Locals forged bond with Haiti through missions

As death tolls rise amid devastation in Haiti, many Lynchburg-area residents hold a connection that spans the 1,300-mile gap and puts names and faces with those potentially among the missing or dead.

Through the years, area churches, schools and other organizations have sent many humanitarian missions to the desperately poor nation. Now, shaken by the tragedy, those that have been there try to comprehend the damage and seek information about friends they have made in Haiti.

In Moneta, members of Resurrection Catholic Church have an ongoing relationship with a girls’ orphanage in Port-au-Prince. Since news of the earthquake, they have been trying to find out what happened to the children and the orphanage in the middle of the city.

On Thursday, church members learned that five of the children had died, said Adele Dellavalle-Rauth of Huddleston.

“We don’t even know their names,” she said.

Dellavalle-Rauth, who has traveled to Haiti several times, said it’s hard being so connected to the area but not being able to find out which friends are fine, and which might be among the missing, or even the dead.

The church has a close relationship with the orphanage, known as Foyer des Filles de Dieu, or Home of the Daughters of God.

“We know (the girls) by name,” she said. “It’s long-term and very deep, and we’ve been just beside ourselves trying to get word, to know what happened.”

Career missionaries Wallace and Eleanor Turnbull, who spent 57 years in Haiti, have been working the phones and Internet, too.

“Imagine over 2 million people in a city that’s smashed,” Wallace Turnbull said.

“It’s a horror. To them it’s Armageddon.”

The couple, who now live in Lynchburg, spent their time in Haiti near Port-au-Prince. They now mentor Haitian students at Liberty University.

Out of all the work they accomplished, Wallace Turnbull said he feels particularly gratified that the hospital he helped to start is being put to good use in the wake of the devastation.

He said he has been in touch with teams working at the hospital, who have informed him the building is still structurally sound, due to its concrete-reinforced frame.

It’s also overrun with the injured, he said.

“They come from all down around the city, come up the mountain to our place because there’s no place to get help in Port-au-Prince,” he said. “It’s a full hospital that grew out of just patching wounds.”

Turnbull, like Dellavalle-Rauth, acknowledged a faithful resilience among the people.

“I’ve had two reports of people hearing people singing hymns at night during the tremblings,” he said.

“A shock would come and they would sing a hymn and thank God they’re alive and another shock would come.”

Retired nurse and schoolteacher Kathy Chase, of Amherst, said in only two trips she’s taken to Haiti, she was impressed with the willingness of the people to try to improve their situation.

“I have to say I saw great progress between October of ’08 and October of ’09,” she said.

An ordained deacon at Amherst’s Ascension Episcopal Church, Chase said she got involved through Christian Service International, with whom she took both her trips.

Disheartening for Chase was the knowledge that things had been slowly but surely improving, at least as far as cleanliness was concerned.

“I am just crushed for those people that they’re right back, worse than where they were,” she said.

“It’s overwhelming, and my hope is that somehow or another, there will be good that will come out of this,” she said.

Even if that’s just making the world more aware of the plight Haitians suffered before the quake, she said, that would be something.

Charlie Johnson, a Lynchburg resident and pastor at several area churches, said he and his wife, Joanne, have visited Haiti four times, as their daughter and son-in-law spent three years in the country as missionaries.

“Watching the news it was absolutely petrifying, because you know how poor the country is,” he said.

Johnson’s first granddaughter, Taisie, was adopted from Haiti, and he said she has always had a heart for the people of her homeland.

For her birthday, which will come next week, Johnson said, Taisie had asked, rather than receiving presents, for her friends to bring items to donate to the Haitians.

After the quake hit, he said, she decided to postpone the event until her family knew better what the people needed.

“She’s actually put off her birthday party until she can find out what they need,” he said.

“It’s heartbreaking because you know how hard it’s going to be for them.”