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Haiti One Year Later
01/27/2011
LOUISVILLE - Within days of Haiti suffering a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake last January, Kentucky Baptists were in the country assessing the damage and preparing to render aid.
In the months that followed, roughly 250 volunteers through Kentucky Baptist disaster relief would join a host of other state Baptist conventions and organizations to provide much-needed medical care, clean-up assistance, water purification and food. When the relief operation switched to a rebuilding effort last fall, volunteers from the Bluegrass State continued to pour their time and skills into helping the people of Haiti.
From the very beginning, Coy Webb said, "we’ve been there." Webb, disaster relief coordinator for the Kentucky Baptist Convention, was on the initial assessment team—that included representatives from the North American Mission Board, Baptist Global Relief and members of several Southern Baptist conventions and organizations from Florida, Mississippi and South Carolina.
Together, the team worked with Haitian Baptists to identify immediate needs and began drafting mid- and long-term relief plans. What they discovered was overwhelming. Initial estimates were that 3 million people—or one in three Haitians—were affected in some way by the natural disaster.
Later, it was determined that the number of deaths directly caused by the earthquake ranged between 100,000 and 300,000. More significantly for relief workers was that more than 1.5 million people were left homeless. Even more were jobless and without schools and churches.
"We provided scores of people some type of shelter. We helped several churches so they could resume services," Webb said. "While that doesn’t fix everything, it does remind people that they are not forgotten—that God has not forgotten them."
Since last January, the KBC has sent 18 teams to Haiti to provide disaster relief or medical services. Depending on skill level, team assignments included setting up temporary housing, cleaning up debris and providing damage assessments for homes. Nurses and EMTs tended to the physical needs; chaplains tended to the spiritual ones.
"God was at work in Haiti in such a way, and I want to thank Kentucky Baptists for being there," said Fritz Wilson, the Florida Baptist Convention’s disaster relief coordinator. The Florida organization has been leading the relief effort—as requested by the Southern Baptist Convention—because of the state’s two-decade ministry relationship with Haiti, Wilson explained.
Wilson commended Kentuckians for working "shoulder to shoulder" in partnership with not only the Florida Baptist Convention, but with the many other state conventions that answered the call for help last year. Volunteers in Haiti have shown a willingness to endure stifling heat, rugged terrain, impoverished conditions and the headaches that come with the country’s lack of infrastructure.
When they could not give their time, Kentucky Baptists gave their resources. Wilson said the state has generously donated more than $500,000 to Haiti through Florida’s disaster relief program. The Kentucky Baptist Convention also collected 9,650 "Buckets of Hope" containing $400,000 worth of essential food items.
"The first container of buckets we opened was from Kentucky," Wilson said of the more than 70,000 five-gallon buckets sent from conventions across the nation through the North American Mission Board. Each bucket was hand-delivered to Haitian pastors for their church members and contained enough food to feed a family for one week.
As the months passed and the relief effort shifted into the rebuilding phase, Wilson said he has been pleased to discover that the Haitians have "really opened up to us." And it was Kentucky Baptists, he said, that "played a huge role initially to get us to this point."
Since October, Baptist volunteers and Haitian residents have been working together toward an SBC-wide goal to repair nearly 300 damaged churches and construct 6,000 new homes. Wilson said about 100 concrete block homes have been built in the past four months.
The project, called Haiti Rebuild, is designed to create affordable but durable housing that uses local resources and is made with Haitian hands. The project is a partnership between the SBC, Baptist Global Response, the International Mission Board and the Florida convention. "We’re empowering the people and churches in Haiti to help Haiti," Wilson said.
Baptist missionaries have been training Haitian men how to build the 246-square-foot structures, Wilson explained. Teams of 16 men are divided into four groups and spend three weeks practicing their skills in forming foundations, laying block and constructing roofs before going out to the villages. Each house costs $2,500 to build and is designed in such a way that later it can be expanded by the homeowner.
Pastor Tommy Floyd, of Oak Grove Baptist Church in Monticello, recently spent a week helping with the Haiti Rebuild project and said he found the experience both productive and rewarding.
"It was the hottest place I’ve ever been to in my life, but the missionaries we worked with were great and the people we worked for were gracious," Floyd said.
The Monticello pastor and a team of nine other men from south central Kentucky were given various construction jobs—from building an outside bathroom to repairing tin roofs.
"Whatever they needed us to do, we did it," Floyd said. "Flexibility is a key word in mission trips."
Prior to the earthquake, Haiti was on the United Nations’ list of least developed nations in the world. Floyd estimated it would take a decade before the country once again rises to that lowly status. In the meantime, he said, "Do not forget there will be physical, as well as spiritual needs there."
‘Ministry of presence’
Webb said he believes the Haitians never expected anyone to help them after the earthquake. The country had weathered the disastrous forces of nature before. They had endured floods, hurricanes and previous earthquakes—each causing its own share of death and destruction. Webb said when disaster relief teams arrived, the Haitians were doing whatever was necessary to survive—almost "returning to normal."
But their lives were not returning to normal. They were living in tent cities and combating cholera. The ones who had left the cities and moved in with their village relatives were becoming a burden on their families’ already-limited resources. While quietly and steadily meeting the basic needs of disaster victims, Webb said Baptists have been able to spread the gospel through what he called "a ministry of presence."
"The reality is that the power was out and people were hungry before the earthquake," Webb said. "I think we have made a tremendous impact there and we have given credibility to our Baptists that are there. We have opened doors to allow people to witness and provided the opportunity to connect with people in a deeper way that we never would have been able to."
Webb said that by combining the efforts of Kentucky Baptists with other state conventions the impact in Haiti has resulted in more than 260 new churches and 250,000 professions of faith.
"They are very much babes in Christ. They will need our help to grow and there will be opportunities for churches to partner," Webb said. "It is important for us to remember that by impacting one life at time we can make a difference."
The Kentucky Baptist Convention is a cooperative missions and ministry organization made up of nearly 2.400 autonomous Baptist churches in Kentucky. A variety of state and worldwide ministries are coordinated through its administrative offices in Louisville, including: missions work, disaster relief, ministry training and support, church development, evangelism and more. For more, find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
by Robin Bass, partnerships editor. Western Recorder issue date: January 25, 2011.
