David Short, of South Dayton Presbyterian Church (pictured in previous post), will be heading up the relief teams sent from the Ohio region. He has recently returned from a team mission to Haiti and has daily accounts of the journey at http://www.southdaytonpcachurch.org/haiti/default.htm

Here's a sample:

Friday, February 5, 2010 - Haiti Day 6

Bonjour...

Sorry about not sending out an email yesterday. After we had breakfast yesterday Bryan and I separated from the rest of the team to do a little more assessment before our long trip back to the Dominican Republic. We started out with a visit to one of our churches in Les Cayes. It was Englese Bon Berger, a church of 4000 with an orphanage, a school and a full clinic with surgery room (this part is still in development. The church was planted here 3 years ago. Part of the design of the Haitian church is to provide a holistic approach to church planting. The need is so great and more than just the soul needs to be ministered to.

After the church we checked out the guest house in Les Cayes. It is a beautiful 3 story complex, but it looks like they will need to move out until some structural analysis is done. All of the ceilings, which are concrete slabs are showing stress fractures.

Some of the things that we learned about Haiti are:

- there is 1 doctor for every 37,000 people

- there are currently 10,000 NGO's trying to help here, with no centralized organization

- education in the country

- 4% is educated by the government

- 17% is educated by the church

- 8% is educated by other organizations

- 71% is illiterate

On our way back to the DR we drove through Le a Gere (spelling) which was near the epicenter. 97% of the town was destroyed.