Update and news from our missionaries and partners in Haiti:
1. Steve James and partners are providing medical care and relief supplies
at Christianville at the quake epicenter southwest of Port-au-Prince. Cooperative Baptists are participating in this effort. Nancy James at Cap Haitien in the north is maintaining the communication link with Steve and his partners.
2. Kristy Engel and our Dominican Baptist partners are in Port-au-Prince with a 75-person team (including 30 medical personnel). The group includes Ketley and Vital Pierre, IM missionaries who have come to Haiti from Nicaragua. Kristy is providing administrative oversight of 3 clinics in which the medical team is working. Non-medical staff on this team will distribute food away from the clinics. Kristy plans to bring in additional teams of doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners on January 26th and February 2nd. They are not at this time taking non-medical volunteers. The trip on the 26th is already full and headed up by physicians associated with UMass. Other Dominican staff will also be part of that team.
3. Madeline Flores and Dominican partners are providing medical care, shelter and relief supplies to quake victims being brought to the Contreras Hospital in Santo Domingo, DR.
4. Church World Service (CWS) is providing relief supplies in Port Au Prince. $15,000 of funds from OGHS has helped to pay for the supplies and their shipment from the DR into Haiti.
5. IM is closely coordinating with the Haitian Baptist Convention and the Christian University of Northern (UCNH). IM partners in Haiti are providing medical care and relief supplies at the partially finished hospital at Quartier Morin.
6. Baptist World Aid is referring potential volunteers to IM’s volunteer desk staffed by Angela Sudermann for placement opportunities. Volunteers who wish to be a part of the ministry efforts of Kristy Engel, Steve and Nancy James, and Madeline Flores-Lopez are asked to contact the Volunteer office at International Ministries to complete applications and be put on the availability list that is continually updated and sent to the missionaries. BIMvolunteers@abc- usa.org
7. IM is planning for additional teams and staffing. Herb Rogers, Vital and Ketley Pierre, David and Laura Parajon, Madeline Flores, Adalia Guiterrez, Vic Gordon and others may play roles related to those teams.
8. Additional elements of the relief response plan are expected to be released by Thursday.
9. A preliminary plan for recovery and rebuilding phases, (a three year plan),
will be developed in early February. The planning team to be named soon may include Wayne and Katherine Niles traveling to Haiti from the D. R. Congo to help assess and develop the plan with our partners on location. David and Laura Parajon are also providing consultation based on their hurricane disaster relief work in Nicaragua.
10. Hungarian Baptist Aid, with whom IM has partnered in earlier global disasters, has two personnel in Port-au-Prince as part of the Baptist World Aid Rescue 24 early response team.
11. IMA World Health is providing medicines and medical supplies as part of the international medical relief effort in Haiti. IM is a member agency of IMA World Health. IM asks those wishing to donate medicines to do so through IMA World Health.
IMA’s president and CEO, Rick Santos, along with two other IMA staff were rescued alive after being trapped for 55 hours under the collapsed Montana Hotel. They survived in an 8 by 5 by 3 feet high cavity created by two concrete beams that held back slabs of rubble.
13. IM is helping to fund a shipment of emergency relief supplies to Haiti provided through Matthew 25 Ministries. http://www.m25m.org/
14. IM’s Haiti Response Team consists of the following staff: Jose Norat, Herb and Bernice Rogers, Dave Worth, Angela Sudermann. Catherine Nold provides communication staffing. The Team coordinates with ABC World Relief Officer Lisa Rothenberger.
