By
Mary Frances Schjonberg, January 21, 2010
[Episcopal
News Service] Helicopters,
satellite phones, a little shared rice, prayer and the laying on of hands were all
part of the Episcopal Church's continued efforts to help the country of Haiti
nine days after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake decimated parts of the impoverished
nation.
The hardware is coming
into Haiti by way of the Dominican Republic, the Episcopal Church diocese there
and Episcopal Relief
& Development,
and the rice and ministering prayer is coming, in part, from the three sisters
of the Convent Sainte Marguerite, adjacent to the cathedral and operated by the Sisters of Saint Margaret, who have told their Boston-based
colleagues that they are staying put.
"We had some people
up here ask us if the sisters were leaving and I said that's not even a
question in anybody's minds," Sister Adele Marie, the order's assistant
superior, told ENS in a telephone interview Jan. 21. "They have no
intention of leaving. They have work to do there and
they have people who are dependent upon them."
Before the quake, the nuns
had what Sister Carolyn Darr, superior of the order,
called "a door ministry -- just people coming and ringing the bell, asking
for help."
"They're doing much
of the same thing out in this field -- now it's tent
ministry," she said.
She and Adele Marie said
that sisters Marie Margaret, who is a registered nurse,
and Marie Therese are living at the growing survivors' camp that Episcopal Diocese of
Haiti Bishop
Jean Zaché Duracin and
other diocesan clergy started in the hours after the earthquake destroyed wide
swaths of
"They were
ministering to them, praying with them, sharing their rice and water … just
trying to soothe them [with] praying and laying on of hands," Adele Marie said
of her sisters who, she added, have told her that conditions at the camp are
bad.
"The stench is
terrible," she said.
A third sister, Marjorie
Raphael, is with Duracin's wife, Marie-Edith, who was
injured when the Duracins' home collapsed. They are
at Zanmi Lasante,
the Partners in
Health hospital
in Cange, outside of
The diocese suffered
greatly with the quake. A number of the diocese's other 254 schools, ranging
from pre-schools to a university and a seminary, were destroyed or heavily
damaged, including the Holy Trinity complex of primary, music and trade schools
adjacent to the demolished diocesan Cathédrale Sainte
Trinité (Holy Trinity Cathedral) in Port-au-Prince.
The school's headmistress,
the Rev. Mere Fernande Pierre-Louis, was at home at
the time of the quake and trapped in rubble for a time. She was rescued and is
receiving medical treatment, according to a confirmed report here.
A portion of the
More than 100 of the
diocese's churches have been damaged or destroyed, Duracin
has said.
Much of Couvent Sainte Marguerite was destroyed and can't be
restored, Adele Marie said. "The rest of it will have to be
demolished," she added.
They do also know that the
front portion of the Foyer Notre Dame, the sisters' home for elderly Haitians,
collapsed during the quake, she said. The nuns bring the home's seven or eight
residents to the camp each night because it is not safe for them to sleep at
the Foyer for fear of looting and possible additional structural collapses.
"It's a diocese that
is physically nearly destroyed," Duracin told
the Wall Street Journal in a Jan. 21 article.
"That's the way life
is. There are moments like this, moments of sadness. There are moments of
celebration. What's important is to keep the faith. We must keep the faith,
knowing that God is with us in the good as well as in the bad days," he
said. "We must keep the faith."
Duracin was interviewed at the survivor
camp that has grown to serve as many as 3,000 who have gathered in tents and
makeshift shelters on a rocky playing field next to College Ste. Pierre, a
diocesan primary school in
The Rev. Canon Oge Beauvoir, the dean of the diocese's seminary and one of
four Episcopal Church missionaries assigned to
The plight at the camp is
a microcosm of the struggles all over
The agency is using
helicopter support from it partner Worldwide Village to provide medical supplies and
food to affected rural Haitian communities and parishes, including Gressier, Grand Colline and Trouin, according to Katie Mears, the Episcopal
Church-affiliated agency's program manager for USA disaster preparedness and
response. She and Kirsten Muth, Episcopal Relief
& Development's Senior Program Director, are operating from the
"We've been working
closely with the Episcopal
Diocese of the Dominican Republic to get shipments into
Mears added that the
relief team in the
The two women said in the release that their work is also the way the agency is
helping to establish a response mechanism that can continue to operate
efficiently as the recovery process gets underway in the coming weeks and
months.
They have helped arrange for the provision of satellite phones and solar power
chargers to enable coordination of efforts between dioceses and increase the
organization's ability to communicate with Duracin
and his colleagues as they serve the thousands of survivors that have
congregated in the College Ste. Pierre camp.
"The infrastructure of the church, even where damaged and wounded,
represents an amazing network of people, skills and resources," said Muth. "It is important that we continue to support the
people of
The Rev. Lauren Stanley, another of the Episcopal Church's missionaries to
"I believe the best course of action right now is to pray, to be generous
in your financial assistance and to begin praying about how you can respond in
the future,"
To donate to Episcopal Relief & Development click here;
or call the agency at 1-800-334-7626 ext.5129; or mail a gift to Episcopal
Relief & Development,