The Big Picture

MNA Disaster Response is working to assist PCA Pastors Dony St. Germain and Brian Kelso. These men are MNA Senior Staff members and have been working in Haiti for many years. In order to determine how best to help these men and their ministries MNA Disaster Response sent assessment team, including MNA Disaster Response Director Arklie Hooten, to travel into Haiti with these men. While in Haiti these men made contact with various ministry sites to determine how best to stage MNA Disaster Response Volunteers to response to this terrible disaster. 

Currently MNA staff are working with 43 church plants which had started prior to the earthquake and is ministering to hundreds of Haitians on a regular basis. They are also working with 13 orphanages with 2,200 orphans as a ministry of mercy and outreach. This ministry is also involved with numerous local church schools and micro businesses. 

Many of the 43 church plants already underway are in cities outside of Port-au-Prince. Because of the intensity of the destruction concentrated in Port-au-Prince many thousands of people have fled that city in search of a more stable place to live. This large movement of people has caused many of the outlying cities to more than double in population, with no increases in infrastructure – infrastructure that was also affected by the earthquake. This has caused depletion of almost every type of resource that a city or town would normally afford.

MNA’s initial assessment is complete with the return of the assessment team this week. A second team is on the ground now assessing damage to over 30 homes of El Shaddai Ministries church members in the Carrefour/Port-au-Prince area. A plan has been established to direct the response of MNA to this disaster. Of course as with any event of this magnitude, this plan is subject to ‘tweaking’ and change as future events unfold. At this point the plan is as follows:

• Mobilize medical teams as space allows. This began within days of the earthquake and is continuing. Currently teams are booked through March. If you are a trained medical provider and desire to serve you can register now. To register, see link below.

• Set up earthquake response operations at Carrefour, a city near the epicenter of the quake. We are moving deliberately and as quickly as possible. This site will become the headquarters for the response. MNA Disaster Response First Responders are preparing to mobilize to secure the facility and prepare it for a long term response. We are currently gathering materials and supplies to ship to Carrefour in advance of the arrival of the First Responders. We expect this phase to take up to six weeks to complete. Once the volunteer facility is ready to go and the airport re-opens in Port-au-Prince, mobilize teams to assist in the rebuilding efforts, beginning with the homes of the members of El Shaddai mentioned above. It is absolutely cost prohibitive to send teams through the Dominican Republic and creates a significant logistical problem for coordinating over-ground transport, which is the reason to wait for the airport to open in Port-au-Prince.
• Continue to provide teams to both El Shaddai Ministries headed up by Pastor St. Germain and Great Commission Alliance headed up by Pastor Brian Kelso at various short term sites in Haiti, once the Port-au-Prince airport re-opens.

We are putting together a list of immediately needed resources and will be making this list of specific needs available shortly. Please check back later this week for this list, including specific instructions regarding packaging, palleting, and shipping these resources.  Please consider an immediate financial gift to support relief effort planning, assessment and setting up a base of operations that will facilitate and care for future long term recovery volunteers who will be working in difficult conditions.