Imagine life without a stove to cook on, dirt floors and using your fingers as utensils. Poverty is like an inescapable virus. This is life for children of Milot, Haiti.

Collins Chapel Baptist Church and Good Shepherd Ministries, Inc. are working to change these children’s lives by volunteering time and money to support three Christian schools in Haiti.

Today, Collins Chapel’s Vacation Bible School children will host a toy sale at Collins Chapel Fire Station on County Road 29 from 2 to 4:30 p.m.

The children will be donating their own toys to the sale. Each toy sold will not be priced, but bought based on donations. The church encourages people to give as much as their hearts lead them to, but hopes to raise $500 for the school. Any additional money will be used to buy food for the children in Haiti.

The money raised at the toy sale will go to buy bowls and spoons for the 2,000 children in the Milot school, and supplement the stove that the church is donating to the school through GSMI.

“We are learning how to serve Jesus by serving people,” church member Julia Maddox said.

The church has supported the charity for several years, and sent members on mission trips to the schools. Maddox attended one of the mission trips earlier this year.

“I have pictures that will just break your heart,” she said.

Maddox went as part of a medical team for three and a half days. The team treated 640 children, and 14 Haitian children accepted Jesus Christ in the short time period, she said in a letter to GSMI.

Good Shepherd Ministries, Inc. was founded in 1974 by Norman and Imogene Dixon when the couple felt the need to spread the Gospel to the people of Haiti. They built an orphanage to support their mission.

Now with three schools under GSMI’s wing, education has become a special project that focuses on building children into capable and educated Christian citizens in Haiti.

The church would like to see people from both Collins Chapel Baptist Church and people from the community come to the toy sale to support the VBS children as well as the Haitian children, Maddox said.

“[The toy sale is] to raise money for the children in Haiti, but also to teach our children how to serve,” Maddox said.