Lucner Laine

This is Lucner and most of his family, in front of his home in Laqua.  He has one more daughter who is away at university. 
He's a pastor, a friend, an encourager, and he's also translated for me several times, in giving messages to churches and in teaching classes. 
I told him a couple of months ago that I don't deserve to be standing in the pulpit preaching.  I couldn't understand why pastors kept asking me to preach.  I'm not a pastor.  
He told me that God can use me because of my brokenness. "Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you UP, my friend!" He says, literally holding my hands up in the air.  
He always backs up his words with Scripture. What's most unbelievable to me is how like-minded we are, even in casual conversation.   He stops by, almost always out of the blue, when I most need a word of encouragement.  He has an uncanny way of quoting a passage to me that I've just read or thought about.  

He's not yet allowed me to pay him to translate, even though this is how he provides for his family.  He tells me that when it's for the Lord, God has already shown him that our friendship is enough.  There is only one other man in this country that has been that way with me.  His name is Antenor Frantz, and he  will forever be my brother.  I love how God knits. 

Lucner and his wife run a school for the deaf in Cayes.  I'm hoping to visit after they return from Christmas break, to help to tell you his story.  Every time in this country when I've run upon kids who are deaf or mute, it's plain to see they don't stand a fighting chance.  They can't go to school and they are always on the fringes of society.  The street is their mother, and more often than not, they are the outcast. They fall through the cracks in Haiti, because the cracks are a mile wide.  
God bless this man.  His heart is bigger than the cracks.