Mission team to world: Please help Haiti

Mary Solterman (left) and Genie Bank of Lexington on their mission trip in Haiti. Courtesy photo) One member of a Methodist mission team that recently returned from Haiti admits she was glad there were no televisions to show her the devastation that followed the massive earthquake in that nation’s capital city, Port-au-Prince.

“What I saw where I was, was wonderful hospitality, happy children and hardworking adults,” said Genie Bank, of Lexington. “Haitian people are lovely people.”

And if anything good can result from the Jan. 12 disaster that killed tens of thousands, perhaps it is more world focus on a nation that desperately needs the world’s help.

“Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. That’s why we went,” said Banks. “The world now sees what we have seen. And that, in a way, may be a good thing. It’s not just the earthquake. It’s the whole country that needs help.”

Genie Banks and her sister, Mary Solterman, also of Lexington, were briefly stranded in Haiti when the 7.0 quake hit on Jan. 12.

They were part of a 17-member Volunteers-In-Mission (VIM) team led by the Rev. Don Gotham, formerly of Sandusky, and his daughter, Elise, 19.

The team left Jan. 1 for a two-week "routine" trip to work with the Methodist Church of Haiti on the construction and painting of a school in Jeremie, a village about 120 miles west of the quake’s epicenter of Portau Prince.

The team also delivered medical supplies to a clinic and planted fruit trees.

Mission teams go packed for nearly any emergency – but an earthquake hadn’t even been on their radar.

“There hadn’t been an earthquake in Haiti in two hundred years,” notes Solterman.

The team was far out of harm’s way.

“We were never in any danger,” Solterman said. “We felt quite a big tremor, so we knew something had happened. Tremors continued through the night.”

It wasn’t until the next day that the news really reached them.

Unable to fight back tears, Solterman relates: “Haitians that we worked with started coming in and telling us about their lost relatives that either had been killed or they couldn’t find and that was really heartbreaking.”

Bank said a painter who was working with them lost his sister.

“He was sobbing. Another young man who came back from Port-au-Prince who was there during the quake found out many of his relatives were killed. He was in disbelief. We tried to show them that we cared. We were just together, is the best way I can put it.”

Others in the VIM team included members of Methodist churches in St. Clair and Ingham counties. Solterman and Bank were the only ones from Sanilac County’s Lexington United Methodist Church.

Team leader Gotham served as minister of Sandusky First United Methodist Church for seven years until August 2005. He is now pastor of St. Clair United Methodist Church in St. Clair County.

The team was originally scheduled to depart Port-au- Prince on Jan. 16, but travel

between Jeremie to Port-au- Prince became impossible after the quake rendered roads between the two cities impassable.

The only means of communication was via cell phone and the Internet, and cell phone towers were temporarily down.

Family back home spent an anxious few hours before learning that the team was safe.

“I’d just gotten home from the Cros-Lex Middle School play when I heard about it,” said Mary’s husband, Brooks Solterman. “Of course we were concerned. I also was very optimistic that they were a distance away, that the magnitude didn’t have an impact.” Around nine o’clock that night, 5-6 hours after the earthquake, Solterman learned from his brother-in-law, Wayne Bank, that Jeremie hadn’t incurred damage.

“Then it became a frantic race to find some method of getting them out,” he said.

While they awaited rescue, “We talked a lot. We prayed a lot. We sang a lot,” Mary Solterman said. “We knew people were praying for us and working hard to get us home.”

The team finally was airlifted on Mon., Jan. 18, by three planes from Bahamas Habitat (www.bahamashabitat.org), a United States-based Christian non-profit organization that provides housing and disaster relief in the Bahamas.

Bahamas Habitat has been running airlift operations with volunteer aviators between the Bahamas and Haiti since Jan. 15, delivering relief supplies and evacuating missionaries and mission teams.

From the Bahamas, the VIM team was transported via commercial plane to Nassau, then Miami, and then Detroit. They arrived Jan. 19 at Detroit Metro Airport.

In addition to Bahamas Habitat, the effort was supported by the office of Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan), which was coordinating with Detroit Methodist Conference officials for ways to support the evacuation of the team from Haiti.

The North Central Jurisdictional United Methodist VIM Coordinator, Lorna Jost, helped by putting the conference office in contact with Bahamas Habitat.

The Rev. Paul Doherty, chair of the Michigan Area Haiti Task Force, contacted the families of team members to notify them of the safety of their loved ones once the airlift took place.

By Sun., Jan. 17, the refugees had started to pour into Jeremie.

“Two boats full of people were coming every day from Port-au-Prince,” Mary Solterman said. “This will affect the entire country, eventually.”

She also hopes that the world’s heightened awareness will improve the plight of the Haitian people.

“They are such wonderful people and they were very poor before this happened. Now they have absolutely nothing,” she said.

“The Methodist church has developed programs to help people help themselves through education, health clinics, water filtering systems and other long-term programs. And those programs will continue, despite the current catastrophe.”

Added Banks, “Our mission was successful. We made a difference. I hope more people will be drawn to do the same.”