Water, food situation in Haiti growing critical, ADRA workers say

A week after an earthquake leveled Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince, both aid workers and survivors are struggling -- the first to quickly distribute food and clean water and the other to get their share of emergency supplies.

Photo taken from the ADRA convoy while traveling through the hardest hit areas of Port-au-Prince on route to the ADRA Haiti office. [photo: Matt Herzel/ADRA]

"Water is at a premium," said Raymond Chevalier, an ADRA employee currently helping to coordinate relief work in Haiti. "In the following days, we expect civil unrest to grow -- especially in some of the overcrowded areas where people have sought shelter -- unless an abundant supply of water and other forms of aid are quickly made available to them."

About 30,000 refugees are camping on the grounds of the Haitian Adventist University in Port-au-Prince. [photo: courtesy Dominican Union]

A doctor from the Adventist Hospital in Haiti amputates the leg of a badly wounded Haitian man. The greatly reduced staff of the small hospital is caring for more than 400 patients. [photo: Matt Herzel/ADRA]

Global Medic is also setting up a water purification system at the Adventist hospital for refugees and patients camped on the grounds.

Lesly Archer, a doctor at the hospital, said the staff is in dire need of basic medical supplies, including IVs, gauze and antibiotics. The once 70-bed hospital is currently home to 400 patients, with more arriving every day, said Matt Herzel, an ADRA employee currently in Haiti.

The hospital building itself is unusable and the staff is working outdoors, ADRA workers report.

A Loma Linda University medical team, as well as physicians from the Caribbean island of Martinique, is scheduled to arrive early this week to aid the understaffed and overworked doctors, said Elie Honore, health ministries director for the church in Inter-America. Honore, a physician, is coordinating Adventist medical teams going into Haiti.

Leaders for the Adventist Church in Inter-America said the death toll among church members is still uncertain. The church leaders, currently in Port-au-Prince, are helping search for the missing people as well as coordinating relief funding.

So far, five of the Adventist Church's 13 world regions have promised $125,000 toward church rebuilding and assistance. Adventist world church administration has promised $200,000 to go directly to "organizational needs," said Juan Prestol, undertreasurer for the world church.

"This is in addition to the money our churches are donating to general relief efforts," Prestol said.

For more information, visit adra.org and interamerica.org .

- Additional reporting by Nadia McGill and Libna Stevens

Adventist relief team entering Haiti today with medical, emergency supplies

Earthquake survivors in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince survey the damage after a 7.0 - magnitude earthquake leveled much of the city Tuesday evening. Red Cross initial estimates put the death toll at around 50,000, while the Haitian government said they estimated around 500,000. [photo: AP]

A team of Seventh-day Adventist Church relief workers is on its way to the Dominican Republic border and is expected to cross into Haiti later today.

The first wave of assistance brings medical supplies and emergency goods to the country after a 7.0 - magnitude earthquake left the nation's capital of Port-au-Prince in ruins Tuesday evening. Tens of thousands are thought to be dead.

The team, consisting of Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) workers, medical personnel from partner organization Global Medic and Inter-American church leaders, will deliver supplies, pass out water purification tablets and set up emergency care clinics.

The team will also assess the situation for the next round of relief work, which ADRA has pledged in the amount of $1 million.

ADRA President Charles Sandefur said the organization is fully committed to providing quick solutions to the urgent need in Haiti.

"We will continue to do everything possible to alleviate the suffering of those affected in this incredible tragedy," Sandefur said.

Four mobile clinics set up by ADRA and Global Medic will aid up to 1,000 patients each per day, and the water treatment supplies will provide safe drinking water for up to 90,000 people per day.

The staff will also distribute vitamins, pain medicine and antibiotics donated to ADRA by Heart to Heart International.

Wally Amundson, director for ADRA in Inter-America, acknowledged that providing sufficient aid right now is a challenge.

"With the lack of communication in Haiti, we don't know how much is available locally or how much we would need to draw on from the Dominican Republic, which is a potential source of supply line and hub for the relief effort," Amundson said via satellite phone.

Inter-American church leaders on the team will coordinate trauma counseling with the help of disaster response experts. The Inter-American workers also hope to gather more facts about church members in Port-au-Prince.

So far, church leadership reports that thousands of Haitian church members are still missing, while one local pastor has been reported dead. There were 100,000 Adventists living in Port-au-Prince before the earthquake.

Structural loss to church property currently includes damage to two of the city's largest churches, the university and hospital. The university is currently using campus grounds as a refuge for hundreds of displaced persons and hospital staff has resumed medical operations outdoors.

For more information, visit adra.org and interamerica.org

Reporting by Nadia McGill, Libna Stevens

Quake affects millions of Haitians, death toll uncertain

A devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit southern Haiti last evening, destroying buildings and triggering tsunami alerts for Haiti and the surrounding islands in the Caribbean.

The earthquake, which struck 10 miles outside the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, has so far resulted in 28 aftershocks of magnitude 4.0 or higher, CNN reported. According to the Haitian government, this is the strongest earthquake to ever strike the country.

A 7.0 earthquake that struck the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince last evening has affected millions of people, the Red Cross reported. Local and international Adventist relief workers are preparing to deliver food and water to the most affected. [image: ADRA International]

"We know that there will be great need in the coming days," said Israel Leito, president for the Adventist Church in Inter-America.

The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), the humanitarian arm of the Adventist church, is currently monitoring the situation and preparing a response, the organization reported.

"ADRA Haiti is prepared to use cash donations to make a first response immediately ... in terms of food and water to the most needy, utilizing its volunteer base," said Wally Amundson, director for ADRA in Haiti.

Several government officials and non-government organization workers are unaccounted for. Early reports indicate extensive damage to infrastructure in some areas, with the Associated Press reporting that a hospital collapsed during the quake.

Assistant director for ADRA Haiti Ketteline Israel said the destruction is widespread.

"There are buildings collapsed all around, traffic is barely moving and a general sense of panic and loss of life is evident," Israel said.

Most of the church's large institutions, such as its hospital and university, are based in Carrefour, a city on the southern outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Although Carrefour is not close to Delmas, church leaders are waiting to hear more about potential damage to those institutions as well.

Inter-American church leaders say they are hoping to have more information tomorrow. So far, the church's headquarters in Haiti have suffered no structural damages, according to local church officials.

With 80 percent of the population living below the poverty line, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The country is still recovering from a hurricane that left thousands of Haitians homeless October 2008.

The earthquake also delayed a volunteer project from a church in the United States that partners with a Haitian orphanage. A group of 31 church members from the New Hope Adventist Church in Fulton, Maryland last night canceled their week-long trip to the Eden Garden Orphanage, 60 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince.

"There were so many uncertainties," said Marty Chappell, a member of the volunteer team. "None of us are equipped to do search and rescue."

The group planned to hold a Vacation Bible School for community children, as well as help drill two water wells, one for the orphanage and one for the community.

"We knew we wouldn't have been able to drill [the wells] because of the aftershocks," Chappell said.

The orphanage sustained no damage, and the 50 children and the director and his wife are safe, he said.

Haiti has more than 335,000 Seventh-day Adventists worshiping in 470 churches. In addition to a hospital and university, the church operates dozens of schools there.

The quake affected roughly one out of three Haitians, or about 3 million people, according to Red Cross estimates.

For more information, visit adra.org and interamerica.org

UPDATE: ADRA International, ADRA Canada and the Adventist Church in Inter-America have gathered $85,000 in relief funds so far, with a goal of raising $500,000 in seven days. The funds will go directly toward helping Haitians recover from the January 12 earthquake, an spokesperson ADRA said. ADRA International is also partnering with Adventist-run Florida Hospital to send a medical team to Haiti tomorrow.

Reporting by Megan Brauner, Libna Stevens, Nadia McGill and Ansel Oliver

Adventist lawyer's blog ministers when many need it most -- Monday morning

When Kent Hansen gets a case of the Monday blues, he doesn't mope around the office; he blogs about finding God in "ordinary" and oftentimes faith-testing situations.

Adventist lawyer Kent Hansen's blog, Monday Grace, provides encouraging weekly devotionals to some 4,000 readers, many of whom he says might not attend church regularly, but welcome an opportunity to find God at their desktops. [photo: courtesy Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen]

Hansen says he "stumbled into" online ministry. The Southern Californian attorney whose blog, Monday Grace, now reaches 4,000 readers, began writing the weekly devotionals on practical faith in 1998 when his sister was in the last stages of pancreatic cancer.

"I said, 'God, I'll write if you give me something to write about,'" Hansen remembers.
Aside from completing academic or legal assignments, he hadn't written anything for 20 years, after his fiancée died in an auto accident during his junior year of college.

Since beginning Monday Grace, Hansen, who recently did a series on worry, says he has tried to "write about life, but be positive." He previously covered prayer, forgiveness and other "things people wrestle with."

Many would say his devotionals come at the ideal time.

"The people I work with sit at the computer Monday morning and say, 'Ugh ... another week.' They're facing tough stuff and I want to say something positive about God to them," Hansen says.

Out of his blogs came two books: Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places (Review & Herald Publishing, 2002) and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God's Love Through Prayer (Pacific Press, 2007).

As a boy growing up in Santa Cruz, California, Hansen was interested in history and government and knew he wanted to study law. He also demonstrated an early interest in writing -- he composed short stories, edited his academy newspaper and minored in Journalism at Seventh-day Adventist-owned La Sierra University.

In 1979, Hansen graduated with a law degree from Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Oregon. Since 2000, he has worked as general counsel for Loma Linda University, where he supervises four other university lawyers. He also serves as La Sierra's legal advisor.

While Hansen doesn't hear from everyone who reads his blog, many do contact him -- asking for prayer or sharing their experiences. "Over time it establishes a community," he says.

That community extends to some "fairly remote places," he has learned. "I've heard from [readers in] Mozambique and Zimbabwe. One woman who came across [the blog] is a Ukrainian exchange student in Beijing, China."

Hansen sees a blog as a place people who might not show up in church Saturday morning or attend an evangelistic meeting can find God. "It's very hard to get people in the doors of your church. This reaches them at their desks," he says. "That's where most of them spend their time."

Several people have even decided to become Christians because of his ministry, he says.

Broadening his reader base, several church conferences and the C.S. Lewis Foundation now run an RSS feed of his devotionals on their sites.

While Hansen's ministry might be a bit "unusual," it's also "practical and insightful," says Lowell Cooper, a reader and Loma Linda University board chair. "He's very gifted in expressing spiritual truths. He's got readers across the spectrum," Cooper says. 

To read Hansen's weekly devotionals or subscribe to the e-mail version, visit mondaygrace.com.