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Jim Hoepner in Haiti, 1996

Haiti Connections

St. Paul members Rita Brown and Jim Hoepner (pictured above) are connected with the people of Haiti in personal ways.

Haiti

One Year Later

Marking the one year anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, people are still renewing hope and rebuilding lives. St. Paul people work hard to make a difference in the world and responded to this disaster by donating $5,103 to efforts in Haiti through Lutheran World Relief.

Since the earthquake struck one year ago, gifts to ELCA Disaster Response have reached $12.5 million. What as been done in the past 12 months? Read how those gifts have been put to work »

The message came to Rita: “Dieuse is alive”

For days after the Jan. 12 Haiti earthquake, Rita Brown could not verify the safety of Dieuse (pronounced Joo’-iz) Michel, the young woman who had been an exchange student in their home in 2006.

Then came a message via Facebook social networking website from Dieuse’s friend Jocelyne: “Dieuse is alive. She is homeless but alive. She like everybody else sleeps on the streets of Port-au-Prince despite all the danger. Pray for her.”

Another friend Ruthie posted on Facebook: “I know that Dieuse’s house collapsed but I talked to her aunt and she told me that she is alive.” Later, on the day of a powerful aftershock, Ruthie wrote: “The earthquake is still shaking our country…I was so stressed this morning…(6.1)…Cry out to God!”

In 2006, Dieuse and four other young Haitian women came to the Quad Cities on a two-year study program at Scott Community College. Dieuse lived with the Brown family, mastered the English language, and eventually returned home to Haiti. They lost track of one another.

Says Rita, “There should be nothing else rivaling this story in the news. We can’t grow comfortable with this.” Yet she knows how quickly a disaster, even one of these proportions, slips from public awareness.

Rita and Jason Brown and their three daughters are doing their part to keep hope alive. Annie (12) and Laura (10) participated in a brief prayer gathering in our Chapel just days after the quake. The family has held onto the printed prayers, reciting them whenever they gather at the dinner table.

They call on God to comfort those who mourn, to shine light in the darkness, to give the Haitian people strength for the challenges ahead. And they ask God to protect their friend Dieuse.

More on Dieuse »

Jim’s “kinship” with Haiti

He can picture the two-story concrete block building where he lodged in Petit Goave, along the coastline just west of the earthquake epicenter.

In 1995 and 1996, Jim Hoepner participated in two medical mission trips to Haiti, considered the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Last week, Jim read that a massive aftershock hit Petit Goave, rattling the relief efforts. The Jan. 12 quake had already destroyed about 30 percent of the city’s buildings.

He knows that the block building is likely in rubble.

Jim’s photo album tells the story of those mission trips. Quad-City doctors, nurses, chiropractors, and helpers set up clinics in small mountain villages like Trouin. There they treated malaria, skin diseases, infections, and skeletal problems.

Jim recalls the sandbag bunkers and barbed wire around the airport, the aromas of the country, the small homes that clung to the muddy hillsides.

Ever since his experiences in Haiti, Jim has actively clipped newspaper and magazine articles, storing them in a thick folder. He has maintained a keen interest in the economic turmoil, followed closely the Duvalier and Aristide political eras.

“Before the trips, I didn’t even know where Haiti is,” says Jim, acknowledging how mission has cultivated a “kinship” with the Caribbean country. He recalls “the contentment in the most basic things… and how the people cling to their strong faith.”

Jim counts on a global response that will “stay with Haiti and not leave it when the disastrous part is just cleaned up. The world can take an impoverished nation and build it back up.”

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"Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.