At the time of Haiti’s earthquake, 45,000 Americans were living there. Many Americans live and visit Haiti for humanitarian reasons.
Cornerstone Free Methodist Church sent four Portage Lakes residents to drill wells for the Haitian people.
The team had just left Port-ah-Prince to drill water when the earthquake hit. They were driving in the desert when they lost control of their truck.
“Imagine a huge piece of equipment grabbing the back of your truck and shaking it as hard as it could. We couldn’t figure out why all of a sudden the truck was being pushed into the stream,” Bruce Oberlin said, an earthquake survivor. “We noticed that the desert actually looked like waves. We caught one and it carried us in the stream.”
The team turned around and headed back to the city with no idea what was ahead.
“At first, we saw walls down,” Oberlin said, “but as we progressed into the city, we had utter chaos all around us. Imagine 10 football stadiums letting out at the same time. That huge crowd was exiting the city and we were going in. As we got closer, we saw bodies laying on the road and a lot of men and women carrying children.”
The local missionaries were shocked when they saw their missionaries’ house demolished. They knew the people they had just prayed and eaten breakfast with were under the rubble.
They immediately started digging.
“We found Katie (an assistant) within an hour,” Oberlin said.
“We tore down fencing and barbed wire to make a chain to pass her down,” Portage Lakes resident Chris Browne said. “She was sitting in a suitcase. We held that without grabbing onto her legs that were broken.”
The group started digging for Jack Munos. Jack and his wife, Jeanne hosted the team during their stay. A career missionary couple from Indiana, they were deep in the rubble.
Jack was face down and pinned beneath concrete. His legs and arms were broken and he had internal injuries. A fire was blazing in the building, but the local residents were not going to let Jack die.
“It was a place that you did not want to go,” Oberlin said.” I was looking to heaven saying, ‘Dear God, remember, I’m claustrophobic.’ The actual roof of the building was on my back and underneath was nothing but rubble.”
“It was all God. He gave us the strength of 10 men,” Browne stated. “Jack was so strong. He gave me courage. A tremor would hit, but we had to keep our focus. Satan kept saying ‘you can’t do this,’ but I would pray.”
“You had to go up on your side,” Oberlin said. “There was no room. If you even touched him, Jack was in extreme pain. I found a New Testament Bible and took it up with me. That gave me a peace. We hammered and chiseled. We worked until we couldn’t move. God allowed each of us to move a major piece of concrete.”
Oberlin was in the hole for over an hour.
“We all had to resolve the fact there was a real good chance that we were not coming out,” said Oberlin. “I knew I could die. I think God wanted us to face true faith. I prayed as I went up.”
The rescue took six hours. They tied bedding together to help slide him out.
“With his broken arms and legs, he helped us by crawling,” Oberlin said. “We wrapped duct tape around his legs to grab onto something.”
When they brought him out, Jack’s first words were, “I believe that my beautiful princess is no longer here with me.”
Jeanne, his wife of 38 years had gone to the basement with two Florida missionaries. None of them survived. Oberlin had talked with Jeanne before he left to drill water. She described a village in the backlands with a Free Methodist Church in bad shape. Oberlin recalled his last conversation with Jeanne and she expressed a burden for the backlands church.
“During morning meditation, Jack got up and she put me in his seat. It was comforting. It was like a mother. I lost my father traumatically when I was young and my mother in 2000. I am just so thankful that I got that moment with her,” Browne said. “She read scripture and sang hymns in Creole. I didn’t know Creole, but she told me I sang beautiful. It was a moment I will cherish.”
Next, the team found the remains of a Haitian gentleman, in a charred stairwell. They had dinner with him the night before.They lifted the stairwell and beams to get his remains out. They gave him a proper burial. They met his pregnant wife and 3-year-old son.
“It was the best decision to bury him,” Browne stated.
With up to 7,000 being thrown into 30 foot mass graves, they saw many bodies, Browne said.
A Haitian mother cried for Browne to help her son whose eye was gone.
“She was frantic. The Embassy only helped Americans. I was afraid and confused. The boy was in the backseat. He had some bandages. There was nothing I could do,” said Browne. ”I tried to comfort and pray over him. This will weigh on me. The feeling of helplessness is so hard.”
The team lost everything including passports and clothing. Browne went with no food for the four days.
“There were children with no food. They were malnourished. I couldn’t eat,” he said. “God blinded me from what was going on.”
Hindsight, he recalls an explosion. “I’m sure it was. I didn’t know it at the time, but I could feel the heat when we were going through some areas. We just continued to pray.”
Tremors, many over 5.0, were felt every hour. The team slept in an alleyway to be safe.
“We felt the violent shaking,” Oberlin said, “but the calm was about 200 school children right below us. They sang church praise songs all night long.”
Hope arrived for Haiti, Oberlin said when they saw glimpses of U.S. planes, helicopters and our armed forces arriving.
“They coordinated the whole thing,” said Oberlin. “We saw planes and cadaver dogs from all over the world, but you could tell that it was our country that was in control. I have so much admiration for our government. They made arrangements to get us out of the country. They put us in a hotel. They let us call home. They flew us out in a C-130 plane. We were a mess. We had been in the same clothes for four days. We had been moving dead bodies.”
The team is back physically, but there are struggles.
“Last night, I had a vivid dream of me digging bodies out of my basement. I think I am going to have to put up with this until I calm down,” Oberlin said.
“I am trying to cope with God’s plan. I truly believe there is a time when we are all going to pass. It just shows that it wasn’t our time. God had his hands on us and he kept us out of harm’s way,” said Browne. “That is hard to grasp when you see so much devastation and death. I try to understand why me? What have I done? Sometimes you beat yourself up about it.”
The Clear Blue Water Team needs to get water to the Haitians.
“Their water is like a cesspool,” Oberlin said. “There is oil floating on top. That is their drinking water.”
“Ninety percent of the people are below poverty level,” Pastor Brenda Young said. “They have so little on a good day.”
