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Local groups help earthquake survivors in Haiti
(by Kim Lunsford, Staff Writer - January 22, 2010)
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| Photo courtesy of Waves of Mercy |
| Haitian earthquake survivor, 18-month-old Louvenda sits with her aunt in the home of a Waves of Mercy church family as she awaits medication to prevent infections from burns caused by the earthquake. |
Who will be saved? Mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and complete strangers are making that decisions for families throughout Haiti. Louvenda is one of the children who became a victim of the Haitian earthquake.
Last Tuesday, the 18-month-old child was playing around the fire as her mother prepared dinner. Many Haitians do not have what some would call a normal kitchen. Outside the home, a little more than two feet off the ground, stands a round container resembling a crude wok filled with charcoal that is more like burnt wood than the briquette most Americans are used to seeing. Squatting around the pot centered in that wok, Louvenda's family began to feel the Earth tremble just as the other Haitians in and around Port au Prince. The pot tipped over onto the girl leaving her badly burned.
Louvenda's story continues as she is forced, like many other injured Haitians, onto a bus to be transported inland for either treatment or even death from their injuries. After a 12-hour bus ride into Port de Paix and passing out from the pain, the girl's fate was no more secure than it was when leaving the capital city.
Three busloads of homeless and hurt Haitians were delivered to the Port de Paix airport last weekend. In Haiti, it is the responsibility of the family that brings in the sick to feed them and pay for the necessary medications. Many victims have no family to pay for their care. They were just dropped off. In the care of her aunt, with no money and no medicine for treatments, the hospital turned Louvenda away.
Nobody wants the baby. They believe she will not survive the gangrene infection that would soon set in.
Nobody but Madame Diana and Papa Larry.
Larry and Diana Owens run Waves of Mercy mission in Port de Paix and have been in the country for 30 years taking care of Haitian orphans, street boys and widows in need.
After starting their original mission, Northwest Haiti Christian Mission, the Owens family began raising their children to know the work of a missionary. Today, while home base is in Versailles, Ky, there are two of their children as well as their spouses and their children who live and work in Haiti alongside them running the NWHCM. For their retirement gift to themselves, The Owens' created Waves of Mercy.
"They are no longer in Haiti helping, they are there living," said Lori Trousdale, director of programming and ministry at Amazing Grace Christian Church in Grove City, and their daughter.
In their outreach, they are reaching to the street boys and widows in the Port de Paix area of Haiti and their role is increasingly adapting after the tragic earthquake that has changed everything. Madame Diana and Papa Larry will be working in the hospital of Port de Paix. They will feed the injured, clothe them, and begin to make preparations for a home for well over 100 refugees.
They are providing shelter for Louvenda and her aunt and the Silvadene cream that helps neutralize the infection that might just save the girl's life.
Trousdale said this small mission is different than the other groups that are now going into Haiti. Rather than being a mission that takes out administrative costs, Waves of Mercy uses all funds to provide what local Haitians need.
This is the reason some local churches and organizations are getting involved, said Cindy Knehans, church secretary for Christian Assembly in Columbus.
"We wanted to make sure we were giving it to someone who was not eating it up with administrative fees," she said.
Christian Assembly is partnering with Amazing Grace Christian and other area churches, organizations and individuals to help aide the earthquake victims. Currently Amazing Grace Christian is gathering items to help the Haitians, not only through this hurdle, but the one that comes in six months from now when they are going to have more needs.
"When there is a need, that's what we are here for," Cheryl George of New Birth Christian Ministries said. "God has put it on my heart to do as many sheets as possible."
New Birth is focusing on the burial cloths the Haitians need to bury their victims. Their outreach ministry, Food for the Souls works to feed and help the homeless.
"Anytime there is a cry for help, we are going to step up and put our best foot forward to help," George said. "We are all family. We are all God's Children. We were put here to help."
Churches and individuals interested in getting involved in the work Waves of Mercy is doing and the earthquake aid can do so by contacting Trousdale at (614) 506-3694 or at trousdalelori@yahoo.com. Donations of peanut butter, rice, beans, other non-perishable items as well as Clorox to clean water, white sheets for burial, sleeping bags and basic hygiene items are being accepted. Monetary donations will also be accepted through the Web site http://mercysaves.org.
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