Marty and Mati: Faith, love and death in Haiti

Marty Welp didn’t go to Haiti to fall in love; he went to Haiti because he fell in love with Jesus Christ.

It was a big step for a man who never planned on leaving his hometown in rural Indiana.

“I’ve always loved Dubois County,” he explained. “The low-key, slow living has always been attractive to me.”

But the church wasn’t very attractive to the fun-loving Marty. “I was raised Catholic, but you know, I didn’t get the message growing up,” he said.

It wasn’t until he began attending services at the Christian Church of Jasper that he came to understand what faith really meant. Somehow, the messages he heard at the church reached him. “I have been back [Catholic Mass] now and I have attended great services. I get it now. The church hasn’t changed, I have changed,” he said.

It was during this time that senior minister Darrel Land encouraged the congregation to read a book by David Platt called Radical. Marty bought an audiobook version and listened to it while he traveled for his job at Kimball Hospitality.

In the book, Platt challenges Christians to take a one-year journey in authentic discipleship. A discipleship that isn’t shaped to fit the reader’s cultural preferences or current social status.

“I’m pretty selfish by nature, you know. I did not want to do what that book was asking me to do,” Marty explained. “It wasn’t who I was to go and help others. It wasn’t in my disposition to go work for free. None of that appealed to me.”

It was a radical change for the 1988 graduate of Southridge High School who had worked in sales positions with local furniture companies and never been married. Life had been simple; Marty made plenty of money and had a home with an affordable monthly payment. He dreamed of owning a bar and did finally partner with a friend in purchasing The Overtime in Huntingburg.

But the book and newfound love for Christ worked on him. He met with Land to talk about this new conviction he had for doing something radical. “He asked me what I was thinking,” Marty explained. “I told him I didn’t know what I was thinking but that I wanted to sell what possessions I had and go do something someplace else.”

The Christian Church of Jasper has supported missions in Haiti for many years so Land made a phone call to Pastor Leon D’Orleans, the executive director of Haiti Outreach Ministries (HOM), and Land’s mentor and close friend.

HOM creates community centers based around three foundational needs; God, education and health. Each center has a church, school, medical center and some include water purification plants. The plants are necessary since most of the city doesn’t have running water much less indoor plumbing.

“So I am thinking right away that I am off the hook.”

According to Marty, within ten minutes, Land had D’Orleans on the phone and learned that HOM had a position it needed to fill, a construction project manager. “I remember I had a sigh of relief in the back of my mind because I did not have a construction background,” Marty laughed. “So I am thinking right away that I am off the hook.”

But Land asked for some more details about the position and D’Orleans explained HOM needed someone who had good communication skills and could take photographs and liaison with engineers back in the United States. “Right then and there I knew it was something I obviously could do,” Marty said.

With the need and the opportunity staring him in the face, the freewheeling salesman and former tavern owner began to make plans to go to Haiti.

To get some construction background, he took a position with Seufert Construction in Ferdinand. The company knew of his plans to go to Haiti and Marty credits that experience heavily with the success he has had in Haiti. “I am pretty sure the Tretters [owners of Seuferts] knew I was a loss-leader when they took me on,” he said. “So I am very appreciative of the time and money they invested in me.”

A couple months into his new construction job Marty had an epiphany. “I wondered ‘what if that’s not God? What if you’re crazy,'” he asked himself about his newfound faith and predilection to help.

To clarify the matter, Marty decided to go on a short-term mission trip in August of 2012 with the Christian Church of Jasper.

On the trip, Marty immediately knew he was supposed to go to Haiti. “You know, I thought I grew up poor or less than privileged,” he said about his own childhood. “But I know where I can get four or five free meals a week in our community. I don’t know anywhere I can get a meal in Haiti. It is just abject poverty.”

Cité Soleil — a region in the city of Port-au-Prince — is one of several areas in the city that HOM has created its community centers. Cité Soleil is considered the poorest part of the poorest city in the Western Hemisphere.

The need stared him in the face. “People living on less than a dollar day. One in five children don’t make it past the age of five,” he explained. “300,000 kids can’t afford to be raised by their parents, and they get enslaved to a family. Yes, slavery is alive in well in this hemisphere.”

He returned in January to work with HOM on another short-term mission, and although he wasn’t supposed to start his long-term position with HOM until April, they convinced him to come down in February. Marty returned home on January 26 and immediately packed his clothes, finished the final touches necessary to leave the U.S. for up to three years, and returned to Haiti.

The organization put him to work on projects immediately. He originally thought he was tasked to build schools but in Haiti the need is great and the work is plentiful. “I think they tricked me,” he laughed. “I worked on 23 other projects before getting to a high school.

And he fell in love.

He met Mati Mémé on his first trip to Haiti in 2012. Mati is an accountant for HOM. She also supervises medical teams that come to the country. The 29-year-old was in the second class of students that went to grade school and high school through an HOM-supported community center in Cité Soleil. She attended college in Haiti and returned to work for the organization.

Marty remembers seeing her in the first organizational meeting he attended in Haiti on that trip. “I remember her smiling face, but I don’t know if she remembers mine,” Marty said. “I was smitten by her.”

Mati was impressed that Marty was coming to Haiti to work for HOM. “I couldn’t believe he was coming to my country to work for free,” she laughed. “I think it was very, very special and important for him to sell everything and come to my country to help.”

When he took the long-term position with HOM, he began to find excuses to talk with Mati. The two were friends and spoke frequently but it wasn’t until Marty came back to the U.S. for a visit that he knew he was in love. “You know, I was home and I would send her messages disguised as something work related, but I just wanted to talk to her,” he said. “I missed her. And you know it’s easier to speak over something like Facebook Messenger. If it gets awkward, you can always LOL it off or something. But we started talking about our feelings then.”

When he returned, the two began dating and the relationship grew stronger. They even traveled to the U.S. and Indiana together a couple times. Then, in March of this year, Marty and Mati went to Disney World together. Mati loves Disney and with the most magical place on Earth as the backdrop, Marty asked Mati to marry him.

After the Disney trip, the couple returned to Haiti with their new plans, but in late July, Cité Soleil bit back. Mati’s 26-year-old brother Welove was murdered.

In the poorest city in the poorest country in this part of the world, police departments aren’t very fastidious on crime scenes. After Welove was found on the side of a road next to a field, the local authorities simply arrived to catalog his body before releasing it directly to be buried. “They put him in a casket right there on the side of the road,” Marty said.

From what little the family has been able to determine, Welove, who was an affable and easygoing guy according to Marty and Mati, was at a party and something happened. They don’t know what started it but Welove’s hands and feet were bound and he was taken into a sugarcane field where his attackers beat him, stabbed him and shot him.

Left for dead and still bound, Welove dragged himself to the edge of the field and died within sight of the road. The authorities estimated it took him seven agonizing hours to die.

He left behind a four-year-old daughter, Blondine, who Marty calls Willow as a tribute to her father.

In the country faced with little possibility for her future, Marty and Mati were already considering adopting Blondine. Welove and Blondine’s mother Nadege both supported the adoption because of the opportunities the U.S. would give their young daughter.

With Welove’s death, Mati is now working with the local authorities to complete the adoption. In Haiti, prospective parents have to be 35 or older to adopt. Fortunately, some exceptions are made for family members and the 29-year-old Mati thinks she will be able to adopt Blondine soon. However, to avoid any other complications, the couple’s wedding has been postponed.

Through all of this, Marty has witnessed Mati’s complete faith in God. Its depth is sometimes mysterious and awe-inspiring for the man that thought he was poor in Huntingburg once upon a time. Where Welove’s senseless murder would have rocked his own faith, Mati stands strong in her grief.

It brings tears to his eyes when he talks about Mati’s faith.

But Marty is also new man, different than what many local people may know and remember about him. He can only credit God for the radical change from the hedonistic and selfish man he used to be to the flawed and loving man he is today.

His past is part of him and those experiences still come in handy during his work in the poorest city in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Now, he is contemplating the future with the love of his life and their potential adopted daughter. He is sure God will bring him opportunities to serve and he is ready to listen to that voice without question through his own young faith as well as Mati’s limitless faith.

“God always has a plan for you and nobody can ever take that away,” she explains.