HOT SPRINGS — It helps to have friends in high places — like the Holy Spirit.
As of late December, members of the Hot Springs Haiti Mission are saying it looks like one door after the other opened in their quest to deliver 57,000 school lunches to a central Haiti school and community.
“God just opened doors,” said Larry Womack, a parishioner of St. Mary of the Springs Church.
The mission began sponsoring aid to Colladere, Haiti, three years ago. Primarily, volunteers have worked on projects for feeding and teaching children. Anywhere from one to five people have made six trips. They have worked on projects to upgrade the solar and wind electric power grid at St. Andrew Church and rectory. Also, St. John and St. Mary parishes have sent $2,500 monthly to the school to pay for the wages of the teachers and cook.
Womack traveled to Colladere in January to verify the food had been received and was being properly distributed.
More trips by more residents are planned as part of the joint parish commitment to grow the people of Colladere to self-sufficiency. The work to ship the meals began before the January 2010 earthquake that killed at least 300,000 people. After the earthquake, Bishop Anthony B. Taylor allowed the mission members to spend some of the parish collection for Haiti earthquake victims on the meal project.
In terms of earthquake relief, the choice to associate with Colladere turned out to be good for relieving human suffering.
“We are focused on the middle highlands where the people fled. But the aid doesn’t get there, it goes to Port-au-Prince,” said Womack, 57.
The point behind the meal shipment was to help the children of Bishop Walter F. Sullivan School, which was named after the retired bishop of the Diocese of Richmond, Va. Enrollment had been about 150 students. Post-earthquake, enrollment grew to 250 students and that means the cargo of meals must stay in the community.
“We were hoping to be able to use it at the mission churches, but it’s going to be just barely enough to cover this year’s school,” Womack said.
A meal is a hand-packed pouch that can be used for cooking up to six cups of rice. It also includes soy protein, dehydrated carrots, dehydrated onions and powdered vitamins.
“I tried it,” Womack said of the meal. “It is good. They had a little bit of salt. It was tasty. I actually brought one of the bags back. I think at the next Haiti meeting for the churches, I’m going to boil the bag and let people taste it.”
The meals arrived in the northern coastal town of Cap-Haitien where Father Banive Peralte handled the customs work. Father Peralte is known to many in Hot Springs as the pastor of St. Andrew Church in Colladere. Father Peralte visited Hot Springs in 2009.
A total of $7,895 from Hot Springs parishioners was used to buy a shipping container in addition to shipping and customs fees. The actual meals were donated through the assistance of St. John parishioner Steve Hotho, director of a private foundation called the St. Stephen’s Charitable Fund. The fund received the 57,000 meals as a donation from Feed My Starving Children of Coon Rapids, Minn. People working for relief organizations Caritas and Outreach Haiti worked with the Hot Springs leaders to ship the cargo container to Cap-Haitien.
Arkansans are making a difference in central Haiti, St. John parishioner Pam Keck said.
The 54-year-old registered nurse has made a few trips on her own to share her medical skills. She said her experiences traveling to this central part of Haiti have taught her to live in the moment a little more. Keck volunteered in the orphanage operated by the Sisters of Charity in Colladere.
“They are so happy to get any kind of help. There were around 100 children. I would say that about 75 percent of those children were under the age of 3. That’s not all of the children, that’s just on the second floor,” Keck said.
Keck said the orphanage is the kind of place where parents arrive and say they cannot care for a child. They leave the youth or two or three of them at the orphanage, and it becomes their new home.
And in late December, 57,000 meals arrived to alleviate human suffering.
“In Haiti, there isn’t any place to work. You’re thinking about what you’re going to have for lunch. It’s a meal-to-meal (life),” Keck said.