HomeMedia Haiti Update: Media Stories on Adventists
Haiti Update: Media Stories on Adventists
Friday, 22 January 2010
Numerous television,
newspapers, and magazines covering the Haiti tragedy have noted or featured
Seventh-day Adventists in their reports. Here are 13 leads and links:
The following link provides a report from Fox News on how one
Seventh-day Adventist congregation in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is coping
with the situation there.
ADELPHI, Md. - At the Seventh Day Adventist church in Adelphi, Md., pastor
Pierre Antoine's congregation is all Haitian. Everyone has a connection to the
tragedy. As he prepared for Saturday's 9:30 a.m. church service, Antoine met
with congregation members, including Casseus Erby, who finally got a call
through to Haiti Friday. Erby learned his immediate family is fine. But
it hasn't been all good news. Antoine said another member learned Friday that
nine members of her family are dead.
But many members, like Raymond Vernet, still don't know anything about their
loved ones' fates.
"My sister is over there," Vernet said. "I haven't heard from
anyone."
The pastor also has not heard from his kin. As leader of a 200-member
congregation, he says, "You don't have a choice not to be strong yourself.
It is not an option, you have to be strong."
He says as his members watch the devastation on television and seek answers,
it's his job to provide them.
"To help the person to understand that God makes no mistakes, that God
allows that for a purpose," Antoine said. He adds he has counseled many
congregants facing the most traumatic moments of their lives. Antoine also
plans to bring in professional grief counselors.
"If you have somebody near you, tell them that you love them, that they
are valuable to you, because in a zip, they can be gone," said Toniane
Kersaint Vernet.
Antoine said Saturday's service will not be the regular happy time of praise
and worship -- that would be inappropriate, he said. Antoine adds his sermon
will come from the 54th chapter of Isaiah, as he tries to bring a message of
hope.
USA TODAY
Injured overwhelm Haiti hospital http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-01-16-haiti-hospital_N.htm
…The earthquake rattled the foundation of the Adventist Hospital in the city's
Diquini neighborhood, forcing patients and staff into the courtyard and lawn
where they remained throughout the weekend. "We lost 52 patients yesterday,"
Medical Director Dr. Lesly Archer said Saturday. "I'm facing a very bad
situation. We don't have sufficient equipment and people are in danger." A
skeleton crew of doctors, accustomed to a 70-bed hospital with modern operating
suites, rushed among 400 patients who made their beds on concrete walkways,
gravel roads and bare patches of lawn outside the hospital. Receptionists and
nurses triaged patients and filled out forms at a table beneath a tarp. A
technician read X-rays on a folding table under a tree…
Riverside's Mount
Rubidoux Seventh-day Adventist Church is holding a 7 p.m. fundraiser today to
raise money to help victims of the Haiti earthquake.The church will conduct a
prayer vigil and pastors and elders will be on hand to counsel those who are
worried about loved ones in Haiti, said Claire Tucker, 50, a church member who
immigrated from Haiti in 1982 and is helping organize the fundraiser. A prayer
vigil and fundraiser was also held last night. Tucker said about 30 people
attended Thursday's vigil and fundraiser and contributed about $100…. About 30
to 50 Haitians attend Mount Rubidoux, she said.
Norcross, GA -- The
devastation in Haiti was the focus of a special prayer service on Saturday at
Ephese Seventh-day Adventist Church in Norcross. The service was full of
emotions, ranging from sadness to fear to joy. There was joy for Stephanie
Remy, who had no idea whether her husband and two young children survived the
earthquake until she got a call from him Friday morning. "And he said,
`Baby.' And I was like, `Oh, my God. Jesus.'" Remy told 11Alive News.
"It was such a great feeling, because I didn't eat for days. I went to
school and couldn't concentrate."
For Jean-Paul
Dieubeny, the unknown is unbearable. He still hasn't heard from his brothers,
his sisters or his daughter. "I don't know what I should do," he
said. "I've tried to do everything. I tried everywhere. I can't find
anything from them. That's really sad for me." Evans Dumond fears his wife
and two daughters may not be safe. They survived the quake, but his wife is
worried. "She told me they're on the streets sleeping and running out of
food and water," he said. "They don't know what the days ahead will
bring."
So they turned out
Saturday to pray, to be together, to find comfort in their faith. "The
country is devastated," said Pastor Jacques Medastin. "Our hearts are
devastated, but Haiti will rise up, again. And so will we."
… Carrefour, once a crossroads for rice-planting villages near the sea, is now
the site of a huge tent city at Adventist University Haiti with thousands of
people. Wally Amundson, director of Adventist Development and Relief Agency's
inter-American division, began the biscuit distribution process days ago when
he told the WFP that his agency could help get food into the right hands. At 7
a.m. Monday, he and staffers made the 40-minute drive to the U.N. compound near
the Port-au-Prince airport to get the biscuits. Helicopters swarmed overhead.
Massive cargo planes jostled for space on the crowded taxiway. Pallets of water
and food sat stacked off the tarmac where soldiers loaded it onto trucks and
helicopters. The relief workers spent two hours locating the biscuits — a U.N.
worker couldn't find the trucks — and the right WFP people to authorize the
transfer. …
… Jeffrey Compas loaded a small cart with donations at Bethany Seventh Day
Adventist Haitian Church in Tampa Sunday. Most it coming from his neighbors,
friends and family— wanting to help the earthquake victims in Haiti.
"We've already donated money but we feel that we must donate as much as
possible. Clothes, shoes, food supplies, water supplies, hygienic
supplies," Compas said. "Because the people in Haiti will need it in
the week and months to come." …
Leaving the Dominican Republic and entering Haiti is as abrupt as ocean meeting
desert. The country's green forests were long ago slashed and burned, giving
way to dry, brown hills scarred from mining and from mudslides caused by deforestation.
The valley floor is barren, over-farmed long before the devastating earthquake.
Our caravan was composed of four Adventist Development and Relief Agency
semi-trucks, a bus chartered by GlobalMedic — a Canadian NGO — and a rented
SUV. We were packed with water purification devices to help alleviate the
shortage of clean drinking water in Port-au-Prince.
Oklahoman Newspaper – Oklahoma City
Quake aid is snarled as despair in Haiti grows http://www.newsok.com/quake-aid-is-snarled-as-despair-grows/article/3432223?custom_click=lead_story_title#ixzz0d4aWr2r4
Frank Kean with the Edmond Seventh-day Adventist Church said the international
organization Adventist Development and Relief Agency is shipping much needed
relief supplies to Haiti.
Kean said people can make donations to the Adventist relief agency by calling
(800) 424-2372 or by going to www.adra.org.
Members of the Novato Haitian Seventh-Day Adventist congregation gathered at
the Novato United Methodist Church Saturday night to sing and pray for the
safety of their relatives and friends back home, and the future of their
country.
Although united by
their faith, three days after a cataclysmic magnitude-7 earthquake devastated
Port-au-Prince, the attendees were separating into three groups: those who
spoke of the relief of hearing that their loved ones survived the quake, those
who nervously kept checking their cell phones because they still haven't heard
from their relatives, and those who said with eyes cast down that the news had
not been good.
The message for the people of Haiti at an interfaith prayer service at the St.
Martin de Porres Parish Saturday was one of hope, faith and solidarity. Leaders
from St. Martin, the Baptist Haitian Tabernacle and the Haitian Seventh Day
Adventist Church of Kentucky presided over the event and called on people of
all faiths, color, creed and class to stand together in support of the
earthquake-ravaged country. …
Agape Seventh Day Adventist Church has several congregation members whose
families were impacted by the quake. Wilfrid Gabriel’s family lives in Jacmel,
outside of Port-au-Prince, an area that was devastated by the earthquake.
Gabriel learned on Wednesday that his younger sister perished in the
earthquake. … The rest of Gabriel’s family has been sleeping in the streets of
Jacmel, terrified to go indoors for fear that massive aftershocks will topple
more buildings. Gabriel has been following news coverage of the earthquake for
days, but said it has left him feeling powerless. …
… In addition to donating US$10,000 to the relief efforts and launching a
collection drive in its more than 700 churches yesterday, the West Indies Union
Conference of Seventh-day Adventists said they are also prepared to help with
housing. "We are also aware that there might be some fleeing from the county,
as it happened in the past when there is a crisis, and so the church is on
alert to assist in this area with housing, especially in Portland," said
the union's president Derek Bignall in a release to the media. The church's
community services department and the Adventist Development and Relief Agency
in Jamaica have also been collecting non-perishable food items, clothing and
bedding, while Northern Caribbean University in Mandeville will be making
counselling services available to those traumatised by the event through their
Behavioral Science Department.
Identify at least ten persons in this photo including the person sitting in the front (holding the flowers) as well as the venue to enter into a chance to WIN one of five AMAZING PRIZES. Click Here to submit your entries before 30 October 2009. *Conference workers are not eligible to enter. [Archive]
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