Thoughts on Haiti by a team member from Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa
As our team makes their way to CC P-a-P this AM, a number of folks have asked about the status of ministry in Jacmel. We are prayerfully anticipating sending teams on a regular basis starting later this month once a basecamp is established. Jacmel is a deep water port with a working airport, so it is strategically located not only for ministry to the immediate community but for outreach to outlying towns and villages. Please continue to pray for one of our team members who stayed behind in Jacmel. You can read about the ministry he’s partnering with at www.howcantheyhear.org.
In the meantime, here’s a first-hand account from one of the CC Costa Mesa folks we partnered with in Jacmel last week:
Friday evening January 30, both the CCOB and CC Costa Mesa teams arrived back home in the USA. Our teams left Jacmel Friday morning at 12:00 AM for the drive back to Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic. It ended up being about a 15 hour journey. Although the road that connects Jacmel to Port Au Prince is open about, half of it is a small two lane road through the mountains. The earthquake and following aftershocks triggered a number of landslides that have been cleared enough to allow single vehicles to pass.
Between the mountain pass and Port Au Prince lies the city of Leogane. Leogane was all but completely destroyed. We spoke to both Canadian and American troops we met that night who were stationed at two food storage sites. The death toll in Leogane alone was estimated at 20,000 to 30,000. Driving through Port Au Prince at night was both eerie and heartbreaking. The city lay in ruin with only the dim glow of an occasional street light. The streets were lined with the survivors, who either had no home left or were too afraid to sleep inside. Traffic lanes were blocked off with furniture and disabled vehicles to prevent the thousands that were sleeping in the streets from being run over by the occasional vehicle that passed by.
At the Haitian/Dominican border there was a convoy of vehicles that must have been close to a mile long trying to get into Haiti from the Dominican side. Our drive into Jacmel, from the DR a week earlier, had been a very difficult drive do to road conditions and traffic. We could only imagine what it was going to be like this day. A FEMA representative we met at the airport told us that things in Port Au Prince were still very chaotic. He said there was still little in the way of a centralize command, a lot of confusion, and no real plans for the future.
Based on all we have seen we still believe that we could best serve the people of Haiti by setting up a command base in the city of Jacmel. The team from CC Ft Lauderdale has confirmed our original assessment and is looking to partnership with us. We have also been contacted by a number of Calvaries, and other ministries that are interested in working together on this endeavor. We are negotiating a lease on a piece of property and are preparing teams as well as gathering needed materials. We hope, by God’s grace, to have an operational base camp in Jacmel ASAP.
Please continue to pray for the people of Haiti, that God would open their eyes and hearts to His boundless love for them. Then pray that He would send the laborers and resources we will need to impact this nation for Christ.
