One Red Deer woman barely got out of Haiti while the going was good.
Janell Steeves, a local registered nurse, flew out of Port-Au-Prince a few hours before the earthquake hit.
“I found out at the airport coming home, in the Dallas airport. My jaw dropped and I just started praying. I felt like God has a purpose and reason for my life, and I’ve been in really deep thought and reflection mode ever since,” Steeves said Friday.
“Basically, I’ve been glued to the news. I’m definitely feeling a little bit of shock.”
Steeves, 27, was in Haiti as a local member of CrossRoads Church, a committee member of the church’s Global Compassion Campaign, and a delegate for the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada.
She was doing a needs assessment tour of EMCC projects, touring churches, orphanages and medical facilities to see what required attention.
Among the last places Steeves was in Haiti was Wall’s International Guest House in Port-Au-Prince. Hours after she stepped out of the house where she spent the previous night, the building came down.
Steeves said that this collapse killed Ontario nurse Yvonne Martin, the first Canadian to be confirmed killed in the earthquake.
Steeves hadn’t met Martin, but was travelling with another woman in her medical group and said she heard nothing but good things about her.
“I felt really connected with that group, even though I hadn’t met them,” Steeves said.
She added that of the two she was travelling with, one man was on the last plane out of Port-Au-Prince and the woman remained on the ground in Haiti, although Steeves has since found out she is OK.
Steeves, who works in home care, said she’d like to go back and help in the future, but is skeptical about how much assistance she could be right now.
“They need a lot of help, education . . . they need God to make a change in their nation,” she said. “They’re great people.”
While some Red Deer residents are watching TV news and praying, others are working the phone lines and Internet to get help to those in need. Darcy Lamoureux is a member of the Liberty Christian Assembly church in Red Deer and an active supporter of the church’s project in Grand Goâve, Haiti.
He got an email through from Haiti on Friday, through which he learned that most of the buildings church members sponsored in the community had been destroyed.
The church they sponsored collapsed, as did the guest house and kitchen. The orphanage was damaged, and they’re awaiting an assessment to see if it can be repaired or if it would be better to knock it down and start again.
Two of the 100 children from the orphanage were at school in Port-Au-Prince and are missing. The rest of the children weren’t injured worse than “a few scratches and bruises,” he said.
“We’d like to get in there to help, but right now that’s nearly impossible,” said Lamoureux, explaining that the warehouse that stores all the food was destroyed and the supplies buried.
Lamoureux said Liberty church is making an appeal for financial aid to get the orphanage back up and running, “to make life worth living again, just to carry on.”
“I’ve been going there for more than 25 years now . . . those kids, they’re all my family.”
mgauk@www.reddeeradvocate.com