Romans 8:28 is one of those Bible verses that is easier to believe when life is going well. But when tragedy comes our way, that’s when we really need to hear that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him.”

Moise Vaval (center) and Cross Projects Officer Claudio Merisio (right) have worked together to organize aid distribution in Haiti.

This verse was a recent focus of our morning devotions here at Cross, and a very relevant one in light of the suffering we’ve been encountering in Haiti. God doesn’t promise us a carefree life, but he gives us hope in the midst of hardship and strengthens us to do everything to his glory.

One person who has displayed this supernatural hope is Moise Vaval, a Haitian pastor and long-time friend of Cross International. Moise lost his son Jean-Marc to the earthquake when a school building collapsed on top of him. Moise spent two full days digging through the rubble to find Jean-Marc, who was just short of his ninth birthday, but to no avail.

It would have been easy to succumb to despair, but instead Moise jumped into the disaster relief effort, all the while thanking God for sparing his other three children who had been in the same school. Moise’s volunteer service was crucial to our work, as he tirelessly coordinated the distribution of Cross emergency supplies to mission partners and refugee camps throughout the country.

God’s people very often shine brightest when times are darkest. Moise, like so many other compassionate Christians who work with us around the world, has been an inspiration to all of us at Cross. We can approach the difficult task of long-term recovery with cheerful hearts, knowing there is real hope for Haiti and for all who seek refuge in Christ.

In Proverbs 17:22 we are reminded that “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine…” Over the last several months we have been overwhelmed with images of sadness and despair from Haiti and, more recently, Chile. Sometimes it is nice to be reminded that the poor smile. Below are recent photos from the field of some of the individuals who we’ve helped through the generosity of American Christians. Remember God’s promise from Psalm 30:5: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”

Nicaragua

Guatemala

Dominican Republic

Philippines

Cross President Jim Cavnar and several staff members recently returned from a trip to Haiti. During their time in the earthquake-devastated country, they visited several of the ministries we are helping during this time of recovery.

In their first few hours on the ground the staff was struck by the empty streets of Port-au-Prince, which before the earthquake were teaming hundreds of vendors, children, cars, and animals.

Cross International President Jim Cavnar surveys the damage in Leogane where nearly all of the houses were destroyed by the quake. Cross is supporting an IDP camp of about 200 people who lost their homes there.

“It was like being in a ghost town on the set of a Hollywood movie — it was unreal,” Jim said.

Michele Sagarino, vice president of development, added, “The lack of life in the streets and knowing what that means was very hard to process.”

The group from Cross met with Gladys Thomas, who runs an orphanage and Christian school we support just outside the capital, to survey the damage her ministry sustained. She told them that they’ll have to completely replace one of their buildings and rebuild the tall cement wall that protects their property from trespassers. She also said that her ministry has taken in 20 new children since the earthquake.

Jim and the staff from Cross also visited an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp we are supporting in Leogane, which was at the epicenter of the deadly earthquake. Despite the extensive destruction, there was hope among the people in camp. They had just received another shipment of rice when the group from Cross arrived.

With tents and supplies from Cross International, Project Medishare was able to set up a makeshift hospital that is helping hundreds of earthquake victims in Port-au-Prince.

After visiting a few other ministries we support, assessing damage, and planning an approach to help, the team from Cross stopped by Project Medishare’s tent hospital. Jim and the staff were very impressed by the work being done there — work that has been going on since the first day after the quake. Cross donated tents and supplies to the ministry, which were of great use when the ministry set up makeshift surgical and exam rooms, an infirmary, a lab, and a pharmacy.

Overall the group was impressed by the work we’ve accomplished together with our ministry partners to help those suffering in Haiti. “Our partners are showing tremendous courage and faith in the wake of this disaster,” Jim said. “Though it was difficult to see the suffering, we were glad to also find hope among the people as we met with our partners. We feel blessed to be a part of the recovery efforts that are bringing relief to those hurting in Haiti.”

Click here to learn more about our relief efforts in Haiti.

Below is a beautiful story from one of our ministry partners in Guyana, Ruimveldt Children’s Home & Care Center (RCHCC). We support this Christian ministry monthly so it can continue to provide care to 16 AIDS orphans.

Some of the orphans at Ruimveldt Children’s Home & Care Center (RCHCC)

Micah never speaks about his mother. But at night he has fitful dreams, awaking drenched in sweat and screaming out for her.

Before Micah was brought to RCHCC, he wandered the streets, unattended for days on end. Though he was appeared to be only about 4 years old, his face was sunken and his eyes hard — the marks usually carried by a weathered adult. His body also wore signs of malnourishment. His front teeth were completely black and his small belly was distended due to severe malnutrition.

“We knew very little about him and still have not found his parents,” said Angie Hemric, a volunteer who cares for Micah at the Children’s Home. “He has never shared any memories of them with us.” It is entirely possible that his parents are dead, victims of one of Guyana’s top killer: AIDS.

At first Micah was wary of the help he received at RCHCC. “He was very independent for such a young child,” Angie said. “Every time the gate opened we had to watch that his little body did not slide through it and run off.”

Soon, however, Micah began to let his guard down as he received loving care from the staff at the orphanage. He had never known such selfless kindness. Because Micah was HIV positive no one would help him, and he went without the treatments that would have helped him grow and thrive. During his first weeks at the orphanage, he could hardly eat and his speech was very underdeveloped for someone his age. “Much of the time he was unsettled,” Angie recalled. “He would scream out in the middle of the night and have terrible dreams.”

Micah recently celebrated a second birthday with RCHCC. Though he is still small for a 6-year-old, he has made much progress. His smile is now electric and his body strong, Angie said. “He loves to be held close and read to. He can write his name, color in the lines, count, and say his ABCs.”

The biggest evidence of Micah’s transformation from sick and abandoned AIDS victim to loved and nurtured child of God comes at night. He no longer wakes screaming from fitful nightmares.

Click here to learn more about the life-changing work of RCHCC.

We received some good news from Mike Henry, our projects officer who has been coordinating relief in Haiti since the earthquake. He and one of our partner organizations were able to get medical supplies to a hospital we support near Port-au-Prince. Below is an excerpt from his field notes a few days ago:

With the road cleared, I was able to get further into the field to do some more work — work that will have a true positive impact on people’s lives.

The staff and volunteers at Hospital Espoir offer a prayer of thanks as the medical supplies from Cross International arrive.

I got started early by heading over to the office of a ministry we’ve partnered with during this crisis to pick up some medical supplies to deliver to Hospital Espoir, which is run by one of our long-time ministry partners.

As I drove through Delmas and down Rue Freres, I couldn’t believe how many down homes and buildings were out there. There were only a limited number of cars on the road, but people were walking in every direction, many carrying their belongings.

Dr. Antoine Fadoul, one of my contacts on Haiti, had agreed to provide us with enough supplies to keep Hospital Espoir functioning while we worked on getting supplies to them through the Dominican Republic. By 8:30 a.m., we were able to supply the hospital with a truck-load of items such as gloves, syringes, antibiotics, and pain killers.

Gladys Thomas, the director of the hospital Espoir, was on her way home from India, so her daughter, Natalie, had been left to coordinate activities. Natalie had been overwhelmed by emotions for the past couple of days. I could see it in her eyes. The hospital had all but shut down a few days after the earthquake as they had quickly run out of supplies needed to care for trauma patients.

I was happy to be able to deliver the supplies, and she was relieved to receive the help. Her eyes lit up a bit. Hospital Espoir would now have enough materials to open back up to the public. More importantly, Cross International had a lot more help on the way.

Cross has since provided Gladys with funds to buy more medicines and supplies from the Dominican Republic to keep Hospital Espoir up and running. Please continue to pray for them and all of our other ministry partners in Haiti as we continue to support them in this time of crisis.

Two more staff members will be traveling to Port-au-Prince Wednesday to help with our relief efforts being coordinated from our office in Haiti. They will meet up with Project Officer Mike Henry, who has been working diligently from the devastated country since the earthquake hit Tuesday.

The victims of Haiti's massive 7.2-magnitude earthquake are still desperate for help.

“We will be doing whatever we can to help our partners. We plan to visit some of them as long as we have access to fuel,” said Claudio Merisio, our Latin America projects officer who just returned from Guatemala and postponed his trip to visit partners in Peru in order to go to Haiti.

Mike Wilson, our International Projects Director who several years of experience living and working in Haiti, is flying back early from visiting our partners in the Philippines to travel with Claudio. Both plan to stay in Haiti at least a week.

Since the airport in Port-au-Prince is still closed to commercial traffic, Mike Wilson and Claudio plan to fly into the Dominican Republic and take a bus across the boarder and on to Port-au-Prince. From there they will meet up with Mike Henry at our Haiti office.

Please pray for Mike Wilson and Claudio as they make their way to Haiti, and continue to pray for Mike Henry as he works from our office in Port-au-Prince! We covet your prayers and support.

Our Projects Officer Mike Henry, who has been updating us from the field since the earthquake shook Haiti Tuesday, sent us more news this afternoon. Below is an excerpt from his notes from the day after the earthquake:

Mike Henry, Cross International projects officer

I woke up at dawn on Wednesday morning to the sound of helicopters flying over and thought, “My God, it wasn’t only a bad dream.” I was in disbelief. The aftershocks began early, typically just a slight shake.

I decided that I needed to get busy trying to help. I figured that the search and rescue teams were on the way, so maybe I could help expedite the situation by doing an assessment of our neighborhood and documenting areas that held trapped survivors. I had already seen and heard many, so I thought that I would do another walk-through of the areas of Cineas and Augustin to put together a more thorough report.

Mike interviewing earthquake victims in the streets of Leogane, where 90 percent of the buildings collapsed. (Photo courtesy of Kathryn Bolles, Save the Children)

As I walked through the neighborhood and interviewed different members of the community, I had to fight back the tears. There was so much damage that you couldn’t distinguish one house from the next. Every other house seemed to have missing people inside. Some folks had found and saved one or two family members who had been stuck, but were still missing others.

I drew up a small map in my notebook and began charting where people were missing, trying to distinguish between the difference of “missing” and “alive and trapped.” It was bad out there, but I managed to get together a pretty accurate map for the search and rescue teams.

Mike doing an assessment of the neighborhood surrounding the office in Port-au-Prince. (Photo courtesy of Kathryn Bolles, Save the Children)

When I got back to our office, I found that the number of community members staying at our unofficial camp had increased a bit.  I realized that logistics would soon become a major issue as we would need food, water, latrines, and either tents or some other shelter for each of them. We were able to get several cases of Vitafood meals from a partner we shipped to recently. We also gave some of the cases to a nearby orphanage that had run out of food.

With all the destruction everywhere, it’s good to be able to start helping people. I am hopeful for tomorrow.

Please pray for Mike as he continues to work with our ministry partners in the field to help the devastated earthquake victims of Haiti. Also, visit our disaster relief page to see how you can help.

Our Haiti Projects Officer Mike Henry was in our office in Port-au-Prince during the massive earthquake that shook Haiti Tuesday. Below is his first-hand account of the quake and the destruction it left behind:

Mike Henry, Haiti projects officer

It started off as kind of soft shaking then really intensified. There was no way I could have gotten out of the building. It was shaking too hard. I stood in a doorway to try and protect myself. Everything that was standing fell over. Computers fell off desks and pipes burst everywhere.

Once the earthquake stopped, I ran to the window that looks down over the city. It’s usually a nice view. This time it wasn’t so nice. A huge cloud of dust and smoke hung over the city. I have never seen anything like it in my life. There was screaming, crying, yelling and sheer panic coming from the city. Many of our neighbors’ houses collapsed.  About every other house had gone down the hill. They literally just fell off the mountain. It was quickly getting dark outside — it was really scary. Yelling and crying was coming from every direction.

The street just outside Cross International's office in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

A few hours after the earthquake, I left our office compound and ventured into the streets to assess the damage. That’s when I realized the extent of the destruction. The streets were a maze of rubble and broken houses. They stretched in every direction. All the roads were littered with debris. Hundreds of people were stumbling around in the dark, stunned and begging for help. Most of the houses around our office had totally collapsed.

A bit later, I went with two guys from the U.S. Embassy to check on the road to see if we could get some of the critically-injured people to a medical outpost. We had only gone about 200 to 300 yards down the street when a woman came running toward us, screaming, “Please, come help me. My daughter is stuck — my baby is trapped. Please, you have to help me!”

We followed the woman, and about every 10 steps another person came up to us, asking for help to get trapped people out of the rubble. We freed one woman on the way, but there wasn’t much we could do for anyone because we didn’t have the tools to get them out. I felt so helpless. I hated having to leave them behind, knowing it would be a while until help would come. Those people are still stuck in that rubble, probably in dire need of water and air.

As I sat in the compound later, feeling helpless and overwhelmed, I heard people in the streets singing and praising God. It really touched me. The people’s faith is all they have. It is more real to them than anything around them. Their homes are gone, their children are gone; all that they have is their faith.

Mike is working with our partners in the country to channel our aid to those who need it most. The need is still very desperate. Click here to see how you can help, and please continue to pray for the people of Haiti.

To listen to an audio recording of Mike sharing his story, visit our disaster relief website. Also, see photos he took just hours after the earthquake here.

Reports have been trickling in all day from our staff and mission partners in Haiti. The devastation from yesterday’s 7.2-scale earthquake has been profound.

Photo courtesy of AP

“It looks like Dante’s Inferno. There are dead bodies everywhere,” said Mike Henry, our Haiti projects officer who is on the ground in Port-au-Prince today, working with our partners to bring aid to the people.

The most immediate needs are medical aid, food and water, and shelter. We’ve created a disaster relief fund to help provide urgent aid to Haiti’s desperate earthquake victims. The money we raise will help provide cash grants to our ministry partners to meet their most immediate needs.

You can donate by visiting our disaster relief page, sending a check to Cross International at 600 SW 3rd Street, Suite 2201, Pompano Beach, Florida 33060, or calling in a donation by phone at 800-391-8545.

The earthquake is the worst Haiti has seen in two centuries. The major quake sent 33 aftershocks ranging in magnitude from 4.2 to 5.9. Officials are estimating that about 3 million people — a third of Haiti’s population — were affected by the quake. Haiti’s prime minister announced today that he believes more than 100,000 have died in the disaster.

One of our project officers received an email from a friend doing relief work in Port-au-Prince today who said, “Much of the capital is in ruins. Having spent the last 12 hours in the streets, I assure you — you won’t have a hard time finding someone to help.”

Even our mission partners in Jacmel, a city three hours away from the quake’s epicenter in Port-au-Prince, felt the shock. Below is an excerpt from their email:

“Though it felt like hours, I think the earthquake lasted for about one minute. After it stopped, we went outside and heard people everywhere yelling and screaming and running all over the place. I was thankful to the Lord that we were safe. We went out to the people in the neighborhood to find out if anybody was hurt or needed help. We were told of several people whose homes had collapsed….All that we can do in this moment is pray. We thank the Lord who holds our lives in His hands. And we pray that lives are preserved all throughout Haiti during this time of crisis.”

Please continue to pray for the people of Haiti and for protection over our staff and other aid workers in the country, and join us in helping the disaster victims. We need your support!

Deborah, one of our staff members who usually works at a desk in our Florida headquarters, recently went to Haiti for the first time to see some projects we support in a remote village. Here are some of her raw reflections from day one:

When you have no electricity, you go to bed with the sun and get up with the sun.  As a matter of fact, I am writing this in the dark and hope I can read it in the light of day.

I have more in my backpack than most have in their homes—including food. I didn’t see any stores of food in any homes I visited. In fact, I didn’t see plates or cups or pots to cook with in many of the homes.  Even the animals looked hungry—you could see the ribs on the dogs and livestock.

Cross staff member Deborah approaches the home of an impoverished family living in a remote village in Central Haiti, where medical care is physically and financially out of reach to the very poor.

We visited an elderly man who had cut his leg while using a hoe in his garden. It was a classic example of how even simple things like a cut affect the lives of the poor. The cut was near his ankle. His leg, foot, and toes were swollen. We asked him to remove the rag he used to wrap the cut. When he did there was a leaf covering the cut. The cut was oozing puss. He told us it hurt so badly he couldn’t sleep the night before. We told him to elevate his leg and moved a chair closer to him to show him. We sent back band aids that had antibiotic ointment on them that I had brought, and some hydrogen peroxide. You and I, we would have those things in our First Aid kit and never would have needed a leaf to cover a cut. I sent a Power Bar back for him to eat.  And while that would not cure his undernourished body or his cut, surely the 23g of protein could fill his belly for today.  I hope he could sleep last night.

CLICK HERE to learn more about how you can help Cross answer the need for basic medicines and medical supplies in developing countries.