Haiti Agroforestry Mission

Thank you for inquiring about this major disaster that came upon Haiti with that KILLER QUAKE.  The whole country is in shock by this terrible event. I do have one brother and a nephew and five nieces living in Port au Prince. So far one of my nieces is unaccounted for. They just don’t know what happened to her yet.  My brother and other nephews and nieces have not been sleeping inside their houses for fear that the walls might fall on them during one of the many aftershocks, and their houses have big cracks in the walls and ceilings.

Communication with Port au Prince is almost impossible. What is happening in Port au Prince is affecting the whole country. It is affecting us here at the University.  One student who is married with children, whose family lived in Port au Prince, has lost his house as well as his daughter who died in the house when it collapsed.  Our students from Port au prince might not be able to come back for the second semester at the University. The fuel we buy for our generators and other products that we need have always come from Port au Prince, so in the days ahead we will experience shortages in fuel and other items and this will cause a big problem for the running of the University.  We do have two or three cracks in women dormitory but they are not too dangerous.

What happened in Port au prince will affect everybody in Haiti. It is a national disaster. For one thing everybody around the country has a relative in Port au Prince and so far in our area in the Limbé valley we have heard the cries of many people who have lost a relative, a son or a daughter studying in Port au Prince schools. There is one family in Limbé who lost two daughters and the son has a broken leg. We don’t have any news yet of the First Baptist Church of Port au Prince, the biggest Baptist Church in Haiti; it is located near the national Palace.  As soon as communication can be reestablished with Port au Prince I will try to find out about it.  I believe that it will take years before the country and especially Port-au-Prince to become normal. So far communication in the North or around Haiti is a challenge, it is still non existent.

Please continue to pray for Haiti, pray for us so that we can manage to do the right thing in order to meet some of the urgent needs of the Haitian people especially those in Port au Prince.

Jules Casseus
PS. I just learned that the Bible School/STEP Seminary in Port is down and two students are dead