What's Up with Customs in Haiti?

In a news report captured Thursday, CNN's Soledad O'Brien tries to find out why Haitian customs in Port-au-Prince is stalling relief supplies into the country.

Why the chaos at customs in Haiti?? Watch CNN's Soledad O'Brien's attempt to investigate.

Read the whole story here: Red tape, bad traffic, no power: 'That's Haiti'

Evidently, CNN’s pressure on customs is helping because at 3:15 p.m. Friday afternoon, I received a Twitter message from the orphage mentioned in this newscast, stating that their 2100 pounds of cargo had finally been released from customs...with no charge! However, we have not heard if the relief supplies were released yet to the medical doctor, missionary and other workers who were televised by CNN.

Please pray that all these relief supplies will be released without charge so they can be quickly delivered and distributed to people in need.

Three Americans falsely accused in Haiti

Gary Tuchman of CNN reported yesterday that three American women were falsely accused of forging signatures on Haitian adoption papers. However, it was not until after a harrowing experience and lengthy detention that their names were finally cleared.

On Saturday, as the women went to return home, they were told their military flight out had been cancelled and they would need to make private arrangements for a flight home. Just outside the Haiti International Airport with the six boys, an angry mob approached them and started asking why they were taking babies from the country.

"Don't steal our children. Don't kidnap our children, you missionaries!" the angry group of men and women yelled.

Soon police arrived on the scene and took the women into custody. For nearly nine hours, the three American women were drilled with questions while their documents and the signatures on their documents went through careful inspection. The documents the women carried had been signed by both the Prime Minister of Haiti and the U.S. Embassy.

For some reason, the police told the women they felt the signatures on their paperwork were not genuine, so, at that point, they seized the children, ordering them to be kept in an orphanage in Haiti. The only explanation the women were given was that they needed to get their paperwork in order.

A U.S. Embassy official stepped in to help the women, but it was a grueling 72 hours before the women received the okay to take the six children to their adoptive homes in the U.S. Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there.

When the women were finally cleared and went to pick up the children from the orphanage, they became alarmed because the children were not there. They had been removed from the orphanage. Finally, U.S. Embassy personnel found the children in another orphanage and were able to pick them up and return them to the women.

Watch the video where CNN Gary Tuchman tells the story

Here's a full page of CNN Haiti Earthquake Reports

CNN Dr. Gupta: Why I returned to Haiti video

That's it! I've had enough!

Have you been hearing and reading all those stories about the terrible looting going on in Haiti? Well, a 30-year veteran missionary in Haiti told us the story of a thief who tried to rob someone about a week ago. The ones who happened to be standing around at the time and witnessed the robbery became infuriated and immediately began chasing after the robber, in hot pursuit.

I mean, to them, that was the last straw! Enough was enough! They decided to take the law into their own hands and teach this man a lesson. Soon the few chasing after the man became a mob in pursuit of one thief. In the end, unfortunate for the man, the angered group of Haitians beat him mercilessly until he died.

Now the word on the street is to quit robbing people or you will pay for it with your life. With little police protection on the streets and in the camps, the Haitians have sent out a loud message. They have had enough and won't stand for it anymore.

This same missionary told us that the quantity of escaped inmates who were really major criminals is very small. He said, "The news media has really overblown that." He went on to say that, in many cases, poor people get thrown into prison - many unjustly - and they simply cannot afford to hire a lawyer to get them out, so they just sit there without hope of ever seeing the outside world again.

Watch out for news media stories. Often, the reports you watch online or on the television or read in newspapers and magazines leave out some important details that don't give you a clear picture of the true situation.

Haiti earthquake-related damages

Here's a rundown of the current situation in Haiti as of today, February 23, 2010:

Deaths: 217,366
Missing: 383
Injured: 300,572
Affected families: 286,912
Displaced: 511,405
Collapsed buildings: 97,294
Compromised structures: 188,383

Source: http://haitiseisme2010.gouv.ht

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. To view over 700 pictures from Haiti, follow this link and click "Play Slide show."

This is outrageous! Get the food off that tarmac!

A woman prepares mud cakes at the zone of Cite-Soleil in Port-au-Prince
Feb. 3, 2010. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Made with a little salt, margarine and dried yellow mud from the country’s central plateau, then baked in the sun, these "mud cakes" - or "gato te" in Creole – are a major income earner in Cite Soleil. The neighbourhood is Haiti’s poorest slum, home to 300,000 people and notorious for gang violence, which the United Nations blames for delaying food distributions after the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the capital.

You can read the entire article here.

Okay. So only the poorest of the poor eat this kind of thing in Haiti. But this is totally unacceptable at a time when pallets of food continue to be stacked up on the tarmac at the Port-au-Prince Airport. Everyone is asking why is this happening, but I hear no one answering, providing a solution for speedy distribution of food aid.

This is why I thank God for hundreds of on-the-ground missionaries and humanitarian workers who have been there all along before the earthquake, quietly working behind the scenes, and who are now - in many cases, in spite of their own losses due to the earthquake - taking food and other aid directly to many overlooked groups of people.

I believe it would do far more good for the press to focus their attention on missionaries - the ones who know Port-au-Prince and the communities scattered all over the outlying areas. These are the persons experienced in bringing aid to their people when hurricanes have hit time and again in the past.

They know how to reach local doctors and nurses. They know how to find security personnel when they need them. They are the ones who speak the local language and can quickly build relief teams. Ask any Haitian and they will tell you the missionaries are the ones they have come to respect and trust.

My solution is to put your financial support behind these people. Put missionaries in charge of the distribution of aid arriving at ports and airports. Give these missionaries full access to the pallets of aid sitting on the tarmac, and you will see needs being swiftly met.

You may ask, "But how do we find these missionaries?"

Agape Flights alone has 130 missionary families on the ground in Haiti, already working hard to meet the needs. They have their own field directors, who happen to be seasoned missionaries, working on the ground in Haiti, overseeing the distribution of aid to the missionary families who work with them. That's just one missions organization and there are scores of others with missionaries working inside Haiti.

Put an end to this corruption we are hearing about. These missionaries are the people of character, the ones you can trust. These people are there in Haiti, not for themselves but for the people. Channel your finances through these folks and you will see Haitians finding long-term help.

To help you understand the problem aid workers are having, trying to find those with the greatest need, I will let you read the words of a journalist from the United Kingdom.

Ascertaining who had received aid was tricky: people who had received a little help were naturally reluctant to say so. At a small isolated camp in the district of Canape Vert, beside a steep, rutted road, a man tried to answer the question, only to be shouted down by other members of the camp. Roughly translated, the shouters were saying: “Don't say that, for God sake, or we’ll never get anything.”

He raised his hands. He was a market trader. He had lost his home and everything in it, including three of his six children. “Some of us, but not all of us, were given food coupons,” he said. “I can only speak for myself. I don’t want to lie. I’m a Christian.”

You can read the entire article here.

I want to share this Disaster Relief Resource I just discovered. It's a map of Port-au-Prince shelter camps and the main food and water distribution sites. This map was created on February 13, 2010. Click on the map to zoom in for a closer look.



For more disaster relief resources, be sure to visit the Haiti Earthquake Person and Help Finder.

Donate Double Minutes for Half the Cost All Day Feb. 19, 2010 for Haitian Friends & Family

I added minutes to some friends' phones in Haiti so I am now receiving promotional offers from their phone service. Help us spread the word about this special offer I just received.

For one day only, February 19, 2010, you can add minutes to your family and friends' Voilà and Comcel cell phones in Haiti. Minutes added online to Voilà and Comcel phones will be doubled at www.familyinthe509.com. For one day only, February 19, you will get double the amount of Haitian Gourdes applied to your family and friends' phones.

This applies to online purchases only. The online promotion runs all day February 19 and ends at 11:59pm EST.

To make the offer even sweeter, every time someone makes a purchase, that number will be entered into a monthly drawing to win a free motorcycle. Online purchases can be made in increments of $15 or $25 and the amount of your purchase will be doubled to $30 or $50 all day Friday, February 19, 2010.

3 National Days of Prayer Bring Rejoicing

Thousands have gone. Thousands are still standing to Praise God.

2/13/10 Pictures courtesy of Carel Pedre

Did you wonder about the 3 days of prayer and fasting in Haiti? Well, here's an account I captured from a missionary's blog:

We did not have school today, February 12, because today has been declared the first of three National Days of Prayer. Haitians are fasting for 30 hours - from 6 am this morning to 12 noon on Saturday. And believe me, they are out in force in church. This morning we went to a hospital to serve, and they had just a handful of patients - anyone who can be is in church. We woke right at 6 am because the church outside our window (just across the street, over the school's perimeter wall) started with prayer and singing at top volume. They were still worshiping at 12:45 when we had returned from the hospital. We heard them on the drive to the hospital, and we heard them while at the hospital - different congregations, blanketing Haiti in hymns.

Source: www.benandkatieinhaiti.com

An aid worker wrote, "Yesterday [Feb. 12] was a day of mourning and fasting that is supposed to last the whole weekend. In the downtown plaza by the National Palace the streets were filled with hundreds and thousands of people singing and praising God! Dancing with their hands lifted up and singing "Hallelujah" as their chant, singing a song about God's greatness and how He washed away their sins. It was a sight to behold.

"The tents and sea of humanity that are now forced to live in utter suffering were rejoicing with hallelujahs on their lips. Even now as I write this journal entry, I hear the singing of the people singing at a church down the street from where I am staying in the mountains above Port-au-Prince. I am undone by this; the people and their love for God. People sleeping on the street using scraps of debris for walls and a sheet for a roof multiplied by thousands, side by side; all having lost loved ones, personal belongings, their livelihood, everything, yet they stand and sing praises.

How can we not be moved to action? What are we going to do? How am I going to respond to this? How will we respond to what is happening here?

Follow the link below to watch and hear the sounds of Haitians singing and praising God everywhere they could find a place to gather. If you look closely, you will see some people bowed down completely, with their faces to the floor, in deep worship to God.

Haitians Rejoice (Five One Films)

Haiti - A Call To Fasting and Prayer

Funny I don’t remember the people in New Orleans responding that way, do you?

The last aftershock was on Tuesday (February 9). It measured 4.0 magnitude and was centered 25 miles west of Port-au-Prince.

Someone in a white coat kept bringing me water

While talking on the phone with veteran missionary, Randall Stahls, he told us a Haitian, who was trapped in rubble 27 days, told his rescuers, "Someone in a white coat kept bringing me water."

The news media keeps trying to discount this man's story, saying he was hallucinating, on too many pills, but this man is sticking to his story, insisting that a man in a white coat kept bringing him water. Doctors admit the man could not have possibly survived without water.

Watch a video to hear Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN tell this man's story and see exclusive CNN video of this man.

Orphans held hostage - the other side of the story

At a time when orphan babies are dying and the children of Haiti are in the single greatest need in the history of this nation, UNICEF has worked to shut down all international adoptions.

Now in this important field report from Port-Au-Prince, Doug Phillips examines the present battle to rescue Haiti's children in the context of UNICEF's anti-adoption efforts vs. the work of the Christian community to encourage the Haitian government to cut through the red tape and open the door for legitimate, qualified American adoptions.

Watch Special Field Report: Haiti's Orphans Held Hostage.

Help Haiti Now

Everyone can do something to help. Volunteer your time and skills, give of your resources and help by sharing this web site with others. Thanks to Ushahidi, people around the world can help.

How You Can Help - In person: as a trained volunteer, mapper or translator. Online: as an on-call translator or mapper, or fill in maps. On the ground: by telling others how to report needs, reporting urgent needs, putting us in touch with community leaders helping with aid and relief.

View the current needs: Haiti Alerts.

Please visit our Haiti Earthquake Person and Help Finder for many more suggestions on how you can help.