| Disaster in Haiti |
Date: January 15th, 2010
Subject: January 12th Earthquake in Haiti
Dear Family, Friends, and previous Strangers alike:
I greet you in the name of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I'm sure you've been following the news like everyone else so I want to give you a brief update on what's happening with our Haiti Missions and again ask for your help with this effort.
For those of you have followed us for any period of time, you know how deeply ingrained the Haiti mission work is to our ministry. We partner with a mission organization called Remember The Poor International, where we operate a school, 2 churches, and support various community building projects in some of the poorest and most remote villages in Haiti.
Our school, the center of the community, currently feeds and educates roughly 400 kids (Kindergarten - 9th grade) in a remote village in the mountains. Not only is the 1 meal / day the only food that some of the kids receive regularly, but if our school was not there, most of these kids would join the ranks of the illiterate which unfortunately claims majority of the country. We also have planted 2 churches in these remote villages to spread Hope to these impoverished people through the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout a spiritually dark land where witchcraft, demon worship, and voodoo is so deeply ingrained into the culture. Over the years, we've dug wells, cisterns, built homes, and many other projects to support these seemingly forgotten remote villages.
First, let me give you the good news. Despite all the death and horror we're seeing on TV, no one in our village sustained life-threatening or lasting injuries, that we are aware of. But without our help, the good news will stop there.
Our Haitian people on the ground have informed us that our mission location was devastated by the earthquake. Our school, walls & roof, is severely broken, our water cisterns & wells are unusable, our solar panels for power are broken, the houses on our campus are broken & unstable, and many people's homes are totally destroyed. Pastor Pierre informed us that over 200 people from the community slept on our church / school campus under make shift tents (tarps & sticks) on Wednesday and Thursday night. There is little to no food, very little drinking water, no power or electricity (only power came from generator & solar panels even prior to storm), and very little hope with many of the people.
There are a few things you should understand. First, these people are resilient. Haiti is, after all, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. In our remote village, there was no electricity, running water, or other modern amenities prior to the earthquake. So they are used to tough situations. Secondly, on that note, 4 hurricanes & tropical storms hit Haiti in 2008. We were still trying to recover and rebuild from those. So they are also used to disasters. So you may say, "well, it's a good thing that all the governments with their aid are coming to the Haitian people's rescue".
If you miss everything else in this update, please listen to my next point: The aid that you see going into Haiti on TV, will never get to our village. For some time to come, the governments and press reporters will focus on the Haitian capital, Port Au Prince, and surrounding villages (and rightfully so), and they will never make it up to our village and our people. This is not a negative statement about the relief effort, this is a fact of life about Haiti.
Let me remind all of you of exactly where our mission is: it's seemingly in the middle of nowhere in a village called Boucan La Marre on an island off the coast of Haiti called La Gonave. I'm pretty sure no one has ever heard of it. When we go there for mission trips, we fly into Port Au Prince, drive an hour and a half on the mainland to catch a boat, sail almost 2 hours over 15 miles of water to the island port city (Anse Au Galet), and then take the most rugged 2-hour 6-mile ride of our lives up the side of the mountain to our mission base.
Since the earthquake I've gotten numerous calls, emails, etc. from people regarding what they can do to help. I told everyone to stay tuned, because I needed to know what was going on in our operation instead of just starting to collect this and that. We have been working behind the scenes to coordinate a directed effort to have the most immediate & lasting impact on what God sent us there to do long ago.
This is the 1st of many posts to come as we lay out our strategy and begin to take care of the people God has sent us to for just a time such as this.
Right now, we need as much of the following ASAP in this order:
- Prayer
- Monetary Contributions
While Remember The Poor International has only recently launched it's website, we are directing people to our LWM website for the time being. The LWM site currently has much more information on the effort and it allows us to more effectively utilize limited resources by handling all updates on a single site. Please take a moment to browse through the "OUR MISSIONS" section of our site to learn about the history and current effort that you're donating to save.
Although we're initially coordinating our response on the LWM site, please make donations to:
Remember The Poor International, Inc.
P. O. Box 23351
Tampa, FL. 33623
Phone: 813.425.3213
Feel free to contact us via the LWM website. If it's something that everyone needs to know, we'll post it. Notice I said "Previous Strangers" in the greeting, because I pray we're not strangers when all is said and done.
We're in this remote location because God sent us there to remind these people that they were not forgotten. I believe this can be one of our finest hours: the Church, the USA, and the World as we work together to help human beings who need help. It just might be that this is why "Remember The Poor International" was conceived.
Thank you for what you've done in the past and for what you'll continue to do for the Kingdom...
May God Bless You & Keep You as You Continue in the Knowledge of His Son Jesus Christ…
Sincerely,
Alfonso Kirk
Pastor, Living Witness Ministries
President - Remember The Poor International, Inc.