The person they were going to visit wasn’t home. The guy at the shack where they ended up appeared to be drunk.
It didn’t have the traditional makings of a successful ministry outing.
But as he opened a Bible and spoke with the vodou priest, Jameson Supan found the man responsive. He accepted the gospel message brought.
“He immediately … basically got rid of everything regarding vodou on the spot,” Supan said. “All glory to God … it was God’s timing.”
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Supan said there was nothing special about his own words that day. He believes he simply was allowed a front-row seat for the moment God chose to save the man.
Supan and his wife, Jordan, are bound to return to Haiti in coming weeks to join the ministry of Charis. The organization (whose name is Greek for “God’s grace”) carries out evangelism among people involved in vodou, teaches new Christians, plants churches, and responds to physical needs as well.
Medical doctor Malcolm Henderson and his wife, Joy, founded Charis and live in the SudEst state of Haiti with their four children. Jameson Supan will work with teaching and equipping future church leaders. Jordan Supan, whose professional background is in physical therapy, will put her training to use there.
It’s been quite a shift for two people who went on their first mission trip to Haiti in 2016, neither looking to join the field full time. Yet in that trip, and moments since, they also see glimpses of divine timing.
Jordan Barton graduated from college at midterm and was looking to start a graduate program in the spring semester of 2016. Yet there was a persistent feeling this might not be the path. When a paperwork holdup hampered her graduate school application, she and her boyfriend Jameson went to Haiti to serve for three months with the Hendersons.
“I was pretty certain this was not something I had any interest in (long-term),” Jameson said. “She didn’t have any desire to join the mission field full-time.
“That altogether changed. Jordan was saying she didn’t even want to go back. We had to discern what we were being called to and what the work was.”
There were no landmark moments, he said, but a change came.
“It was kind of this slow shift and change of mind: ‘OK,, what are we here for?’ … We’re called to more than the day-to-day life that we expect in America.
“We really felt pushed and convicted to the point that we needed to break out of that cycle.”
The couple became engaged by the end of that trip.
“We’ve known he had a ministry calling,” said the Rev. Roger Kinion of Calvary Baptist Church in Greenfield, who married the couple on a beach in Michigan in July 2016. “We weren’t sure what that meant or how that was going to end up. Those just kind of began to develop for Jameson.”
Jordan, too, began to see ways she could uniquely serve in Haiti. She met a woman whose house fell during an earthquake in 2006, killing the woman’s husband and injuring the woman. Meeting her years after the injury, Jordan was able to work with her.
“She was able to walk around her yard for the first time in years,” Jordan said. “That was kind of a confirmation that therapy is needed and something I could do (there). … We just had specific times we felt God was really showing us and confirming the call.”
Kinion has known the Supans since they were each attending New Palestine High School and has known Jameson’s family even longer, getting to know them soon after Kinion came to Greenfield in 2005.
He’s seen Jameson grow from an all-energy boy into a man “very steady, mature — more to the intellectual side.” He’s seen Jordan the quiet teen open up and become someone good at handling logistics and administrative details.
When he thinks of how they complement each other, and how they can fit into the work at Charis, he’s excited.
“It’s just going to be a great combination.”
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A send service for Jameson and Jordan Supan is set for 6 p.m. Sunday at Calvary Baptist Church, 1450 W. Main St., Greenfield, which is sponsoring the Supans. "It’s just to celebrate what God’s doing and given them a charge and a blessing," said the Rev. Roger Kinion, pastor of the church. Anyone is welcome to attend.
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