Haiti

Many have been calling in and asking about our response to Haiti.  We have sent supplies down for orphans with some contacts of ours and 5 cases of water filtration systems.  Enough to help about a village.  Amy left today to help with surgeries, and Vic Floener is on standby to go help with rescue work.  Curt, from CC Sarasota is on the ground and has been reporting.  Here is his latest email post:

Haiti has very little resources of its own, with its people being its biggest
asset. If we go in and build for them, cook for them, take care of them, all
we will do is put them out of work and create yet another “welfare” system,
dependant on the good ole USA. And these people want to do things for
themselves as most of them are hard working if given the chance.

As far as construction teams, get them the supplies, a couple of supervisors
and hire the locals, let them rebuild for themselves and help pump up their
economy! Most of what I saw will have to be completely bull dozed and
rebuilt. I’m no expert but I think they’ll have to evacuate everyone in PAP
and start over, the same with other areas that have been devastated like PAP.

What they need is supplies and we need the money to get the supplies to
them. It costs at least $1500 for one person to go in and stay for 7-10 days.
That money would be better put to use to purchase supplies for them and
allows us all to be better stewards of what God has given us.

If you plan on just going anyway, then consider the following: make sure
you have a plan, not a just go and see what happens. Haiti was an unsafe
place to visit before the quake, and it is only getting worse. You must team
up with a church/ministry that was already in place before the quake hit and
one that is a good steward of God’s things, you don’t want someone taking
what you do and using it for personal gain! You can only do a distribution for
two hours max and then you are mobbed and have to get out and then it is
unwise to go back to the same area over and over again as they figure that
out. Even the military is struggling with distribution and they have big guns!!

We will need people to go in and help. This will be a long term project. They
will need help both financially and physically for a long time. Due to the
number of people that can safely go in and be affective, think about splitting
your team up into several smaller teams. As many, many want to come in; it
will be easier if we all work together a couple from here and a couple from
there