Haiti Earthquake Updates

Our Ministries in Haiti

VBC supports three ministries in Haiti, through CrossWorld. STEP (Evangelical Theological Seminary of Port-au-Prince) is one of the oldest theological institutions in the Caribbean, providing an excellent and comprehensive education for Haitian pastors. It now has over 1100 graduates, most of whom are still serving in ministry. The House of Hope is a hospital for children with tuberculosis and malnutrition on the northwest coast. They usually have 80-100 kids at a time, ranging from infants to teenagers, including some (the "Our Hope" kids) who live there permanently. Pastor Evantz Marc is a STEP graduate who is pastoring a church in the village of LaBrousse, in the interior of northwest Haiti. He and his wife Nadalette, have two children, Evda and Jobed.

Current Information

• House of Hope

  The northwest region of Haiti felt the quake, but had minimal damage. They still feel profoundly the effects of the quake as many people lost family members and friends, and they are increasingly a destination for refugees from Port-au-Prince. The House of Hope blog has been updated frequently since the earthquake, with lots of news and prayer requests.

• STEP

  STEP was very close to the epicenter of the earthquake. Several buildings on the campus were severely damaged, including the main building – most people were able to get out, but sadly one of the students was killed. Besides classrooms, the school building contained all of the offices and a large library. Attempts to salvage things from the offices and library have been put on hold since what remains of the building is very unstable. The STEP campus is now home to about 5000 refugees, and the staff there have been working hard to meet the needs for food, water, sanitation, and medical care. But God is at work meeting spiritual needs too – they are teaching Bible lessons to the children and getting together to sing hymns at night. Sunday worship services have been well attended and several people have trusted Christ as their Savior. Crossworld missionaries at STEP have been keeping a blog with earthquake updates

  A very informative resource is a video sermon/presentation by Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, documents his 2-day trip to Haiti a week after the earthquake. It contains footage from STEP, including interviews with missionaries and the seminary president. This is highly recommended, though not appropriate for children as some of the scenes are pretty intense.

• Crossworld

  Crossworld has been posting some very detailed news reports on Haiti, mostly focused on events at STEP. They also provide an opportunity to donate to Haiti relief online. Their home page has current news and photos. Click on "News" for earlier articles.

• Other Ministries

  Two other blogs which have had very good descriptions of the relief work in Haiti are by Heartline Ministries and Troy and Tara Livesay. An interesting web page from Heartline ministries shows video footage from their medical clinic.