After the Earthquake in Haiti

But these details do little to describe the trauma suffered by the people of Haiti. According to the International Red Cross, an estimated 3 million people were affected by the earthquake and aftershocks. Ninety percent of the city of Grand Goâve reportedly was destroyed. A United Nations assessment team declared Léogâne, a town of 134,000 west of Port-au-Prince, as the worst affected area in terms of building damage and lives lost. On February 10, the Haitian government reported that between 217,000 and 230,000 people had been identified as dead, an estimated 300,000 injured, and an estimated 1 million were homeless.

After the earthquake, the Mission Services Association office received hundreds of e-mails from various ministries and individuals serving the needs of the Haitian people. The sheer volume gives some sense of the enormity of the human tragedy on the western side of Hispaniola.

HOPELESSNESS AND FEAR
Wesner Pierre reported that the church of Christ building in Cite Cadet (Port-au-Prince) had been destroyed and services were taking place out in the open. Eddy Bazin described the total devastation of the Delmas Christian Church in Port-au-Prince.

Rene Goude, a Fellowship of Associates of Medical Evangelism (FAME) Impact Scholarship recipient studying medicine in Port-au-Prince, was standing outside her school when the quake occurred. The building collapsed, leaving no known survivors; Rene was struck by falling debris but is expected to make a full recovery.

White Fields Evangelism reported 175 church buildings in the Petit-Goâve area west of the capital were damaged; 512 church members were killed, and 2,687 children were left orphaned in the devastation.

The Haitian people”s sense of hopelessness and fear of continuing aftershocks drove many to flee the capital city and seek refuge in some areas enduring even greater poverty than the city. Hundreds of thousands in Port-au-Prince were left homeless without medicine or food in a city whose fragile infrastructure had been destroyed. Without the possibility of any immediate relief services, the masses sought refuge elsewhere.

Janeil Owen, executive director of Northwest Haiti Christian Mission, wrote that more than 31,000 residents of Port-au-Prince made their way to “Haiti”s dusty Northwest Department,” an arid and mostly barren region that is among the poorest of the nation”s 10 departments.

Approximately 147,000 (no one has an exact count) fled the capital seeking assistance in Gonaïves. Heidi Ennenbach, daughter of Gene and Becky McCoy (of Memorial Christian Church of Mountain Home, Arkansas) made her way to Cap-Haïtien with a medical team from Missouri. Two weeks after the quake struck, she reported: “You just would not believe the things I have seen . . . people everywhere with missing limbs . . . two babies died today . . . one nurse broke down today and said that last Tuesday they were just cutting people”s limbs off that were crushed . . . pray for us and that more supplies will arrive.”

POWERED BY GENEROSITY
The ministries in Haiti are serving in this atmosphere of frustration and hopelessness. Individual missionaries and organizations have formed strategic partnerships to provide what is lacking. Powered by the generosity of Christians in the United States and around the world, supplies are being delivered to meet needs in the name of Christ. God is moving in a mighty way to bring hope to a hopeless people, so they may know him as the source of peace and joy.

Shortly after travel was opened to Haiti, Joe Luttrell of International Disaster Emergency Services (IDES) made a trip to assess the needs. He found people living in tents of stick poles and bedsheets. People were subsisting on sugarcane in tent cities with no facilities.

These same people are now finding some of their most basic needs being supplied by IDES and delivered by Lifeline Christian Mission. IDES has similarly worked with more than a dozen missions and missionaries in Haiti to provide food and funds to meet needs throughout the disaster area.

Knowing that the cities of poles and sheet tents were inadequate, Eddy Bazin and Preaching Christ to the Multitudes have been providing superior tents to as many as possible. Bob DeVoe (of Lifeline) has been helping people in Grand Goâve”s tent cities to use the piles of broken cement blocks and rubble to make floors for their tents. This provides much drier living quarters. While this is not a long-term housing solution, the improved shelter is a tangible demonstration of God”s concern for daily needs.

Just days after the disaster, Salonique Adolphe, of Living Water Christian Mission, just north of Port-au-Prince, began distributing food and supplies at the hospital in Saint-Marc. Early trips proved to be much easier than the later ones. As the people became more desperate, the crowds at delivery points have grown, making the logistics difficult. Adolphe wrote, “We served over 300 care packages of food, cleaning stuff, candles, matches, deodorant and other things. Praise the Lord and thanks to all of you who prayed.”

FAME has organized its ministry to provide a short-term response and longer-term relief. Prior to the earthquake, FAME had a medical team scheduled to travel to Haiti. After the disaster, another trip was added (March 6″“22). Subsequent trips are scheduled for July and October.

Longer-term relief plans include: (1) providing funds for reconstruction of FAME medical facilities in Haiti; (2) establishing Community Health Evangelism development programs; and (3) providing scholarships for qualified Haitian students studying to be Christian medical providers in Haiti.

Northwest Haiti Christian Mission has staged an emergency response team in Port-au-Prince with a partner ministry, Mission of Hope. Together they helped provide trucks full of medicine to two major hospitals, and partnered with 12 churches in the Saint-Louis du Nord area to provide food for refugees.

Future plans include assisting Haitian Christian Outreach in Port-au-Prince with shipping, receiving, and transporting relief goods, doubling the number of meals NWHCM provides to 20,000 per day, and assembling teams of medical professionals to travel to Haiti on a weekly basis. The Spring Hill College and Medical Clinic in Port-au-Prince has focused on providing education for Haitians to meet their ongoing needs. The college is offering courses for people to become licensed practical nurses, certified nursing assistants, pharmacists, secretaries, nutritionists, and more.

ONLY IN HIM
Many other individuals and ministries are also doing good work””too many to list. The ministries of the Restoration Movement are independent and not all provide information to Mission Services, but suffice it to say, our workers in Haiti are busy meeting needs and helping people in the name of Jesus.

Our prayer is that God will use all these ministries to create a hopeful future for the Haitian people. The grip of fatalism and voodoo in Haiti has been weakening year by year because of the faithful ministry of so many Christians working in Haiti. Hopefully, the response of love in the name of Jesus to the earthquake disaster will result in thousands coming to know the grace, love, peace, and hope that is available only in him.

Reggie Hundley serves as executive director of Mission Services Association Inc., Knoxville, Tennessee.