Former Sandusky pastor safe in Haiti

Elise Gotham (at right wearing gray sweatshirt) poses with Haitian children near the church and school where she and her father, Rev. Don Gotham, were doing mission work when the earthquake hit the island nation. The Gothams and 15 other members of the First United Methodist Church group out of the Detroit area escaped harm because they’re in a town about 120 miles from the quake’s epicenter. “There were a few tense hours,” said Laura Gotham, whose husband Don, 46, and daughter Elise, 19, are part of a First United Methodist Church mission team in Haiti, the island nation struck by an earthquake on Jan. 12.

“They felt the tremors, but there was no damage, so our group is safe,” said Laura, a supervisor at Sanilac County Community Mental Health in Sandusky. Don served as minister of the Sandusky First United Methodist Church for seven years, until August 2005. He is now the pastor of a United Methodist Church in St. Clair.

The 17-member mission team led by Rev. Gotham arrived in Haiti Jan. 1, to continue volunteer work at a church and school in Jeremie.

Eleven days later, the 7.0 magnitude quake struck. Fortunately for the team, Jeremie is 120 miles west of the quake’s epicenter near the capital city of Port au Prince, where tens of thousands have died and massive international relief efforts are underway to provide food, water and medical supplies.

“It was 8:30 that night that I finally got an e-mail,” said Laura. “I was clearly glad to hear from him that night.”

The team’s original plan was to fly out of Port au Prince on Jan. 16, for their return trip to Michigan.

“The team is abundantly grateful for our being in Jeremie, as were the earthquake to happen less than one day later, we would have been in Port au Prince, and likely traveling in the area of the epicenter of the quake,” said Don Gotham in a Jan. 13 e-mail to the team’s headquarters in Detroit.”

Laura reported Monday that the team would fly home Jan. 19, thanks to Bahamas Methodist Habitat, a small disaster relief agency based in the Bahamas and "scrambling to meet the needs in Haiti,"

"I can't begin to recap all the details involved in getting this plan together," she said. "As of this morning (Monday) the plans were delayed again due to the pilots no longer being able to use credit cards for fueling the plane. If you can imagine at a time like this trying to come up with enough cash to continue flying these missions. 'This group is flying in and out to make food, water, and medicine drops; then loading up with evacuees in Port au Prince. When we made our plea, he (Abraham McIntyre, director of Bahamas Habitat) agreed to detour to Jermie to get our folks out," said Laura.

"I think a lot of relief was felt when we got confirmation that we are rebooked on flights to Detroit," Gotham wrote in an email. "We do have a couple of students at Albion College (including Elise)who will miss their first week of classes. I assured them we will do what is necessary to get them excused from class - I think 'stranded due to an earthquake' should qualify as a decent reason for missing a few classes - don't you?"