The Cassange Story - Part 1 - The Beginning

We are excited to announce that we will be taking a portion of our newsletter each month to tell you the story of what God has done through Mission E4 in Cassange, Haiti. This is the location of Mission E4’s main headquarters in Haiti and one of the very first villages we started working in. There has been such a drastic change in this community over the last 17 years since we started working there. Here is the first piece of that story:

The beginning - Cassange, Haiti – 2005 - This village of approximately 6500 people was known as a place of great evil. God had already called the Gumps Family to this community several years earlier. However, it wasn’t until 2005 that God brought Scott and Bazile together and gave them a vision to establish a work there through Mission E4. When Pastor Bazile and his family first moved into this village, there were no other Christians present. In fact, this village was known throughout Haiti as being one of three communities that were the most entrenched in the religion of Voodoo. True Voodoo is not like what is in the movies, it is a religion of bondage, where people give themselves over to evil spirits. When we started working in Cassange, they were still practicing child sacrifice. 

In addition to the darkness present from this religion, the village was known for being a place of crime. Early on in our work, we had a truckload of materials stolen from the property there. When we went to file a report with the police, they wouldn’t even entertain a submission and said, “that’s what you get for living in a place like Cassange.” 

One of the first things we did in this community was to establish a school, with 70 preschool and kindergarten children. We started to feed the children each day and provided them with schoolbooks and uniforms. With this small group of young children, we started a Sunday church. One of the local voodoo priests told the people in the village that he would rather kill Pastor Bazile than to see a church established in the community. Others in the village made fun of them saying it wasn’t even a real church because there were no adults present. Through all of this the Gumps family stayed faithful to the call that God had placed on their lives. 

There are two things that come to mind about this beginning. The first is that a more “well-to-do” Haitian family decided to listen and obey God’s call for them to go to a community like this. They also agreed to voluntarily live in the middle of poverty and persecution for the sake of this call. I remember the early days when Pastor and Madam Bazile would sleep on the floor and hang their clothes on makeshift poles made from electrical conduit. They were, and still are, SOLD OUT for the call. 

Next month we will tell you about how the Bazile Family started a youth group and opened their home as a local community center.