three times saved

Can you tell we have friends here? :) My normal evening blogging sessions have been replaced by Hand and Foot and Settlers games!

But, been wanting to post this student testimony for days now...Introducing Nicole, our newest Port-au-Prince student and FIRST female student to live on campus. She has an unbelievably powerful story, and I've been dying to share it with you...

The testimony of Nicole Bastien as told to Stacey Ayars...

"I was born in Port-au-Prince, and my husband is still there. My father and two brothers lived, my step-mother, Rose, was killed. I have five children, and they are now spread across Haiti. My youngest is nearby with a friend, the rest are with aunts and uncles.

I shouldn’t be here today. God saved my life in the earthquake, just as He saved my life from the start. My father had a wife and two children before I was born, but he cheated on his wife. He slept with a 16 year old girl, and that girl was my mother.

I was born, and she took care of me for a little while. But she was poor and young and couldn’t even take care of herself. One day, I became really sick. I was vomiting and had diarreah, and so my mother put me in a cardboard box and left me on the front step of my fathers house when I was 9 months old. I have never seen her again.

My father was gone at work, working on the roads, and his mother saw me in the box. She didn’t know who I was or why my mother had dropped me there, so she left me on the step in the sun. All day long, I laid in the box, sick and screaming. When my father finally came home, I was almost dead, covered in diarrhea and sun sores.

He saw me, and said “Oh, that is Nicole!”

“Who is Nicole?’ his wife and mother said.

He finally told them about me, and his wife wanted to leave me in the box on the step until I died. But my grandmother praised the Lord, because she had always prayed for a little girl, and she scooped me up and cleaned me and took me to the doctors and kept me always by her side.

When I was four, my Nana died, and I became like a slave in my father’s house.

“Do not call me mama,” his wife told me all the time. “I am not your mother. Call me Rose.”

I worked for their family until I could be on my own, and now lived in a house with my husband and children. Two of my five children I adopted when they were abandoned, and I have loved them as my own.

A wonderful woman in the house across the street led me to the Lord whenever I was 12 years old, and I became a girl of prayer. I was always talking to the Lord as my friend and Father, and I still do today. He often gives me grace by talking to me, and I have come to know Him better in this way and through the Bible.

I was in my house when the earthquake happened. I had a school on the first story of my home, and in the morning I would teach there until 1, the younger children and then the older children would be in class from 1 until 5 with a different teacher. I was in my bedroom changing out of my teaching uniform, and the earth began to shake. It felt like someone was very angry and they were shaking the house. I felt it, and started running, shouting, “Lord, grace, grace!” My children ran, too, and I saw one wall begin to fall on my oldest son. Right as I thought it would kill him, it literally stood back upright, and then fell the other way.

All the children in the school lived, all my children lived, all the professors lived. The Lord saved all of us. My husband was at work and outside at the time, which saved his life, too.

Our house, however, is far too destroyed to use, and my husband is in Port now working on building a new house.

All that night, the world kept shaking, shaking, and people were so scared, just screaming and crying in the streets, the whole night. I was praying, and as I prayed I felt that God told me to pray out loud and sing with the people. I left my children and starting walking the street, singing loud praises to the Lord. One by one, people began joining me in praise, and as they sang they became calm. God gave us peace through worship, and soon all the screams were silent, the tears dry, and instead all you could hear was singing. We sang that entire night.

A good friend of mine was friends with the mayor of Acul-du-Nord (area right next to BS), and so on Sunday, my friend and I and our children left Port. We were all sleeping in the streets, and the mayor’s wife promied to care for us.

We arrived in northern Haiti on a Monday, and I was worshipping the Lord Monday morning whenever I felt God telling me “You will evangelize this area.”

Now, I didn’t know one person in the whole area, and I didn’t even know the people we were staying with. But God kept telling me, “I want this area. You must tell this area about me.”

So, I told my friend, “Michelle, I’m going out and I won’t come back in this doorway until I have taken my testimony and God’s message of salvation through every single doorway in this zone.”

And that is what I did. On Friday, I finally ended this small crusade when I arrived to the last house, the house where my friend and children were staying. I talked to every single person about Jesus, and many accepted Him.

When I came back to the house of the mayor. There was a pastor there, and he had heard about what I had been doing, and invited me to come to his church on Sunday.

So we went to his church on Sunday, and he invited me to share with the congregation about Port-au-Prince and about how God had spared my family. I also shared some Scriptures with them.. After the service, he said, “Sister, how do you know the Bible like that?” and I told him that I had been in Seminary (Center of Integral Theology of the Caribbean) in Port, and that I was a third year student.

“Well, I know of a Seminary called Emmaus not far from here, and I heard on the radio you could go for free” he told me. I told him I would pray about it.

I prayed about it, but did not allow myself to think about it, because I only wanted to do this if God told me too. On Tuesday morning when I was praying, God said, “Nicole, pack your suitcase, go to Seminary.”

So, I did. I called the pastor and said, “Pastor, I’m going” and he said, “Wait wait! I will come there and call some people and arrange things and you can go next week.”

I said, “No need, pastor, the Lord has arranged everything and I’m going now.”

Well, I came that same day, Tuesday, to EBS, and they told me the next session started Wednesday!

I am so happy to be here. I never dreamed when my school was destroyed that I would ever have the opportunity to study His Word formally again, and now I can see clearly how He has brought me here and arranged it for me to tell people about Him and to study His Word!

Even an earthquake does not bring an end to God’s plan. Praise the Lord!"