A Manifesto

Heartline Maternity Center Theology of Care 

At the core of the Heartline Maternity Center is our unshakable belief that every woman and every baby is created in the image of God. 

We believe their lives have unsurpassable worth and value. We believe every woman and child are deeply beloved. We believe that each of them deserve our respect as well as our care.

We believe God’s dream for humanity includes the women and children of Haiti. 

We believe God dreams of shalom - an all-encompassing active peace that is more than the absence of conflict but the life-giving presence of justice, wholeness, and flourishing. We are committed to participating in God’s heart for the women, girls, and babies of Haiti to grow and thrive.

We believe that lament and joy are sisters in this work. We are unafraid of the hard and challenging truth of life here in Haiti. We believe in holding space for the truth-telling of lament and grief. But we also believe in making a commitment to celebration, to life and joy as an act of resistance to despair, anxiety, hopelessness, and powerlessness. 

We believe God has called us to actively pursue peacemaking through birth. 

We believe in “stay and listen” because we are committed to faithfulness. We are stayers- we are not quitters. We have been here for more than a decade and we are committed to our friends and clients for the long haul.

  

We still believe in transformation - that God is still transforming the world and we are participating in that transformation, one safe birth at a time. 

We believe that maternal health care is vital to the rise of Haiti. We believe that it is the best and most long-lasting way to reduce the number of children placed in orphanages and effect change in our community. 

We believe the materially poor deserve access to Maternal Healthcare, & that Haiti needs more accessible care. We believe in tackling the root causes of poverty, oppression, and injustice by supporting and equipping the women of Haiti as mothers.

We believe that caring for women and babies is how we are experiencing and knowing God. Jesus said he was among the poor, the marginalized, and oppressed of our world and so we are there, too. 

We believe that the physical needs and the spiritual needs of our clients are inherently intertwined. 

We believe that maternal justice is holistic, - it includes the whole woman: her spirit, her soul, her mind, and her body.

We believe this. 

Your participation is key. 

To join us in this exciting work 

please consider a year-end gift here.

Click here for 2017 Full Review

Thank you for your love and support in 2017.

Troy and Tara Livesay

Heartline Ministries

The 11th Annual is here ...

In 2007 when this family tradition began, Britt was 17 years old and Lydia was 2 months old.  

Britt and Paige have basically aged out of this obligation. Soon we will need to start incorporating their offspring. 

The last five kids were given a chance to call this a dead tradition. Troy and I said, "Hey guys, we can call it if you want. Would you want to call last year's production the last one?"  

They would hear nothing of it. They are not too cool for this tradition yet.  

We had about 8 hours total to give to the project so it was a simple year. One-half day of filming a few hours of recording Hope singing and putting clips together, voila. At one point in the filming Troy was negotiating with some guys who thought we needed to pay them, while the kids and KJ and I quickly filmed what we needed. It is always good times and negotiation on this island. 

From our Winter Wonderland, we wish you and yours a most beautiful and joy-filled Christmas holiday season. Thank you so much for loving Haiti, Heartline Ministries, and us. 

Your encouragement and engagement has meant a lot to us this year! 

XOXO,

Troy, Tara, Isaac, Hope, Noah, Phoebe & Lydia 

pataje istwa ou ~ share your history

Time is hard to measure in Haiti. Surviving day-to-day does not allow for a lot of calendar awareness.  It can be difficult to remember dates of events.

Around the time of the solar eclipse, she was fighting with her brother a lot and her mother grew weary of the fighting.  

It was decided she would go stay at her aunt's house for a while, putting some space between herself and her brother.

At her aunts house she remembers that one night her aunt brought her something to drink that was a syrup and also a pill to take.  Her aunt told her it would help her sleep. She doesn't recall anything else until waking up.

She woke up "arranged in the bed" and her male cousin, the son of her aunt, was there with her.

She stopped getting her monthly cycle.

She is four months pregnant.

She is sixteen years old.

Christmas History ~ Year Three

(2009) This year will always and forever be my favorite year.  There was something tender about this year. It felt like we had a tiny piece of Bethlehem in our back yard. The kids totally enjoyed every bit of the making of the video.  The animals brought so many laughs.  Troy was convinced we'd all gone crazy, but in the end as he fought to get the borrowed donkey back into a truck, I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with him.  Britt and Chris gathered all the costumes and sent them to Haiti.  Troy wrote a simple song and Hope sang "glowy to God" over and over.

There is something about this that will always be deeply important to us all, in that less than a month after we put this together our lives were literally rocked as we watched and experienced our precious Haiti suffer the devastating effects of a giant earthquake.  This sort of represents the end of that stage  of our lives and our time in Haiti.

#BigFamilyProbs

Wouldn't it be so incredibly amazing if the world was able to provide our kids with fair and equitable treatment in the specific and crucially important area of "supply of sugar and junk food" as part of the minimum standard of operation?

Certainly our five children are entitled to a sustainable and more measured minimum provision of Poptarts, AppleCinnamonCheerios, Skittles, Cheetos, and Twix Bars.  

I know they are entitled to this because they tell me so. 

~ ~ ~

Observing them in their natural habitat instills fear. 

The deprivation they face on the regular leads to risk. They are in danger of extinction and have resorted to hiding, rationing, all varieties of dishonesty, and malfeasance. 

It opens up the age-old-question.  (You know the one.)

What is the minimum standard obligation for the universe and the parental unit to provide their dependents with a bilateral  investment in their felt and real need for junk-food? 

What approach is best? The Modern approach? The Non-Contingent approach? The Delayed Gratification Model? The Less is More wisdom of the ages? 

HOW DO WE NAVIGATE THIS???

They are basically participants in a dystopian survival game and it appears that they will ultimately battle to the bitter end over candy and breakfast cereal. 

These kids need help.  An intervention.  Something.

Say for example, a friend visits and brings in a box of Apple Jacks.  The next morning, a kitchen that routinely does not have a single visitor until 7am, is suddenly transformed into a high-traffic zone with three of five children up at 6am to get their hands on the best choice for breakfast.  

When the fourth kid arrives the accusing begins. "WHAT? You had three bowls of Apple Jacks? That was for all of us!!!!" 

Then the defense presents a case: "I got up at six. You slept. You know the rules. The early bird gets the cereal."  After that there is general disgust displayed through jerky-angry movements to get the spoon and bowl out along with the use of heavy sighing over the bowl of dull and sugar free Haiti corn flakes. 

Dokte Jen showed up with cereal and several bags of candy the other day.  Every kid grabbed a bag and ran away to bury it in the yard or shove it inside of a hollowed out book for safe keeping. It caused a stir because Lydia arrived and grabbed first. The others quickly made a claim on their bag. They were behaving like animals afraid of starvation.  

At this stage of my life, I'm right on the edge of snapping at all times - sometimes I just do a little theatrical fake snap to practice for the day the BIG one finally comes. 

"THAT IS IT YOU GUYS", I yelled.

"THIS IS COMMUNITY CANDY."  

We made a plan to combine and share all of Jen's candy. This way everyone could sample a variety of options. I suggested four (they are small) pieces per day per child - until it was gone or until a new edict was issued. 

We placed the bowl on top of the refrigerator.

A few children grumbled that it wouldn't work out fairly.  I heard those complaints - - and promptly ignored them.

Foolish.  That is what I am. 

The next day Troy provided me with jarring video.  

Prior to 7:30am the world's premier most Twix enthusiast, KitKat connoisseur, and chocolate aficionado had taken three quick hits from the chocolate bowl. In total far more than the four piece allotment was consumed. No breakfast on that particular morning, just sugar hits. 

That night I said, "Lydia, would you ever have candy for breakfast?"   

She seemed bewildered. 

"WHO, ME?"   

Isaac created a new verb a while back.  He says when I get sick of seeing him wear and re-wear the same t-shirt too often that I "disappear it".  He recently told Jen, "That shirt you gave me, she disappeared it."

It turns out that Lydia disappeared the candy. Video footage don't lie. 

Going forward we have no solution except maybe to place her in restraints during the hours we cannot watch the candy.

We are trying to sober her up and working on some sort of accountability partner for her.  We are wondering how we can be a big family that is not freaky weird about treats and the distribution of said treats.

Once that critically important task is taken care of we hope we will be ready to present our 11th Annual Livesay Christmas Extravaganza.  

~ ~ ~

This year we ran into a bit of trouble when it suddenly became obvious that we don't have enough hours in a day to finish the video as early in the month as in all past years. 

Until the 11th offering, we would like to point you back to the past 10 years, available at our YouTube Channel.

We recently got to see the Baby Jesus from 2016, he is one year old now and doing well.  

Last year ...