Pastor Jeanne's Passion by ICCM Director Linda Adams

One small life can change us forever.  Fania changed Pastor Jeanne.  Fania's life and death ignited a passion in Free Methodist missionary Jeanne Acheson-Munos that carried her right up to the moment she perished in the earthquake that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands in her adopted homeland, Haiti.

Fania (pictured) was a restavek (French for "to live with"), a household servant, who lived across the street from Pastor Jeanne's apartment in Dessalines, Haiti.  From her window, Pastor Jeanne could see Fania working from dawn to dark, sweeping, tending a charcoal fire, and washing.  She was only three years old!  Jeanne also watched in horror as Fania was beaten, screamed at, and made to sit on a little chair any time she was not working.  She could not play.  She could only sit on the chair.  It broke Jeanne's heart.  She intervened several times, begging Fania's owners to let her live with Pastor Jeanne and her husband Jack, but she was helpless to save Fania.

In July of 2007, Fania was tending the charcoal fire early in the morning when it fell onto her and scorched her small body.  Within a few days, Fania's life was snuffed out.  Jeanne was beside herself with pain, grief and anger.  As God describes himself in the book of Hosea, Jeanne took on the passion of a "she-bear robbed of her cubs."  She was possessed of a ferocious, instinctual, protective love that would not be silenced.

From that point on, Jeanne was on a mission to rescue children from this modern form of slavery.  She spoke up to educate church members on this evil that pains the heart of God.  She used a DVD produced by Free Methodist Haitian Pastor Jean Marc Zamor, entitled Restavek.  She joined forces with Haitian advocates for restaveks.  Whenever she had a chance to converse with an unkempt child, she asked the child, "Do you live with your mommy?"  If the answer was no, she asked more questions, "Do you eat with the family?  Do you get to go to school?  Does the family treat you well?"

Jeanne's voice may have been silenced by death on January 12, but like Abel, she still speaks.  When I think of beautiful Fania and the injustice of her brief life, my passion for the children of Haiti is ignited.  In the wake of the quake, who knows how many more children have been plunged into situations of desperation, where they will do whatever it takes to survive--and how many opportunists will take advantage of these children.

Our partners in the church in Haiti are working to expose this form of child abuse and advocate for the rights of these poorest of children.  I pledge ICCM's support to stand with them, offering sponsorships and other resources in this age-old struggle against slavery.

Pictured left is 3 year-old Fania, sweeping as a "resavek" before her tragic death in 2007.