From the time I founded Friends for Health in Haiti in 2006, I’ve been asked repeatedly to describe our succession plan for the organization. As you can imagine, in our early years, we had no succession plan because we were just beginning to develop the organization and our ministry in Haiti. But, there was always the belief that the Lord was going to bring employees to us who Cherlie and I could mentor and develop as leaders. As with most things in Haiti, our hopes and plans weren’t realized quite as we thought they would be, but we want you to know that they are being realized nonetheless!

For more than a year, the Board of Directors of FHH and I have been actively looking to hire a US-based Executive Director who can become the new face of the organization and assume overall responsibility for FHH, helping to increase our support and financial base, cultivate existing partnerships and develop new ones and lead the organization to a new level of excellence and sustainability. We believe we’ve found that person in Sara Simeunovic, a woman with strong academic qualifications and extensive prior leadership experience in Haiti. Her start date was June first and we’d like to introduce Sara to you in this newsletter. Cherlie and I will continue to be responsible for the Haiti operations, running the clinic and community development programs as we always have. We expect to continue to live in Haiti full-time and work with FHH until we are unable to do so! The two young men we’ve been putting through medical school are almost finished and ready to begin working in the clinic with us. We’re teaching one of our employees to take responsibility for the government statistics and reports and others are starting to help with pharmacy inventory and purchasing. So, we’re certain that, over time, most of our major responsibilities here will be able to be assumed by our Haitian employees with supervision from us.

This is an exciting time for FHH and we appreciate your prayers for us as we enter a new phase in the life of our organization. We’re certain the Lord has wonderful things in store for our ministry and we hope you’ll continue to stand with us as we seek to improve health and change lives in Haiti.