Special Alert: 
Earthquake Disaster Relief

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Donations Received:  $49,332.16 (Mar 29, 2010)


Latest News from Father Gregory:

Monday, March 8, 2010 at 7:15 PM EST:


Blessings upon all!  My apologies for not getting to this sooner; as usual, a deluge of work awaited me upon return from Haiti.  As anticipated, I encountered a lot of fresh landslides on the mountain road from Jacmel to Port-au-Prince, but mercifully the rains had not been heavy enough to turn them to a sea of mud.  Haitian-style, volunteer workers were out wielding whatever tools they could muster -- and a collection hat -- in order to keep at least one lane open.  At only one point was backing up through the dirt canyon required.  And we fret about construction zones!
 
Again, my personal thanks as well as on behalf of our struggling brethren for your generosity in responding to this dreadful situation.  Since the earthquake (not including regular pledges) nearly $44,000 has been offered.  In due course, I will prepare some kind of information/ thank-you letter for all the donors (at least those I can reach).
 
The most urgent need which we are in a position to meet is assistance for the schools.  Even though none of the buildings were destroyed, only at St. Nicholas is the building actually usable under current conditions (and it is desperately in need of a roof replacement).  The government has announced that schools will re-open on 5 April (ours won't until after Annunciation), but has forbidden (until all threat of seismic activity has passed -- when will that be?!) them to use buildings with concrete roofs, even if apparently completely without damage.
 
While "academic tent cities" may offer some short-term solution, they obviously will only last until the first big storm, if that long.  My judgment is that this solution is poor economy.  Slower, but more durable, would be to get solidly built walls up with well-built wood-and-metal roofs (kind of like we build in Tennessee!).  To this end I have (a) disbursed some funds for rebuilding the roof at St. Nicholas School (the school can't currently be used in heavy rains because the roof is so leaky); (b) offered some assistance to St. John Chrysostom School for relocation; its present building while still standing cannot be used, and there is no space available on the premises for anything else; the headmaster, Jean, a reader at St. Dorothy's, is in the process of buying a piece of ground not too far distant, and the school will be relocated to temporary quarters there; (c) authorized construction of a new building at St. Augustine's on a mostly-finished foundation acquired along with a small piece of additional land in the fall of 2007; it is expected to be adequate for six classrooms; not enough, but better than nothing).
 
These projects (including aid already granted) will doubtless consume the lion's share of our available funds.  I hope there may be enough left to offer some personal assistance to several families which have demolished or badly damaged homes -- and in the case of Joseph and his family to get quickly into some better temporary shelter than the sticks-and-tarps-and-scraps hut which is all they have for now.
 
To avoid overloading anyone's e-mail circuit, I'll reserve a few telling photos for the website, haitianorthodoxmission.org.  They may be a day or two in getting posted, so please check back if they are not there the first time you look.
 
Truth department:  Some of you may have seen claims made by Fr. Grégoire Legouté and others of the MP/ROCOR concerning the size of the Orthodox Church in Haiti which can most charitably be characterized as wild exaggerations.  The earlier figure of 3,000 (in the MP, that is), has been downsized to 2,000 in more recent web postings.  Even that figure is at least 1000% inflated -- counting everyone who has ever been baptized & still comes to church at least once in a while.  A recent posting claimed that they (the MP, that is) had NO liturgical books, communion vessels, or church furnishings.  At the time of their submission to the MP, there was a complete set of liturgical books (in French) at Fr. Grégoire's home, another complete set at the rented space in Les Cayes (where, we are reliably informed, there have been essentially no services since the submission), and a substantial part of another set in Fr. Jean's possession.  There were complete sets of communion vessels at both Nativity and St. Moses the Black (Fr. Grégoire's house-chapel), and both were well furnished with icons and other liturgical items.  At the time of the submission, Fr. Grégoire was in possession of (or had already paid out in part to a relative who was brokering the transaction) $50,000 of Mission funds for the purchase of a substantial tract of land at Les Cayes for eventual construction of a church there, for which no paperwork ever reached my hands.
 
Many of you will have heard of the MP's ordination to the priesthood of my son Fr. Matthew.  There are clear indications that part of the intent is to place him in head-on son-against-father opposition in Haiti.  Please pray for us both.
 
God willing, I'll return to Haiti for a Paschal visit the week after Annunciation -- praying intently, as I hope you will, that our beleaguered people will suffer no further severe shocks, and that the Lord will spare them heavy storms at least for this year.
 
Again, I appeal to you all -- Don't forget! -- this nightmare is not going to get "fixed" in a few months.  Obviously, massive projects (desperately needed) will have to be addressed by others, but we can do a lot to help stabilize life not only for our own faithful but also for the children in our schools (most of them not Orthodox) and their families.  Already, the media attention has largely passed by but, thanks be to God, there are thousands of good-willed souls in the country struggling to help.  Most of us can do little directly -- but can do enormous good through our prayers and generosity.
 

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