerful earthquake destroyed their school and killed more than 220,000 people across Haiti. Sherrie herself barely survived the earthquake.

Sherrie:
00:10:57 The earthquake was in the afternoon, almost 5 o‘clock, of Jan. 12, 2010. I had an orphanage at the time with 27 children. I was up in my room on the third floor. I had just gotten up, was going to go to the kitchen and fix myself something to eat.

Jim: Suddenly, the house started to shake.

Sherrie:
00:11:17 I tried to run, but it was shaking too much up that high. I fell down in the hallway. I reached for a little table that I had in the bathroom, a small little plastic table, and put it over my head because things were falling on me. I was the only person in the building at that time, but I was not afraid, and I was not alone.

Jim: Sherrie knew God was with her. After the house stopped shaking, Sherrie ran outside for safety and to do a headcount.

Sherrie:
00:11:47 We had to line the children up. We were … missing one. That was Peterson—and I don’t think I ever get over that.

Jim: Peterson was just 7 years old when he died. He had recently accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior. After he and his brother had run out of their shaking home, they went in opposite directions.

Sherrie:
00:12:11 The back of the building fell on his head. He died instantly. Did he run the wrong way or did he run straight to Jesus?

Jim: While devastated, Sherrie went on to help survivors in her community. She asked a local pastor to help bring them over to a new property they had bought to build a school. 

Sherrie:
00:12:30 He got all these people—the 300 Haitians and my children in the orphanage—and they started praising the Lord that they had survived, thanking the Lord, and singing, and he gave a Gospel presentation—nine people accepted the Lord right there and I’m sure many more later.

Jim: Over the next few days, Sherrie worked to get some supplies and food to the people—but she started getting sick.  

Sherrie:
00:12:57 I was in the hallway and the back of the house, including my bedroom, which was only a few feet away, fell off the back of the building, and all this dust came up in my face. It was concrete and whatever else was just pulverized.

Jim: All that dust was making it hard for Sherrie to breathe, so she was flown out of Haiti to get better medical care. 

Sherrie:
00:13:20 The staff was moving a mattress around for me to lay on and put my finger up and tell people what to do, and then a friend came in, Beaver, and he took a look at me and took me over to the airport, dropped me off. That was hard. You don’t leave your people in an emergency, but I realized later I’d have died if I had not gone.

Jim: She had a fever of 104 and was having a hard time breathing. Her doctor, in fact, wasn’t even able to get an X-ray because Sherrie couldn’t hold her breath, but Sherrie thanks God the doctor was able to put her on a treatment plan that got her well enough to fly back to Haiti eight days later. 

Sherrie:
00:13:59 In the meantime, I had done interviews because my son showed me the Jacksonville newspaper and it said, American missionary missing in Haiti and presumed dead. He says, “Mom, that’s you.”

Jim: That confusion was cleared up as soon as Sherrie was able to talk again. She did interviews with newspapers and TV stations—interviews that led people to start sending her supplies and money. 

Sherrie:
00:14:24 With the money, we built the school so that we now have a big complex with 40 rooms on it and are able to do the school and other projects that we need to do. The Lord provided again.

Jim: And amid Haiti’s most recent turmoils, God has continued to care for Sherrie and the school.

Sherrie:
00:14:44 Haiti was taken over by the gangs in January. There are 200 gangs, and if there’s a hundred members in each gang, that’s a lot of men. They have AR-15s and other big guns that have been bought for them by rich politicians in Haiti.
Jim: These gangs united to oust the prime minister.

Sherrie:
00:15:07 Haitians did not choose him and they didn’t like him. When he went to Kenya to try to work things out there, the gangs then did not let him come back by taking over the airport. He could not get back in the country.

Jim: During that time, violence ensued. Many people were kidnapped for ransom or displaced from their homes. Although the gangs still wield a lot of power in Haiti, the former prime minister has been replaced.

Sherrie:
00:15:34 There’s still over half a million people displaced from their homes. We have some people who have been living in the school because they had nowhere else to go, and I don’t know when they’re going to be able to get back in their areas—but it is improving. Things are peaceful now.

Jim: Even so, Sherrie’s had quite a few close calls over the years in Haiti. 

Sherrie:
00:15:56 I’ve been in a couple of shootouts. The first one was I had pulled up to an intersection and Martha, my old Toyota 4Runner, Martha was hard to drive because it had been in an accident. It turned on a 50-cent piece, not a dime.

Jim: Down the street, people were shooting at a water truck filled with 3,000 gallons of water. 

Sherrie:
00:16:18 I couldn’t get through the intersection because some fella had stopped and was looking and so I closed my eyes and I waited for the water truck to smash me and when I opened my eyes, I was half a block away. I don’t know how I got there, but I know how I got there.

Jim: Another time, Sherrie was followed on her way home.

Sherrie:
00:16:37 I thought I had lost them and when I got to my gate, they were there, waiting on me and they pulled up behind me, blocked me from backing out.

Jim: Sherrie feared if she got out of her vehicle to open the gate, she’d be grabbed, but she credits God for directing a friend of hers to be sitting on the wall of her compound’s entrance. 




Sherrie:
00:16:58 He jumped down, opened the gate. My dogs came running out barking ferociously and the kidnappers ran away, so I missed being kidnapped by about five seconds. The Lord always has a plan. The Lord always can take care of it.

MUSIC TRANSITION

Jim: Sherrie Fausey’s trust in the Lord brings her a peace like nothing else can. What about you? Do you know that peace? Would you like that kind of peace? Would you like to be able to trust that God always has a plan and that He can take care of every situation you face? It begins by having a relationship with Jesus Christ. We can tell you more at our website, FindPeaceWithGod.net. That’s FindPeaceWithGod.net. Or, if you’d rather talk with someone, you can do so right now at our 24-hour prayer line. 855-255-PRAY. 855-255-7729. That’s 855-255-PRAY.

If you’ve ever thought that God might be calling you to some sort of ministry, but you’re not sure you’re qualified, you will want to hear what Sherrie has to say to you in just a moment.

MUSIC STARTS

Voice-over: You’re listening to GPS: God. People. Stories., a podcast production of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Billy Graham:
00:18:26 God loves every person in the whole world with a love that is beyond our comprehension.

Voice-over: Billy Graham …

Billy Graham:
00:18:35 In spite of everything we’ve ever done, God loves. And words cannot describe it. And God says the moment you receive His Son as Savior, He gives you the Spirit of God to live in your heart and the Spirit of God produces this love in you and through you. That’s the reason Jesus said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” It’s a supernatural love for your neighbor. Love is doing. Love is a verb. Do you love the souls of men enough that you would be willing to go next door to your neighbor and up and down the streets to tell them about Jesus Christ? Jesus laid down His life for us, and that’s the reason the Scripture says there’s no other way to Heaven. You can’t be saved any other way.

Jim: You can learn more about how God’s love can change your life and the life of others by paying a visit to our website: FindPeaceWithGod.net. FindPeaceWithGod.net.

Our guest on this episode of GPS is Sherrie Fausey. She is 76 years old now and still a missionary in Haiti and the CEO and founder of Christian Light School. Sherrie likes to say she has one son and grandson in the United States and many children in Haiti. She divides her time between Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, and her home in Jacksonville, Florida. 

If you feel like God has called you to some sort of ministry, Sherrie has this final piece of advice.

Sherrie:
00:20:05 It doesn’t matter who you are, the Lord can use you, and there are other more talented, more capable people, but the Lord chose you. And that the Lord is faithful. If He chooses you to do something, the Lord can make it happen. You don’t have to be super capable or super … anything. The Lord will work it out. It’s all dependent on the Lord.

Jim: An excellent reminder to leave us with from Sherrie Fausey. We’re grateful for Sherrie letting us in on the adventure that is her life in Jesus Christ and for the insight that she has shared. If you were inspired by this conversation, please share this episode with someone that you think it’ll be a blessing to and also would you please leave us a review. And while you’re at it, be sure to check and see if you’re subscribed to GPS, so you never miss an episode. We post them every other Wednesday. 

I’m Jim Kirkland, and this is GPS. God. People. Stories., an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association—Always Good News.

CLOSING MUSIC

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