Sarah Dyar remembers praying as a child for the opportunity to be a missionary. She wanted to go where people were hurting, poor and hungry and share the love of Jesus Christ.
Dyar“It’s always been in my heart,” said Dyar, a junior majoring in religion at Charleston Southern University. “As a young child, I wanted to be a missionary doctor in Africa.”
Before returning to the classroom after summer break last fall, Dyar was managing a restaurant in Walterboro, where she met Donald and Loretta Lyons, who lead a mission organization called Haiti Under God (H.U.G.).
“Every time they’d come in, I’d drop everything and sit down and listen to their stories about Haiti,” said Dyar. “It reminded me that I’m making the right decision to leave the workforce and prepare myself for the mission force.”
Instead of hearing stories of death and devastation, Dyar said she began to feel hopeful about life in Haiti. She still identified with the little girl who prayed to serve as a missionary. In a few weeks, she will travel to Haiti for a two-week mission trip with H.U.G. Her role will include serving at a church and cooking for 400 children at a school. Dyar also hopes to be part of the H.U.G. prayer ministry, where team members go out and pray for Haitians and share God’s word.
After thinking about it for a moment, her eyes fill with tears. “There are just so many people out there who need to know that God is there for them,” she said. “I’ve seen the difference in my life when God is there. I just think it will be amazing to share the redeeming love and grace that comes from God.”
H.U.G. has been making mission trips to Haiti twice a year for almost a decade. The first trip of the new year, the one Dyar is scheduled to be on, leaves the first week in March when about a dozen missionaries leave for Haiti, where the organization runs an orphanage and a church outside of Port-au-Prince.
“It’s a country where a little bit of help can go a long way,” said Dyar. “I just want to see some of them be able to smile. It may be that I don’t see lives changed while I’m there, but I want to be able to plant some seeds and to help some people.”
In a few weeks, Dyar’s prayer, the one she’s prayed since she was a child, will be answered when she boards a plane bound for Haiti. – CSU