Area residents making difference

Saturday, July 6, 2013
Abby Yarick of Hume visits with children at a mountain church in Haiti. Eight members of the First Church of God in Fort Scott, Kan., visited the church sponsored school in Borel, Haiti, and helped by painting, building items and assisting the dentist. Submitted photos.

The First Church of God in Fort Scott, Kan., sent Jeanie and Kirk Hart, Bob and Joyce Love, Ken and Zach Wheeler, Linda and Phil Wilson, and Abby Yarick to Haiti on a mission trip affiliated with Project Help on June 20.

The group stayed a week at a church-sponsored compound in Borel, Haiti, about 90 miles north of Port-Au-Prince.

Project Help was established in 1967 through the cooperative efforts of pastor Jim and Leona Wallace and the Churches of God General Conference. It's mission was and continues to be to bring the "good news of Jesus Christ" to the people of Haiti and help them break the bounds of poverty, according to the project's website.

Phil Wallace, of Potosi, Mo., visits children at a mountain church in Haiti. Eight members of the First Church of God in Fort Scott, Kan., visited the church sponsored school in Borel, Haiti, and helped by painting, building items and assisting the dentist. "Our main goal wass to share the Love of Christ with those we meet," said Kirk Hart of Hume.

The group from the Fort Scott church also include some residents of the Hume area. The group spent time on the mission trip building furniture, working on a guard shack, or sewing curtains.

Among other things, the women sewed curtains and helped Haitian women learn how to make scarves out of T-shirts.

"The goal was to be able to show the ladies how to make something on their own out of whatever they had. They really enjoyed that," said Kirk Hart of Hume.

Phil Wilson and Phil Wallace built a guard house. Ken and Zach Wheeler worked on screening in a big room that had a huge open space. Bob Love and Kirk Hart made a counter for the eating area and a 6-foot-long swing.

Hart delighted a missionary's younger daughter by helping make a dresser.

"They requested a little dresser for their child's clothes," Hart said. "They had three-quarter inch plywood available. We made it 4 feet by 4 feet by 2 feet deep. It was a two-door dresser with a couple of cabinets."

Hart said he was impressed by the culture and cleanliness he saw in Haiti.

"They're very hardworking," he said of the native Haitians. "They get up at 4 a.m. to work in fields while it was cool. It was amazing how clean and white their clothes were with the canal water that they used."

The group also visited a church-sponsored hospital.

"The hospital was a lot like ours, except the only air conditioning we saw was in two operating rooms," Hart said. "Everything is pretty much run by solar panels or generators because they don't have any electricity like we're accustomed to.

"In our hospitals we have glassed off areas; there everything was open," he said.

Hart said the experience taught him how fortunate he is.

"We all take the simplicities of life for granted," he said. "And, God works wonders everywhere."

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