News - January 14, 2010

Dear Family,

So much to tell you, where to begin. 

We have heard of several more deaths in the Port au Prince families of those who live here in our community and the family of one of our staff members.  Refugees are already arriving in our area with nothing and needing so much help. Many more will be coming very soon. We must prepare.

We have some disaster relief funds on the way from Globe International but will need much more and very soon.  Thank you for all those who have answered the call already.  We can't really convey the urgency here.   

We are praising the Lord that two pastor friends working in PAP have reported in that they are safe and some missing family members have been located alive and safe.  We still wait for word on many others.

One of our biggest concerns is the condition of one of our buildings. While we can see no structural damage at our Grace Children Adoption Home (Creche) yet, we have had problems with pieces of the ceiling falling and other structural issues over the last few years.  This is the main reason we are working so hard to get our new Creche finished quickly. The Creche building is a rented building and not one we built to our stricter standards. We continue to have very strong aftershocks here, over 50 so far, with more than 40 of these at or very near 5.0. We are beginning to be concerned about the safety of the Creche but we have nowhere to take the children at this point.

This brings me to the planning we are doing.  Our ministry team met and discussed our situation and what we are looking at in the near future as far as caring for our children and helping our community, and what the addition of thousands of refugees will mean.  This is what we are planning right now.

1.) Buy food and supplies for our 118 children while we can, Right now we have 3 days worth of food and less than a week of fuel. We also need to work on the storage depots to be able to store and distribute the supplies we expect to bring in in coming months.  We will need a few men who are construction minded to come in very soon to work on this specific project.

2.) We already have two families in our neighborhood who have lost siblings in the earthquake and have come to us for help. We are going to set up help for them through our church initially.

3.) We are also anticipating setting up a sort of food pantry for the influx of refugees that are expected to come to our area. This will require the purchase or shipment of food, some clothing and eventually household items.  Again, we will need our depots to be set up better to handle these supplies.

4.) We must finish the babies new home to move them out of the Creche house as soon as possible. It is not safe and with all the shaking still going on, we are more nervous than ever!

5.) As soon as we feel we can, Pastor and Keith will go to PAP to survey the situation and see where we can be most useful. I have heard rumors that our rented house in PAP is destroyed, (only a rumor!) Our first stop will be to check this house to see if it will be a place we can house groups coming in to help in PAP.  

6.) We will continue working on collecting supplies and shipping safely to Port de Paix dock. Right now supplies are being collected in Pensacola, FL and at the stateside warehouse in Thorntown, IN. We need to locate a 3rd location to cover an area farther west.

7.) Begin organizing teams to come in to work on the Depots, complete the new Creche building, and also teams to go to Port au Prince to help rebuild homes. These teams to Port au Prince will be in conjunction with other missionaries we know well in the area who can identify the need and work with the families after the renovations. We cannot take teams to work in PAP until we know the situation and have proper preparations in place but we are willing to talk to people to start organizing these groups.

So much to consider. What a mess,  but we will see victory in this too.

Standing Strong and Courageous in the Word He put on us 

Keith & Cindy