Haiti Education Foundation Update

Sunday, January 18, 2010
We have heard more news from some of our longtime friends and partners in Haiti.  We are so relieved that the news of their well being is good!

Pere Irnel, former priest in charge of Ascension Parish and very good friend of the late Pere Albert is alive and well.  He is still assessing damage in the area he now has charge over.

Valdeez, circuit rider for Living Waters of the World, is alive and well.

The clinic in Cherident (Grand Colline) is still standing.  The doctor is not there at this time because there are no medical supplies. He is alive and well and in Jacmel for now.   Haiti Healthcare Partners will be working with them to get supplies as soon as possible.  Ancy’s wife, Lorna, is a nurse at the clinic and is now in Cherident to do what she can.

Living Water of the World is organizing a trip to assess damages to its water purification sites in Haiti.  They are working to secure transportation into Haiti.  If anyone has information or access to transportation, please email Chris McRae at cmcrae11@cox.net.  Purified drinking water is vital to survival for the people.

Ancy and his family are staying in Cherident with family.  He is accumulating information and will be in contact soon with photos.

The following is a news article written by John Reed of  Fishersville, Virginia, for the Staunton News Leader.  Thought you might enjoy his insight.

Finding the silver lining in Haitian earthquake

John Reed Columnist
My first impression of the people in Haiti, back in the mid-1980s, was how they maintained such joy and hope in the face of appalling poverty.

While denying themselves, they would feed our mission teams meals they would never provide for themselves. This quality of self-denial was repeated by the schoolchildren who would save a portion of their only meal that day, a bowl of enriched oatmeal, and take it to the edge of the compound where a hungry mother with a baby in her arms waited.
As the excellent News Leader series on Haiti repeatedly pointed out, it is these qualities that caused the hundreds of Shenandoah Valley residents who have been there to irresistably return and the reason my wife Anne and I went there on our honeymoon. Another impact of these visits is realizing how extremely blessed we are — never having to concern ourselves with clean water, shelter, our next meal, medical care or whether we could get to where we needed to go.

When our mission team left the mountains in Grand Colline last April to go to the airport, we had six flat tires along the way. Carrying an air pump in the vehicle is standard because of the condition of the roads. Given all of these inconveniences that are a given part of everyday life before the earthquake, imagine what it is like now.

On Friday, I was finally able to get through by cell phone to Grand Colline, high in the mountains 30 miles to the south of Port-au-Prince. It gave me great relief to find our longtime friend and driver, Ancy, and his family were safe, although their church, as well as the three-story, 24-room vocational school that Tinkling Spring Presbyterian Church built in 1995, was heavily damaged, with several hundred people now sleeping in the security of the walled courtyard.
My daughter Molly, who went with me in the early 1990s, gave me something to cheer about. She said, "Dad, the silver lining in this horrible catastrophe is that it will call the world's attention to the conditions in Haiti that existed before the earthquake, plus the rebuilding will create thousands of jobs."

Many have asked, "what can we do?" The obvious answer is to send money to the many relief organizations. One that is of great personal appeal is the Haiti Education Foundation, which feeds and educates 13,000 children (HEF disaster fund,1801 W. Block St., El Dorado, Arkansas, 71730). There are no administrative costs — all of the money goes to Haiti.

This is a challenge all people of faith are called to meet.