A Match Made in Haiti

Serving with Samaritan's Purse, Couple Finds Love

April 27, 2011 - The love story of Belinda and Frantzcy goes goes beyond romance and conventional wisdom. "It was all a God thing, that's all we can say."

"Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."
— I Cor. 3:6-8a

By Trevor Freeze

For 13 years, Belinda* had specifically prayed for a husband.

Patience? Well, at age 47 there was a lot of reasons to have little patience left.

But Belinda kept praying faithfully.

And she got pretty good at waiting.

“A year ago, if you would have said I was going to go to Haiti and meet my husband, I would have said that’s not going to happen,” she said.

But after her Samaritan’s Purse contract in Uganda came to an end in October, she signed up for a year in Haiti, moving there in November.

The first week of December, Belinda was going to the bank and met a 31-year-old guard named Frantzcy* working with Samaritan’s Purse. Soon after, a friendship was formed.

And as fate would have it, the ran into each other on other trips to the bank.

Belinda said the coincidence was lost on her at the time.

“For me, we were friends and it never crossed my mind.”

“I’ve been praying for a long time that God would bring along a husband,” she said. “I prayed for specific things, but I never prayed for a 31-year-old.”

So finally one day, Frantzcy sent Belinda an e-mail.

That was late December. Fast-forward a few months and all of Belinda’s fears had been put to rest.

“We’re so much alike. We get along really well,” she said. “We are so much alike, it’s weird. Our temperaments, I don’t know, it’s like I’ve known him for years. Like I’ve known him forever.

“But then it’s like, ‘How can this be, we’re not even from the same country.’ ”

But God wove their hearts together and on April 9, the couple was married by Billy Graham Evangelistic Association Rapid Response chaplain Denny Sanders.

Belinda had made a connection with Denny and his wife Ginger, when they were in Haiti in December and as the most recent chaplains left a week before their wedding date, the Sanders had returned.

“We announced it two weeks before we got married,” said Belinda, who will continue to serve in Haiti until at least November, when her contract expires.

The event, as Belinda described it, was as picturesque and perfect as she could have asked for, the ring exchange coinciding precisely with the glow of a Haitian sunset.

“It was awesome,” she said. “God just provided the whole scene. Everybody pitched in. The Lord just blessed the whole time.”

The couple honeymooned two nights at a beachside resort and then moved into an apartment that has both running water and electricity, a rarity in Haiti.

But not as rare to Belinda as meeting the man of her dreams.

A 31-year-old. In another country. Doing the Lord’s work.

And married four months later.

“It’s funny,” she said. “The first day I was going to the apartment, I said to my husband, ‘Can you pinch me real quick? I just want to make sure this isn’t a dream.’ ”

Not a dream. But still, quite a story. "It was all a God thing." Belinda said. "That’s all we can say."

*To protect their identity, last names were omitted.