Escalating violence, including the weekend kidnapping of 17 Christian missionaries east of Port-au-Prince by a gang identified as the 400 Mawozo, threatens to end medical missionary David Vanderpool’s work there as the cofounder of LiveBeyond, a Gospel, medical and humanitarian group on the island since 2013.

Vanderpool said, “This episode is just the most recent in many, many, many hundreds of episodes that have been going on since the United Nations left in 2017. We’ve taken pretty stringent security precautions because we’ve been attacked ourselves many times. The problem is, this really represents an escalation. Kidnapping this many Americans at one time is a departure from what they’ve done in the past.”

The 17 missionaries kidnapped included 16 U.S. nationals and a Canadian working for Christian Aid Ministries, among them five children, who were taken while visiting an orphanage. The Ohio-based group provides a worldwide ministry outreach for Amish, Mennonite, and other conservative Anabaptist groups.

Conditions have deteriorated since the UN pulled peacekeeping forces out of Haiti in 2017, with violence escalating since the July murder of Haitian President Jovenel Moise and the August earthquake, both of which further shredded the economy.

Vanderpool added“We need prayers. The answer to this is the love of Jesus Christ. He’s in control.”

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