Indiana church mission team takes on hurricane relief in Haiti

Published 6:00 am Wednesday, October 12, 2016

NEW ALBANY, Ind. — Every fall, a group from Faith Community Church in New Albany, Indiana, travels to Haiti for a week on a mission trip. It’s a tradition that’s been carried on for 15 years.

While there, volunteers host a medical clinic in a compound with an orphanage and a hospital near a town called Saintard. They distribute medication, perform eye exams and provide other services.

But in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, which has killed more than 1,000 Haitians, the mission group may be tasked with recovery efforts.

“We’re Christians called to serve, and God’s perfect timing is in this,” group member Dee Dee Hurt said. “We’re going at just the right time to help these people.”

As members of the group prepared to leave Monday, they didn’t know what those recovery efforts might entail. They already heard stories of houses collapsing and rivers flooding. They weren’t sure a bridge they must cross to get to their village would even be passable. And the flimsy homes that many live in may be washed away.

“They have nothing, and now they have even less,” Hurt said.

Dr. Jamie Hurt, an optometrist on the trip and Dee Dee’s husband, worried about the high potential for the spread of disease that comes with flooding. With more than 200,000 Haitians forced from their homes by the storm and the resulting flooding, access to clean food and water has been compromised, and fears of a cholera outbreak are growing.

“A lot of their rivers, they have garbage dumped right on the edges of them, so when floodwaters come up, a lot of garbage really gets in the water,” Dr. Jamie Hurt, said. “I know the last time we were down there after a hurricane, there were so many eye infections. People get down there, they bathe, they wash their face, and then all that sewage gets in their eyes.”

The group understands that people sometimes question why Faith Community Church chooses to visit Haiti, with its political uncertainties and poverty. To Dee Dee, the answer is simple: the friends they’ve made there are like family.

“If you’re living in an area like that, it’s so dark and it’s so discouraging,” she said. “There have been time when we actually thought about just sending the money that we would spend on traveling down there, and we contacted some of the missionaries down there. And they’re like, ‘Don’t send the money. Come. Because you bring encouragement and you bring love.”

Dee Dee Hurt told the Jeffersonville, Indiana News and Tribune that the group has been in contact with their friends in the region to confirm their safety.

“I know (God) has a job for us to do,” she said. “We’re going to go down and do it.”

Beilman writes for the Jeffersonville, Indiana News and Tribune.