God Answers Desperate Plea
Once Viviane Sander finished high school in her native Haiti, she came to New York to live with her Haitian father and stepmother. Her father had taken care of her financially over the years and kept in touch. Nevertheless, the fact remained that Sander’s father had left her Haitian mother when she carried Viviane in her womb in order to marry a woman who could secure him permanent residency in the U.S.
“I had heard the United States was a land blessed by God, and I wanted to see what that was about,” recalls Viviane of the 1976 invitation from her father. “I had the curiosity.”
Even though Sander at the time had no trouble staying in the country on a visa because of her father’s U.S. citizenship, the transition didn’t go smoothly. She unsurprisingly clashed with her stepmother and step-siblings. She bounced from job to job. She moved in with various friends, but soon wore out her welcome. She got entangled in a relationship with a young man that left her feeling shameful and depressed.
“Satan was tormenting me terribly,” Viviane recalls. “The enemy convinced me to jump in a river.”
Yet at the brink of suicide, Sander inexplicably escaped.
“I found myself riding on a bus, but I didn’t remember how I got there,” Viviane remembers.
Soon a friend invited Viviane to a Pentecostal church service and, at age 19, Viviane surrendered her life to Jesus. She started attending church regularly and became friends with the pastor’s assistant, André Desert. The couple wed in 1981, when Viviane was 23.
André also had immigrated to the U.S. in 1976, at the age of 24. He already had studied engineering in Haiti and architecture in Italy, but found he couldn’t get away from God’s call to ministry. He served as a pastor’s assistant for 12 years in a Church of God congregation.
In 1992, Desert joined the Assemblies of God and planted a church with a dozen people. New Life Assembly of God in Spring Valley, New York, now has over 300 attendees. The church is comprised of recent Haitian arrivals as well as Haitians who have put down roots as professionals, ranging from engineers to physicians.
Desert, 74, is vice president of the Haitian American Fellowship of the Assemblies of God, one of two dozen recognized ethnic/language groups in the AG.
As is the case with several Haitian-American congregations, New Life Assembly regularly sends funds to help Christians in the troubled Caribbean nation of 11.4 million people. Throughout its history the nation has experienced times of political instability including a 2004 coup. Yet troubles have come in other forms. Earthquakes repeatedly have devastated Haiti, most recently in 2021. Hurricane Melissa, just one in a series of tropical storms this century, left 43 people dead and widespread destruction this fall.
More persistent recent problems include abductions of wealthy people held for ransom, murders, and gang violence essentially controlling the capital of Port-au-Prince.
Jean Nixon Rebecca has been president of the Haitian American Fellowship of the AG for 14 of its 20 years in existence. The Fellowship includes 29 congregations, most of them in the northeastern U.S.
Rebecca moved to the U.S. in 1994, after planting an AG church in Haiti, which now has a related school feeding a daily hot meal to children. Since 1999, Rebecca has pastored Haitian Assembly of God in Brockton, Massachusetts. Many of the church’s 400 adherents came to the U.S. as refugees. In 2011, Haitian AG of Brockton purchased a historic building in the city and renovated it.
One of Rebecca’s goals as superintendent is to provide more effective training.
“We are trying to connect workers together through their School of Ministry to become pastors and to plant churches,” says Rebecca, 65. “We also are trying to build a bridge to assist Haitian newcomers. A lot of them are AG.”
Rebecca’s wife, Magalie, co-pastors with him. The couple’s son, Ricardo, who was 2 when the family moved to the U.S., is now a 34-year-old correctional officer.
André and Viviane Desert have three sons and one daughter. Viviane retired in April after 25 years as a county health department public health outreach worker. She has assisted her husband in church work, helping with women’s ministry and especially teaching Sunday school. She remains active, teaching guitar to youth and crocheting to women.
Viviane is grateful that she could lead her father to accept Jesus as Savior shortly before he died.
