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Haiti Relief Updates

Last Updated 2/8/2010 12:01:45 PM

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ACSI Eastern Canada has been working in Haiti for over 15 years. Here is what we have done and are doing:

ACSI in Haiti

Three or four times every year, except during 2007, teams from Eastern Canada held conferences throughout Haiti for principals and teachers.
Canadian member school students prepared and sent several thousand student packs to Haitian students as seen in the pictures. This included basic Bible courses whereby Haitian students could earn their own Bibles by completing the courses. Our students continue to do that. The fact is that most Haitian Christian school students and their parents do not own Bibles.
Our office has sent Haitian schools hundreds of boxes of French language library books donated for the most part by French Catholic public schools in Ontario. We continue to do so. This is important because a typical Haitian school with 300 to 500 students will only have 10 or 12 books in their entire school library.
We bring key Haitian Christian school leaders to our Toronto Teacher's Convention.
In partnership with Latin American Faculty Theological Studies (FLET University) we have been offering a globally recognized MA programme in Christian School Administration to Haitian leaders. The first attendees graduated in the fall of 2009 and the Haitian Ministry of Education hired some of them even before they completed their courses.

Updates from post-earthquake Haiti and the schools that we serve:

All of the ACSI/FLET University MEd students have been found, but many of the school principals are still missing and presumed dead. Most people have lost homes, family members, and more. One principal wrote: “I am saved. My family too. We lost everything. No possibilities for future. Pray!”
There are 150,000 confirmed dead with an expected 200,000+ when everyone is accounted for in the capital region. Mission heads in the mountaintns stating that the next while will probably reveal that 500,000 died. Mountains are sliding into the valleys with every tremor taking villages and farms with them.
Aid is finally getting to many, but feeding nearly 2,000,000 is mind boggling. Word received through media says that the small missions like Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM), Rotary, etc. have been the most effective in getting supplies out fast—less logistics than UN/others.
Please view BHM's blog for news on medical and other fronts. Three stories of survival in particular are heart wrenching. With our huge government infrastructure it is hard for us to imagine a country with no infrastructure even before the quake!

MIRACLES: remember the widow's oil that never ran out? Three stories from Baptist Haiti Mission: in the first crisis, medical supplies kept turning up in cupboards that were supposed to be empty; water (this is the dry season) ran out in the big cisterns and the BHM hospital was shut when the water truck arrived, it could only unload a bit because the main cistern was NEARLY FULL and no one knows how; a pot of beans/rice was cooked for 60 hospital personnel to keep them going and my friend was assigned to tell the cook when it ran low—all 60 ate, more than once, and the pot was still nearly full!!

Amazing stories of Haitians praising God and trusting Him. Chris, VP at BHM, was driving back up the mtn with a load of supplies after dark one night, and driving by one of the tent camps heard a great hymn sing going on. Uplifting for tired folks. This past Sunday service at BHM was amazing: Solect, the superintendent for BHM's 350 schools preached on Lamentations 3:19–39. Spoke with power on Jerusalem's flattening and rebuilding and God's faithfulness every day.
Last, the future. In spite of sporadic skirmishes, even the media are amazed at the Haitians dignity, resilience, patience, grace, resourcefulness, and unusual sense of community. Out of great loss, they are beginning to regroup, move if they can, but mostly make do and start anew out of nothing. One great concern: the children—there were about 350,000 orphans before the quake, and much child slavery. Legal adoptions have sped up, but the Haitian government has stopped all new ones for good reasons: no one knows yet whether living relatives have survived, and 15 children disappeared from hospitals in one night alone, probably to traffickers. Pray for the children.
Have been very glad to see the international community supporting the Haitian people, but more importantly the battered remains of the goverenment. If it were possible to strengthen a government, eliminate corruption, and rebuild a country with solid infrastructure (not a half dozen elite families controlling everything), the earthquake will have done more than 100 years of aid help could ever do.
Pray for the spread of the gospel. There is a reason why it is called “The Gospel of Hope” even for people who seem to be in hopeless situations. What else could cause them to sing hymns in the midst of such an enormous tragedy? Following the quakes we have seen that many Haitians have become Christians.