Mission: Haiti 2025
Higher education
Gilbert Lindor often quotes some famous “pedagogue” (a word for teacher that derives from the Greek) like Paulo Freire of Brazil, who said: “Education does not change a world, it changes the people who will change the world.”
Education certainly changed Gilbert.
During and after six years of studying in medical school in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, he is giving back to his homeland.
“The importance of returning to Haiti to help educate children where there was no school, first, is to share my testimony with parents and children, and then to combat illiteracy in so many children for a better tomorrow,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert and the rest of Climbing For Christ’s New Generation (C4CNG) oversee three schools supported by C4C in mountain villages of Haiti: Boucon Pierre, Kalimette, and Majon. About 600 children are going to school – just like Gilbert did for the first time in his home village of Gentilhomme when Climbing For Christ built its first church that also housed a school. It was Gilbert’s first step toward becoming a doctor.
“In the same way our medical missions in places where people do not receive medical attention is also with the purpose of preventing and alleviating diseases in people without access to medical attention,” Gilbert said.
He uses those opportunities to tell the people “how God used the life of a doctor so that today I am who I am.”
First, a Climbing For Christ worker rescued Gilbert, who broke his leg while playing in mountainous Gentilhomme, and then doctors saved his life. His gangrened leg was amputated. After that, the Holy Spirit saved his soul.
Gilbert was inspired to use this life that had been given to him to help others – just like he had been helped. He got an education all while carrying on the work Climbing For Christ had done in Haiti from 2005 to 2014. We hope to continue the work through him by opening a clinic in the mountains where there is no medical access.
One parent in the village of Kalimette summed it up nicely, saying, “I am very grateful for C4CNG and at the same time for Dr. Gilbert, because now we not only have someone who helps us with the education of our children, but also a doctor. Now if we have someone who is sick, he can help us.”
THE EXPEDITION: Scheduled in late October. Our team will attend Gilbert’s (delayed) graduation from medical school at Universidad Tecnológica de Santiago (UTESA) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. We will then conduct a medical mission in the Chaine de la Selle mountains of Haiti, Lord willing, or in Dominican camps for Haitians. There is limited space on this trip – our first Mission: Haiti since 2013 – but anyone from health care (doctors, nurses, dentists) can apply. Email info@ClimbingForChrist.org for a mission application. Membership is required to GO on a Climbing For Christ expedition.
This will be Climbing For Christ’s 13th expedition to Haiti, where we first worked in 2005. C4CNG has continued the work supporting schools and carrying out medical missions.
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