Plays On Word Radio

Ep 175: Gospel Work In Gang-Controlled Port-au-Prince

Fred David Kenney Jr. Season 4 Episode 175

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0:00 | 27:06

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"Amid Haiti’s gang violence and instability, missionary Brian McDaniel shares stories of gospel outreach, humanitarian aid, and disciple-making under pressure. How does faithful ministry in dangerous places challenge your understanding of trust and obedience?"

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We talk with missionary pastor Brian McDaniel for a clear-eyed update from Port-au-Prince, where gangs, closed flights, and constant danger collide with relentless gospel work. We come away sobered by the reality on the ground and strengthened by how God keeps opening doors through prayer, protection, and bold church planting.
• airport closures, restricted flights, and what it takes to get in safely
gang control in the capital and preaching anyway
• the evangelism truck story and handing out 14,000 Gospel of John booklets
police protection forming around the Bible training center
• spiritual warfare, voodoo influence, and why Bible-teaching churches matter
discipleship model that trains pastors for years then sends them out
urgent needs like port fees to release a donated food container
audio Bibles in Haitian Creole and why that changes whole neighborhoods
• the personal cost of evacuating family and going back in
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Brian's original interview, EP 124

Cross To Light Ministry - https://crosstolight.com | Brian and Sophia McDaniel
Ministry Continues in Haiti Despite Rising Gang Violence -
https://calvarychapelmagazine.org/articles/cross-to-light-in-haiti
Pastor Brian McDaniel 

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Voodoo, Deliverance, And The Mission

SPEAKER_02

Lord, you know.

SPEAKER_01

You're now listening to play is the best.

SPEAKER_02

The voodoo. The voodoo is strong and the deception strong. And that's why what we're doing is, you know, we get these young guys who are making disciples, preaching the gospel, and actually establishing the only Bible-teaching churches on the island. That's the only thing that's gonna break the back of the voodoo, nothing else.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah, and you've seen people delivered from that.

SPEAKER_02

Oh yeah, are you kidding? In the name of Jesus, they come out. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Welcome And Why Haiti Matters

SPEAKER_00

Hello, and welcome to Place on Word Radio, where we discuss, analyze, work, and play on the Word of God. Thank you for joining us on the Sixth Thursday today. Let's join Pastor Teddy, also known as Fred David Kenny Jr. That's made founder of Plays on Word Theater. Yes indeed. He does a deep dive into the Word of God.

SPEAKER_01

Deep dive, deep dive. Amen. Thank you very much, Josh Taylor and Katie Kenny, for that introduction. Welcome to everybody. Welcome to everybody. Welcome everybody to Plays on Word. There we go. Plays on Word Radio. Yes, my name is Fred David Kenny Jr. And we are moving along. We are currently getting ready to go to Calvary Chapel Clayton, their marriage conference. And we're real excited about that. We'll be doing our Pete play for them. Yeah, it's gonna be dinner a play, dinner and a play. Yeah, so that's gonna be really cool. But I had the chance to catch up with our dear brother, Brian McDaniel, who is who has been on the program before. He's a pastor in Haiti, he's a missionary in Haiti, and let me tell you, Haiti is oof, ooh, Haiti's next level right now. And this conversation that I was able to have with him was eye-opening to say the least. It was amazing. So I'm not gonna waste a whole bunch of time of but your time right now. We're gonna get right into the check this out. Listen to it. How are you doing, bro? I'm I'm blessed. Man, I'm glad we are able to connect, even if it's for a little bit of time. I just wanted to, man, we we had you on plays on word radio. We'll we'll put up a link to the uh the other episode, but we wanted to get an update, man, on what's going on with Brian McDaniel from uh down in Haiti down there, man. So what's going on? Where are you located right now?

SPEAKER_02

If it's safe, I just I just I just flew back into Cal.

Getting Into Haiti With Flights Closed

SPEAKER_02

So I was in like I was I was in Haiti right before I saw you last week, and you know it's it's it's tough getting in there because the airport's closed. The FAA restricted all flights going in. Wow. And so we were able to take mission flights international. We're able to get a small aircraft to take us in, and it's like 90% of the capital's taken over by gangs, but by the grace of God, we're like the the last 10%. It's a miracle that haven't gotten us. And wow, we we we preached big time. We we have an evangelism vehicle, it's a a box truck with the sides cut out, and we took that out in the Capitol, passed out 14,000 gospel of Johns a lot to a lot of gang members.

SPEAKER_01

Oh man, God bless you.

SPEAKER_02

And and they they they they didn't shoot, they listened, and people got saved. Amen.

SPEAKER_01

Praise God, man. Wow, that ugh. That's uh you're you're literally in a war zone, man. It started going south. Was it last summer? Or yeah. I mean, it's been it's never been great, but when did it go south? Where I was like, I told my congregation, I said, we gotta we gotta pray for Brian.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it it it like maybe a year and a half ago, it started getting bad. And so, but now the tides are turning. It's like Exodus 17 when Moses' hands are up. Now the the the they're sending in reinforcements, the cops are getting organized, they have resources, and they gotta they're determined to fight. So they're there a lot of fighting going on, but we're winning, amen.

SPEAKER_01

Amen to that, man. Amen. That poof. That's yeah, that's 100% awesome, man.

SPEAKER_02

We're hey, we're uh where's your congregation at?

SPEAKER_01

We're in North Carolina, so we're Southport, North Carolina. We're just north of the South Carolina border. We're not far from you, man. We're we're a short flight away, a couple hours, few hours.

SPEAKER_02

Oh man, when that baby opens, man, you guys are gonna be the first ones in.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we want to come down and check you out, man. But I tell me more about what's happening. Like you're you're where you guys are meeting. Uh you have a fellowship down there where there's it was right next to the police department, or so or the police moved next to you.

SPEAKER_02

So so so what's what's happened is Mar Marco Rubio went and met the president of Haiti in Jamaica. And not they had a meeting. And then after that meeting, US C 130's cargo planes have been landing in the airport, dropping off supplies. Oh, good. Okay, now what's one of the things that happened with us, and you you just think that the hand the hand of the Lord, our security guard that we've had, okay? His name's McKinsey, and we we got him a while back, we got him a nine millimeter, okay? And so the thing was is every time you talk to him, you say, What do you need? And he says, I need ammo. There was no ammo. So he would find a guy with 20 bullets, we go, okay, go get it. He'd find a guy with a box of 50, and we go, okay, go get it, right? So he's getting this, he's getting all this ammo, right? So, so what happened was they formed

Preaching To Gang Members In The Streets

SPEAKER_02

the the the cops had to let 90% of the capital go because they were under stat, they're under, they didn't have the resources. So they congregated up right in a base right behind Cross the Light and at Cross the Light. We have a place where we let them stay. And so then they formed this little group, and there was like 20, there's like about 30 of them, and they would go out and fight. They were like David's mighty men. They would protect our area, and they would get called out by the different areas, right? Well, they had a leader, a commander of this group, and I would pray for him in the morning, you know, protect Lord would protect them and give them wisdom. And and so, anyway, the commander of the group, he got ambushed downtown, I think by barbecues, guys. They he got he got shot. And he was laying in the street, bleeding out. He had a bodyguard. The bodyguard took off running, and the guy was there dying. He was he was he was gonna die. And so, by the grace of God, our security guard and a couple other guys heard it on the radio, man down, and he knew they found out where he was and they jammed down in there and they got him. They found him on the street, they threw him in the back of the car, they took him to the hospital. He was okay, got shot in the leg, he needed some blood, he had some surgery, but he's okay. So the the guy who got shot, he knew he goes, You two guys, man, do not leave my side. He knew 100% that they saved his life, right? They banished the other bodyguard. Well, what's happened now is that guy that got shot, they just made him the new chief of police in '80. And so our security guard now.

SPEAKER_01

This is in Port-au-Prince.

SPEAKER_02

This is in Port-au-Prince. He's the he's the new chief of police, and when this stuff comes in on the C-141s, they're our security guard. So our security guard went from having you know a nine millimeter with no ammo to now he's got his own 60 cal with unlike unlimited. He's got a 50 cal, too. I called him up. He's trying to mount it on the roof. And he's got oh man, you gotta see it. He's got Kavlar helmet, night vision, goggles, bulletproof vest. They got they got like a $500,000 armor vehicle the U.S. gave them.

SPEAKER_01

God's provided. This is amazing, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah. And so now we got all kinds of special ops guys all around the Bible training center, and and they don't no one comes in there, man. They don't because those cops move their families around the Bible training center. Yeah, so the gangs just won't come in. We'll we'll find out when we get to heaven.

SPEAKER_01

Wow, man.

SPEAKER_02

That's yeah, it's pretty cool, dude. We're when we pulled in in a small aircraft at the airport, we had our army pick us up.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, that's that's favor right there. I mean, tell me, what was this what caused this degradation in like society down there as far as what when it went south? Was it because the president got shot and there's no leadership?

SPEAKER_02

Or what's yeah? Well, I think they think what happens is is some of the opposition leaders, they they've they fund the gangs okay to try to they they think that they'll keep them in power.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02

You know what I mean? They'll help them overthrow elections and so, but it's barely backfired on them because now it's you know the it's think the devil, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of I mean, we've we've prayed over the the appeal to witchcraft down there.

SPEAKER_02

I know there's a lot of the voodoo, the voodoo is strong and the deception strong, and that's why what we're doing is you know, we get these young guys who are making disciples, preaching the gospel, and actually establishing the only Bible-teaching churches on the island. That's the only thing that's gonna break the back of the voodoo, nothing else, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and you've seen people delivered from that.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah,

The Police Shield Around The Training Center

SPEAKER_02

are you kidding? In the name of Jesus, they come out, amen. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_01

Come right out, no problem, baby. Amen. Yeah, I've man. I just I'm so inspired by just hearing this the story. Yeah, is so what do you need? Is there anything like people listening right now? Somebody wanted to help out. We're gonna put a link up how they can reach out to you. But is there anything that you need besides besides prayer? We need to keep you in prayer.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we keep in prayer. Well, you know, one of the big needs we have right now, there's someone they there's a company that donated us a 40,000 or no, 40-foot container. It's like $70,000 worth of food. They donated it, and they paid for the shipping from Miami, but we got it in the port. So we got we got there's gonna be some port fees in Haiti.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02

You know, like driver, we gotta, we have we have to pay the driver 600 bucks. We gotta pay the broker, we gotta pay for the an inspection because we have them come and inspect it across the light, not at the port.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

So we have great, we have some fees in Haiti. They can, if anyone wanted to help, they could go to cross to to light, cross to light.com, and we'll use it. We use every dime we get, man, every month. There's the it's the poorest country in the western hemisphere. So every month we end up with like 10 bucks in the bank. Everything goes.

SPEAKER_01

Amen. Oh man, yeah. And and this this really should inspire somebody to pray because we've been we've been praying, and the last time we had you on, we put out an appeal that you guys need to pray for this work that God's doing there. I mean, this is straight up darkness down there, man.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah. It's like they it's it's called the land of broken dreams. Listen, where we're at in the Capitol, the UN declared it the most dangerous place, the most dangerous city on earth.

SPEAKER_01

You're kidding me. Port-a-princy.

SPEAKER_02

No, no, yeah. I didn't know in City Soleil, it's one of the top five slums in the world. Oh, when the prison fell during the earthquake, all the prisoners escaped into this city. It's right there where we're at. And they 5.2 million people are in catastrophic famine conditions, and we're feeding the hungry, preaching the gospel, clothing the poor, and we got thousands of Bibles we're given out. We got audio Bibles.

SPEAKER_01

And is this in French or Creole or something like that? In Creole, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So one of the things 95% of all organizations pulled out of the Capitol. The US State Department ordered everybody out. So we decided to stay. And the Bible says, dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness. And because we decided to stay, God has been so faithful to us. There's these, we used to get these audio Bibles, Faith Comes by Hearing. They're like 200 bucks each. They're a sol, they have a solar panel, they have a whole Bible, and in Creole, like 30 people can hear it, and they're like 200 bucks each. But we used to get like three of them and be really careful with them. Well, they called and said, Are you still there? And we said, Yes. They said that's what we heard. They said all of our contacts pulled out of Haiti. Do you want all the audio Bibles? So they gave us, they said 200 audio Bibles for each church. Oh man. That's just the beginning, man. There's one thing after another. Amen.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my goodness, man.

SPEAKER_02

Now so now every family in the church will get an audio Bible. Oh, praise God. And every family, every house around it says I'll be a wall of fire around Jerusalem. Every house will have an audio Bible. And they listen to them, man. When you they don't have anything better to do, you give them an audio Bible, they're just sitting there listening, man.

SPEAKER_01

It's in their native tongue. That's unbelievable. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah. It's thousands. I mean, we we could be four, we would get four or five of them. Now we got like thousands of them.

SPEAKER_01

Praise God, man. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02

That's all the cops got audio bibles around us, all the community, all the churches. The whole place is listening to the word of God in Creole.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my goodness that hey.

SPEAKER_02

And they they're well having a meeting tomorrow. They want to send in another boatload of them. I have a meeting tomorrow at two o'clock. They want to send in another shipment.

SPEAKER_01

Oh man,

Why Church Planting Confronts Voodoo

SPEAKER_01

dude, this the Lord is doing some work down to hear good news coming out of such a dark place just blows my mind.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And you know, there's you can't really all the airports closed for for FA restricted all flights. But we got Mission Flights International.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

And they fly the our cargo right into us for us. Yeah, we get everything we need.

SPEAKER_01

How dangerous is it for you just generally in life, just living, like living your life down there? And how is it is it dangerous? I mean, are these gangs they're really not trying to bother you because God's giving you so much favor?

SPEAKER_02

Or you know well, I mean, you know, it's it's go taking the evangelism vehicle out into gang strongholds was a little dangerous, but they didn't shoot. They didn't shoot. That was the great news.

SPEAKER_01

We didn't get shot. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02

We didn't get shot, dude. We heard a lot of gunfire, but we didn't take any direct hits.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, praise God, man.

SPEAKER_02

So anyway, other than that, you know, we got a lot. I mean, God's the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fears him.

SPEAKER_01

I just read that today, Psalm 34.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah, baby. We you know what? And the thing is, is you know, the boy Samuel grew in favor with God and man. We got listen, we got so much favor. It's just one bucket of favor over another. Amen. It's just we just because we got if if if you if any of these guys, any of your people or anybody listening loves to pray, go to cross to light, cross like and then t-o-l-i-g-h t dot com and get the newsletter prayer request, and then like when we're bringing in the container or we're going to preach the gospel, we have people pray.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, that's the key.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that is the key. We pray, they lose.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, right. Amen. I remember I think w one time a few years back, I was on a FaceTime with you, and you were showing me a bunch of guys around a table going through the word, man, and just That's what we do.

SPEAKER_02

We we we bring a small group of guys in, they live there for three years for free, and then every week we have four Calvary pastors that take them, disciple them.

SPEAKER_01

Praise God.

SPEAKER_02

And then at the end of three years, if we have seven guys, maybe one or two can go into a voodoo village and start a church.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_02

That's it.

SPEAKER_01

What is that what does that even look like? What does that entail?

SPEAKER_02

I mean, I well, we have one church, it's it's in Artabonique, it's called the Voodoo Capital of the World. And so, like, if two people get in a fight in Haiti, they'll go, you know what, that's it. I'm gonna I'm going to Artabonique. And what that means is they're gonna go pay the witch doctors, and then and then if the person hears they're gonna go to Artabonique, is they're gonna go okay, okay, okay, let's work it out. Let's let's it's a fear of Artabonique. So, anyway, we got the only Bible-teaching church in Artabonique. Man, wow, six sixteen voodoo temples in our church.

SPEAKER_01

You got you have God, so you have a majority there.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, I went, I went and visited the church, and they got voodoo dolls around the outside of the church perimeter pointing at the pulpit.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my goodness, wow, man. It's it's hard to comprehend in 2026. You're there on the

Food Container Costs And How To Help

SPEAKER_01

front line, but yeah, being here in America, man, and just looking at what we complain about, and then hearing your story story, I'm like, oh my goodness, this guy's glad that he didn't get shot on his on his uh ministry excursion. You know, we're like upset if somebody cuts me off in traffic if I'm going to you know midweek.

SPEAKER_02

And uh so I'm in Cal right now because we I had to get my family out in the middle of the night. They we barely got out. They were burning, they burning everything and shooting, and and so we got out at three in the morning and got I got them over here so I can go back in. My wife's Haitian, so she's going back in next month. I mean, she's used to this stuff. Wow, but we're not gonna let the kids go. She wanted to breed the kids, but we're gonna hold off a little bit.

SPEAKER_01

That sounds like a movie, man. You literally you just made it out as they were closing in on you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so oh, we barely made it out, trust me. Yeah, the last yeah, it's a mere one, it's always like that. You know, the last mission team we had there, the gangs took over the airport while the mission team was there, and they closed the airport, and and they were leaving the next day. So I didn't I didn't tell the team, you know, that they're now permanent missionaries, right? I didn't let them, I didn't want to get them riled up, right? So in the morning, the security said, nope, the airport's taken. It's it's a it'll be a firefight if we go down there. And then I looked on my app and it said flight 377 from Miami is on time. I go, hey, I don't know what the airport looks like, but their flights coming in. They go, it's not coming in. I go, it's coming in. Yeah, take them down. And it was funny because they they got them down through there, they got them out through right through the gangs with a boatload of cops, and the plane came in and picked them up and took them out, and that was the last commercial flight.

SPEAKER_01

The last one.

SPEAKER_02

Wow, yep, they closed it after that. They another one came in and they put hundreds of bullet holes in the American Airlines plane. It was sitting on the tarmac for a while.

SPEAKER_01

This is not good, man. And there's no military, it's really just the police, right?

SPEAKER_02

It's just it's just the Lord, man.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my goodness, man. Wow, that's uh so you're planning on going back this month.

SPEAKER_02

We're regrouping right now. I just guy called me this morning. We're getting we're going back in.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Well, we'll have our people, the plays on word family. You guys need to be in prayer, and we'll put we'll put links up in contact for Brian. So if you want to reach out to him directly, if you if the Lord puts on your heart heart to help or even go, hey, if you want to go, you reach out to him, man, and is the Lord'll make it happen, man. And you come back with a John Wayne story or whatever.

SPEAKER_02

Hey man. Hey, we'll get it. We'll try to get to the congregation for like five minutes before the study and try to encourage him if you want.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, man. I I just I definitely want to do that. And I tell you what, man, let me why don't why don't

Audio Bibles In Creole And God’s Provision

SPEAKER_01

you pray? And I I want to pray for you, but I'm like, man, this guy's got he's got that special anointing going on right now. Maybe you could just just just pray for us, man, and and we'll we'll pray for you, man. Okay, why don't you close us in prayer?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, oh Lord, we thank you for the it says it Psalms 105, oh, give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, and make known his deeds among the people, Lord. You're a mighty God. And Lord, I was just was reading that in the on the fourth day you made all the stars. I and I Googled how many star stars are there. It's like it's a one with 24 zeros, and it's like innumerable. And Lord, you can do anything, and you measure the heavens with the span of your hand. And Lord, when we call upon you in our day of trouble, you will answer us and you'll show us great and awesome things. You have all the resources to give us to turn it the worst situation into the best. And you give us beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning, and you work it together for good because we love you and we're called, we're called according to your purposes. So bless my brother, Lord, fill his congregation with your Holy Spirit, and let us continue to encourage each other in Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_01

Amen. Amen. Thank thank you, my brother. Thank you. I love you, man. We love you too. Brian McDaniel on the Plays On Word radio program. You guys, we we got to stay in touch with this guy. We're gonna we're gonna try to keep regular updates with him as as much as we can.

SPEAKER_02

All right, buddy. I love you, man. I'll talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_01

Very soon, man. We're gonna get this for the whole church, all right? Soon and very soon. Amen. That's it, man. All right, God bless you, brother. Amen. Hey, if you're not inspired after listening to that dude, I mean, whoo we is he is living only by the power of the Spirit of God, man, fueling his life. He's been set free. He knows what it's like to be set free by God, and he's so grateful that he's just radically, radically on fire for Christ, and he lives with reckless abandon for the Lord. He's he's one of the few guys I know that live full throttle for the Lord, just full throttle for the Lord, man. Pedal to the metal, all

Escape, Prayer, And A Call To Jesus

SPEAKER_01

about Jesus. And it's my hope that you listening to this would be inspired to just press a little harder on the pedal. Yeah. And it's not you doing it, it's the power of the Holy Spirit, man, the power of the Spirit in your life. If you don't know Jesus, then this is just futility for you, you know. But you can know him. And I would implore you, I would beg you, reach out to him, ask him to come into your life. You can say, hey, if if if that that madman down in Haiti and that madman on the radio, if they're right, I want to know you, Lord, please forgive me. Come into my life, show me, forgive me of my sins, fill me with your Holy Spirit. I I I realize I don't measure up. I know I'm a sinner. Please forgive me. Let me I want to be filled with your spirit. I want you to live through me. If you do that honestly, you will move from death to life. Just like those guys, those gang members in Haiti that they that are getting saved as they drive around in the gang-infested area with a box truck with the sides cut out, and they preach the gospel. And people are coming to the Lord. Alright. And that's all I gotta say right now about that. I'm I'm still processing like the gravity of the situation my brother's dealing with. And we thank God for it. We thank God for him. So please keep him in prayer. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. And that is all the time that we have for today. We're gonna stay as get as many updates as we can from this brother. Until we meet again next week, God willing, if the Lord tarries,

Final Blessing And Where To Find Us

SPEAKER_01

the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you, the Lord, and be gracious to you. And the Lord, may he lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

SPEAKER_00

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