Mission Trip to Haiti with Greg Welch
by Lorine Parks
“It’s not about us - it’s about what we do for others.”
With these words, Greg Welch showed us pictures and told stories about his humanitarian trip with Downey Calvary Chapel to Haiti last March.
Port-au-Prince was the destination, and rebuilding a mission church after a devastating earthquake, was the purpose. A major fault line called the Lamentin Thrust, runs northwest through Haiti’s southern peninsula toward the bay, right in the plain that includes Port-au-Prince, near Pétion-Ville and northwest through the city of Carrefour.
The greater Port-au-Prince area is home to about three million people. It includes not only the capital city, but also the suburbs of Carrefour, Pétion-Ville, Delmas, Tabarre, Cité Soleil, and Kenskoff, plus the neighboring cities of Léogâne, Miragoâne, and Gressier.
Pictures of rubble and washed-out roads were interspersed with colorful native markets where fruits and woven chairs were displayed for sale. Homes consisted of cinder block walls with canvas roofs, in what is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Although Haiti is picture-postcard scenic, the average family gets by on $1.25 a day.
Away from Port-au-Prince, in the mountains, the dirt streets were clean but the hillsides were still littered with refuse. “Traffic is crazy,” Greg said, “there’s no rhyme or reason.” Pictures showed Greg and fellow workers cutting lumber for the chapel.
The natives were enthusiastic about receiving Greg, but lack the tools and skills to do much to help themselves. Particularly touching were photos of Greg holding a little survivor. He said she had been sitting in the ruined chapel and crying for two days, and needed someone to pick her up and reassure her.
The last pictures showed Greg shaking hands with the president of the Rotary Club of Port-au-Prince. The president was in coat and tie but Greg wore his work clothes, a red tee-shirt that would have gotten him a place at any Rotarian table because it said in big white letters, “End Polio Now.”
Greg’s trips always involve physical danger and discomfort, either from snakes and insects or some other local hazard. On this trip, there was the real risk of the Zika virus.
“And after I got back,” said Greg, “I felt sicker than I have ever felt in my life. I went to Dan Fox, and he ‘adjusted’ me. That man is a great chiropractor.”
While waiting for the projector to cooperate with the wi-fi connection at the Event Center, so the program could begin, enterprising members of the club got up in the semi-darkness and had the club’s attention.
Barbara Lamberth and Nate Mahoney used the down time to ask for donations for Nate’s Thanksgiving project, to produce Thanksgiving dinners for needy families selected by TLC, True Lasting Connections, our liason with the children in the Downey District. A number of members contributed.
Chris Pohlen appeared in her cherry pink and white golf clothes, to tell us that although Mike was in the hospital, he seemed to be enduring the tests pretty well.