I mentioned in the last post that I would be sharing video from the current Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief mission to Haiti. Take a look at this powerful testimony from one of our Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief chaplains who has been in Haiti this week as he shares about ministering to Haitian pastors.

The chaplain in the video is Alan Dodson, the pastor at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Lexington. The Kentucky medical and chaplaincy/assessment teams are scheduled to arrive home tonight.

Click here if the device on which you’re reading this post doesn’t show the embedded video or if you want to download it to use in your church.

– Robert Reeves

It’s looking like Kentucky Baptists will send more than 12,000 Buckets of Hope to Haiti as part of the SBC-wide effort to provide practical aid to the people devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake. The goal here in Kentucky was to collect 10,000 buckets so our people have been especially generous.

The video on this page shows students at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville preparing thousands of the buckets for transport to Miami where they will go by ship to Haiti. (Click here if the device you’re using doesn’t embed the video into the post.)

Just getting the buckets to Haiti has been quite a testimony of cooperation. In most cases, the buckets went originally to one of our Baptist churches, then on to an association office serving as a cluster point and then finally to Louisville. In Louisville, the students here are putting the buckets on wooden pallets, shrinkwrapping the pallets and then loading those pallets onto trucks for the long ride south. Handling the buckets is hard physical work and much appreciation is due to Bob Perkins and the entire team at Southern that has been coordinating this labor. Kentucky Baptist disaster relief workers are also helping with this part of the project.

Once the buckets arrive in Haiti, they will still have to be transported to secure locations from which distribution can be managed. My understanding is that the actual distribution will primarily be accomplished through the Haitian Baptist churches which already have the experience in handling this kind of distribution in a controlled, fair and compassionate way.

The Buckets of Hope will be extremely valuable when they arrive in Haiti. Kentucky currently has had both medical and chaplain/assessment teams in Haiti this week (working in Port-au-Prince and Mirabalais) and the stories that are coming back continue to be heartbreaking. The needs of the country before the quake were already desperate but are even more difficult now.

I just watched video footage earlier today (that I’ll have up in the next couple of days) of one of our pastors describing the physical and emotional exhaustion of some of the Haitian pastors who are almost literally serving as shepherds as they go out seeking food and water to meet the physical needs of their flock. Almost all are dealing with deep personal grief after having lost loved ones and most are still living under makeshift tents. The approach of the rainy season has our doctors worried about the public health impact from unrecovered bodies still buried in rubble from the quake.

Yet, our God is at work! People are coming to Christ by the thousands and even voodoo priests are coming to the Lord during this difficult time. And our disaster relief teams continue to talk about the resiliency of the Haitian people and the admiration they have for them.

Please continue to pray for the people of Haiti and for those who are ministering there. Be praying now as well for each family that the Buckets of Hope will be helping. May the Lord use these staples to provide physical and spiritual sustenance!

– Robert Reeves

A fitting wrap-up of the Dateline Haiti series is this video dispatch just released from the International Mission Board from an interview of Butch Vernon, the chaplain of our 10-member Kentucky Baptist Convention Disaster Relief medical team that arrived home earlier this week. If you’ve been following the series, you know that Butch was the author of the posts from the field.

For those who may be reading this on a platform that doesn’t allow you to see the embedded video,  click this link to go to the video on the IMB Commission Stories Web site.

Vernon was also featured today in a story in The State Journal in Frankfort, Ky. Here’s the story from writer Keren Henderson:

A newborn was placed in a copy paper box, when no other spot could be found at one of the makeshift hospital’s in Port-au-Prince.

Editor’s note: Butch Vernon, the pastor of Thoroughbred Community Church in Nicholasville and the chaplain for the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s disaster relief team, returned last week from Haiti. The 10-member medical team treated hundreds of patients each day in a makeshift hospital near Haiti’s collapsed national capitol. Butch recently shared his chaotic story with The State Journal, explaining that hundreds more Americans are working in similar hospitals across Port-au-Prince. This was his third trip to Haiti.

Desperate and malnourished, the 15-year-old Haitian girl dragged herself to the makeshift hospital.

“Please help me die!” she repeatedly screamed. “Please help me die!”

Linda had been pulled from the wreckage of her home two days after the earthquake. Once free, she discovered that all 11 in her family had been crushed and killed.

With nowhere to go, no one to take care of her and no food, she was wandering Port-au-Prince. Even the shirt on her back was not her own.

“She wanted to die,” Butch remembers. “All we had to do was show her a little love, a little compassion, and that was enough to get her through the day.”

After hugs and some warm food, Linda was smiling again.

Her story describes the daily struggle of one million Haitians who live in squalid tent camps and eat an average of one meal every three days.

The makeshift hospitals are bare bones – merely a series of tarps hung over street signs. At Butch’s hospital, the surgery room is a desk with a mattress on top. Newborn babies are placed in whatever’s available – in one memorable example, a cardboard box – giving mothers a few hours to rest after labor.

“We had a lot of toes and fingers that were gangrene,” Butch said. “Most of what we were dealing with was revisions of earlier amputations.”

However, the surgeries he witnessed can’t be compared to those during the first few days after the quake.

“A lot of initial amputations were done with hacksaws, Black & Decker tools, and in a couple instances, chainsaws. And there was no anesthesia, just a stick.”

Currently, the greatest needs are hunger and stress related.

“Nearly everyone is suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder,” Butch said.

Someone to listen

When he wasn’t assisting the physicians, Butch listened to stories similar to Linda’s.

“They just needed someone to listen,” he said. “I would listen as a dad was telling me, ‘I watched my wife and infant daughter and 4-year-old son crushed in front of me. My business was destroyed. I lost everything. What do I do now?’”

Sometimes, there weren’t any answers, so Butch prayed with each person he talked to, asking God to show them his presence in some way that day.

“As Americans, our response is ‘It’s going to be OK.’ We don’t know that. It’s going to get worse in Haiti before it gets better.”

Desperation has driven several to violence.

“They’re on their last nerve,” Butch said, reiterating that large families are living on top of one another in tent villages with very little food. “It doesn’t take hardly anything to cause a violent outbreak.”

It wasn’t uncommon for doctors to get distracted from treating quake victims to respond to gunshot and knife victims after a fight.

At the same time, Butch says, it’s easy to mischaracterize the Haitians as they go through this struggle.

“They are some of the most resilient people,” he said, praising their ability to withstand incredible pain.

He remembers one girl who – without any painkillers – looked up at his camera and smiled as a doctor scrubbed out bone-deep wounds on her leg.

One of Butch’s main goals was to care for the doctors and nurses – to help them process the things they were seeing.

Watching people suffer and starve was emotionally draining, especially for the women on the team, Butch says.

Most of the children are malnourished; many of their mothers died in the quake; and the mothers who made it can’t feed their infants.

“There aren’t a lot of cows running around Haiti,” Butch said. “Hardly any grocery stores are standing. It’s difficult sending a child away with a few boxes of formula knowing that when it’s gone …”

So, Butch, who has earned a reputation for his love and compassion under even the most stressful circumstances, kept encouraging his team to keep a short-term mindset.

“We got them through today,” he encouraged.

A hope for the future

Butch is also thinking long term.

He carries thousands of stories of loss and tragedy, but greater than that is his sense of hope for the rebuilding.

“Every time I come back, I have had a feeling of hopelessness, that things are never going to be different. This is the first time I came back and didn’t have that feeling.”

That hope is being administered by churches and Haitian pastors, he said.

As has been widely covered, the national government has no ability to help the people. The only social structure still standing is the church, which has spearheaded relief in Haiti for decades.

“If we’re going to make a difference, we’re going to have to work through the faith-based organizations,” he said.

Related to that is the importance for Haitians to give up voodoo superstitions, which exacerbate their posttraumatic stress, Butch says.

Voodoo beliefs place great emphasis on taking care of the dead.

“If you do not treat the body of a dead relative with respect, that relative will return as a spirit and kill children or cause mischief,” he said, adding that in a nation where families make $200-$300 a year, they will spend as much as $2,000 to $3,000 on a funeral to make sure they are not haunted.

“The end result is horrific posttraumatic stress,” he said. “They have witnessed dump trucks driving through town dumping bodies in holes. The people are horrified that their spirits are going to come back and pay them back for not treating them with respect.”

So, as Christians are feeding the homeless and helping the injured, they’re also preaching the Gospel.

“The tragedy is going to grow worse, but the end result could be very positive,” Butch said, summarizing his hopes. “But the birth pains will be horrific.”

Nurse Nancy Clark with patients

This is the sixth of several guest posts from the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s disaster relief team in Haiti. The 10-member medical team arrived in Port-au-Prince Monday and began ministering through a makeshift hospital on the edge of a tent city on Tuesday. In this post, Butch Vernon, pastor of Thoroughbred Community Church in Nicholasville and the chaplain for the group, shares about the group’s final day of work.

I’m writing to you on our last night in Haiti. Our prayer this morning in the van on the way to the hospital was that we might finish strong. Praise God He allowed us to do just that!

We had three babies born this morning and it was crazy hectic. My day was really different. The doctors suggested that I take pictures of the wounds up close so that we might use them later on in clinics to teach Haitians how to do their own clinics. To say I was out of my comfort zone in the surgical area as fingers and toes were amputated would be an understatement. However, God didn’t send me here to be comfortable, He sent me here to be obedient.

The day went by quickly. We were all so busy that time just flew by.

Linda with nurse Chris Lee. Linda was the only survivor from her family of 11.

There is a picture here of a little girl named Linda. She is about 15. Linda came in today malnourished and despondent. We found out that she had been buried in the rubble of her home for two days before being dug out. When she was finally freed she discovered that her family of 11 were all dead. Since then she has been wandering the streets with no where to go and no one to take care of her.

The little girl in the arm cast and leg cast was also involved in the quake. She was injured but treated. She came to us because the wounds were dirty. We cleaned them but even before we started she was crying hysterically. We couldn’t figure out what was wrong. We eventually got the idea that she thought we were going to amputate her leg. She never truly settled down until after we gave her some toys and gifts and allowed her to limp off with all her limbs intact.

We had another little boy who came in complaining of an ear ache. We couldn’t get him to allow us to touch it so we had to sedate him. The doc dug in his ear and pulled out a bean that had gotten stuck in the canal. It was one of the few light moments of the day.

A doctor ministers to a girl with a broken leg and arm.

Just as we were closing up and sitting around cutting up to release built up pressures, we heard all kinds of screaming and hollering and suddenly people were being rushed into the room. We found out that there had been a knife fight and four people were injured. It reminded us that we must always be ready to respond to what God sends our way.

It is a relief that as we leave there are other teams already in place to fill the gaps. Slowly but surely things are settling down to the point that we might be able to begin planning on sending other teams in. Please be praying that God will work out the logistics so that we can reach out to the Haitians while they are still the most receptive.

May God continue to allow His holy light to shine upon the people of Haiti.

A Haitian brother and sister at the hospital

What a day! We thought the hospital was losing 50 staff today but it ended up being more like 90. Yet we saw as many patients as we did any day this week. When we found out this morning how many people were gone and how thin the ranks were, Glenn Hickey, our team leader, and I went aside and prayed.

Before we got here another medical team had shared a testimony about how they prayed for God to stretch their medicines and God never let the suitcase run out of what they needed, although they kept track and knew that they had given out considerably more than they ever could have had. I felt led to pray the same thing for our two medical teams. I asked the Lord to let it be like we had extra doctors and nurses and to send in extras as we needed them. It was amazing! God allowed us to do more than we could ever have imagined and then when it seemed we were going to have to turn people away, He sent fresh doctors from nowhere! It was awesome. Our God rocks!

We got in this morning and there was a little baby who had just been born under a huge mosquito net. What a blessing. Then we had another gunshot victim come in that we were able to stabilize in the parking lot and get to another hospital. The docs think he will probably make it.

A Haitian child

We also did several amputations and wound cleanings today that were pretty nasty. You never get hardened to the pain, but you learn that you can’t afford to be squeamish either. We had the cutest little girl come in today and she had two huge chunks out of her leg. I’m pretty sure it was bare bone I was looking at and if it wasn’t, it was really close to it. As surgical tech John Brickey began to clean her wound she looked up at him and smiled the biggest smile of appreciation you could imagine, although she had to know how much it was going to hurt. The Haitian people are amazing.

The Florida team just got in yesterday and today we threw them directly into the middle of the fire. It was really edifying to see how God took some of their initial fear and their obvious discomfort and just walked them right through it. They did an amazing job as well and it was a joy to work alongside them.

We came here with an expectation of doing a bunch of wound cleaning and amputations. This hasn’t been the case. What we are seeing more of than anything is stress and hunger related issues. The teams coming after us really need to reconsider what they need to bring. Please pray for them that God would give them wisdom as they pack.

Dr. Thomas McKechnie and a young patient

We were so busy today I was running non stop pretty much most of the day. Around 1:00 I realized that there was something I really needed to pray about and got alone with the Lord for a short, but really great time. I cannot tell you how much everyone here appreciates your prayers. There is no way we could be doing what we are doing without the prayer cover of our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Well, we have been in aftermeetings pretty much all night and I’m going to crash. Tomorrow is our last full day doing medical work and we will probably be slammed. Please pray that we can make a difference for the Kingdom in our last little bit of time here.

Kentucky doctors minister to a little girl brought to the hospital by ambulance

Another great day in sunny Haiti! Every day is different. We got to the hospital this morning and right after we got there a beautiful little baby was born. Kind of like Jesus in the manger, he ended up in a copy paper box.

Big prayer request: about 50 of the hospital staff left today to go back to their respective countries.

We probably saw about 600 patients today. We will have 10 new folks helping tomorrow. It could be a really, really busy day tomorrow.

Our team is essentially going to be heading up most of the areas in the hospital tomorrow. What’s really great is how well these guys and girls will handle it with a Christlike attitude. This is one of the finest teams of any kind that I have ever had the opportunity to serve with.

We had some U.S. Army Rangers from Fort Bragg come by today to get a doctor and some nurses for some undisclosed purpose. I got to talk to them a little bit and I don’t think the Haiti tour is their favorite posting so far, but they were pleased that they got to make a difference.

The view of the damaged Haitian presidential palace from the hospital

We had some guys from the International Missions Board communications office come today. They followed several of us around and a few of us got to do interviews. Keep an eye on the IMB Web site and some of the material may be up soon.

We also went walking around downtown Port au Prince with an armed police officer and got to see some of the damage up close and talk and pray with several people. I really wasn’t scared at all until the officer started looking around and told us we needed to go in another direction because this was a very bad part of Port au Prince. I personally had no desire to tour a very bad part of Port au Prince so we took his advice and left.

We went by the Catholic cathedral that was destroyed and the amount of devastation was amazing. Just as we were leaving, this long convoy of cars went by (I mean so close that they almost brushed us). Our guard told us it was the Haitian president.

The Florida Baptist Convention did a small food distribution outside the hospital. The people were truly appreciative but we saw first hand why there are very specific rules in place for our disaster teams. Experienced Haitian pastors were distributing the food but when it ran out the crowd could very easily have turned into a mob.

Fortunately some police pulled up and kept anything from happening, but we were all reminded why we couldn’t randomly hand stuff out. These guys new what they were doing and things still almost got out of hand.

The tent city near the hospital

The CMBH (Confraternite Missionnaire Baptiste dHaiti) house where we are staying is packed tonight. Tomorrow will be pure chaos as two teams that just arrived will be going out for the first time. Please be praying for them because the culture shock from an American hospital to a temporary Haitian hospital is immense. Be praying as they make the transition to being creative and trying to provide as sterile an atmosphere as possible in the midst of absolute filth.

The lady who is heading the hospital right now, Omayra Alvarez, loves Southern Baptist Disaster Relief. She was here several days after the earthquake trying to help a friend from the Dominican Republic find a loved one. She saw the need as the tent city began to grow up in front of the capitol building.

It was Southern Baptist Disaster Relief folks who provided her with the funds to get up and running. Everytime she sees one of our yellow shirts she smiles a mile wide smile. Pray for her as she has been on site since the beginning.

Well, it’s almost 8:30 and I got a little too much sun today so we’d better shut down. We really covet your extensive prayers tomorrow as it is a day of great transition. These are the type of days Satan loves to play havoc with, so please intensify your prayers.

Kentucky Disaster Relief medical team

This is the third of several guest posts from the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s disaster relief team in Haiti. The 10-member medical team arrived in Port-au-Prince Monday and began ministering through a makeshift hospital on the edge of a tent city on Tuesday. In this post, Butch Vernon, pastor of Thoroughbred Community Church in Nicholasville and the chaplain for the group, shares about the group’s second day of work.

Click here to get more of the big picture view of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief work in Haiti from Baptist Press.

Just wanted to give a quick update. It’s getting late quick and we had a really long day and tomorrow will be the same.

Doctors minister to Haitian gunshot victim

We were in the hospital across from the national capitol building today. It was amazing. Probably had 500 patients through the whole day. Had one guy brought in on a wheel barrow who had been shot in the head. He was brought to the hospital in a pick up truck and the hospital basically said there was no chance. Pray for his family. We don’t know any of the situation.

We didn’t see a lot of the tragic things from the early days after the quake but it looks like there could be a real possibility of some serious health issues with these folks. Please pray that the Lord would stop any outbreaks.

It looks like we are going to be in the same place for the rest of the week. This should be great as it will allow us to continue to build relationships with the staff and other support personnel.

Continue to thank God for this team. They are incredible. We put some people in some situations today that were waaaaaaay out of their comfort zone but each one of them sailed through with flying colors praising the Lord for the opportunity  to be stretched.

The Florida Baptist Convention and the Confraternite Missionnaire Baptiste dHaiti (CMBH) has really taken good care of us. We sleep in a.c. each night and we are eating very well.

Vernon chats with nurses and patient

This is the second of several guest posts from the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s disaster relief team in Haiti. The 10-member medical team arrived in Port-au-Prince Monday and began ministering through a makeshift hospital on the edge of a tent city today. In this post, Butch Vernon, pastor of Thoroughbred Community Church in Nicholasville and the chaplain for the group, shares about the group’s first day of work.

Just wanted to update you on the first day of the clinic. When you pray for this trip, take the time to thank God for the team that He put together. These doctors and nurses and Glenn Hickey, our leader (called a Blue Hat in Disaster Relief terms) are amazing! They each have a truly Christlike attitude.

Glenn Hickey with members of the security team

We were in the heart of the city today and saw incredible devastation. For those who have been to Haiti before you will be even more surprised at the amount of incredible collapse that is everywhere. We were sent to a mountain tent city adjacent to a Catholic church and on the way you could look up the mountain and see where one house fell and took out eight or nine more. There were patches where you couldn’t tell anything had happened, but then you would hit a place where the devastation was all around you.

Our clinic today was really busy but we were seeing folks who were suffering from the aftermath and not from the actual earthquake devastation. We saw about 250 patients. There are a lot of signs of tuberculosis. Be praying that there might not be a huge outbreak.

A medical team member sutures a head wound

People here are scared. There is a fear that permeates everything. However, the pastors are excited. They believe that God is going to do something tremendous. We talked to a number of pastors who didn’t know each other at all and they all had the same message. May God allow it to be so.

Many people were frightened about us coming here. Honestly, I have felt extremely safe in Haiti on this trip. One reason is that we are only out during the day. Another is that we are being guarded by the Haitian president’s personal security team. (All three of our officers asked if they could go with us again tomorrow. Be praying for them that we might reach them with the Gospel.) They were each one thrilled to be a part of helping their people.

Finally, we have felt safe because we are doing what God has called us to do. Safety is not the issue, obedience is.

We are finding out through trial and error many things that will help the next groups to follow. Pray that we can find a methodology to allow some form of continuation for the teams.

Be gearing up. I believe God wants to use us here. Check out the Buckets of Hope for Haiti at the Kentucky Baptist Convention Web site.

Butch Vernon

This is the first of what we hope will be several guest posts from the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s disaster relief team in Haiti. The 10-member medical team arrived in Port-au-Prince today (Monday) and will be ministering through a makeshift hospital on the edge of a tent city. In this post, Butch Vernon, pastor of Thoroughbred Community Church in Nicholasville and the chaplain for the group, shares about the group’s first two days.

Greetings from Port-au-Prince, Haiti! We made it. What an amazing trip. The airline (Delta) let us take 42 packages for no extra charge. The problem was, we had so much that 12 bags containing very vital medical supplies got left in Atlanta. Initially the Dominican airport officials very apologetically told us that it would be the next day before we could get them. We prayed for God to intervene in a very direct way and just a few minutes later they called us over and said the bags would be there by 9:00…and they were. Praise God!

A collapsed Haitian home

We are the first in what will be a wave of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief teams coming to Haiti. As such we are very blessed to get to endure some things that hopefully the next groups won’t have to go through. Folks in charge of transportation weren’t initially prepared for the vast number of bags that medical teams have to have, so we ended up waiting while alternate transportation was graciously provided. (By the way it was worth the wait.) We had an extremely comfortable trip to Haiti and God allowed us to make up lost time by having the border guards simply wave us through without even looking at any of our documentation. What a blessing.

Please be in prayer for one of our Dominican drivers. We got word that on his way back to the D.R., he was involved in a very serious accident. We do not know the extent of his injuries or his condition.

It was funny that after we switched to vans and tap taps, I was videotaping our entrance into the city when the vehicle that was hauling our luggage ran slam into the back of our truck. I got it all on camera. No one was hurt or even shook up be we were all borderline hysterical with laughter. It has been a long couple of days and we are going without a ton of sleep at this point but that is about to be remedied.

A bookcase becomes a pharmacy

Tonight we turned an area that was a small library into a pharmacy. It was amazing to see all the medications that God provided for the two teams to work with.

The Kentucky team got our orders tonight and we will be operating in a small portable hospital just outside the edge of one of the larger tent cities, the one that sits directly across from the National Capitol building. We are expecting to be slammed all day. We will leave here at about 7 a.m. and work until 3 when we have to stop and come back because of security concerns. Please be praying that things would flow smoothly and we would get to see as many patients as possible. They guys who went on the initial assessment this afternoon said the damage was unbelievable downtown where we will be heading.

God has really been at work in our midst and I am anxiously awaiting the opportunity to fill you all in on what He does next. I want to close with a vision that was shared at dinner. Haitian Pastor LaBranc, the director of ministry for the CMBH (Confraternite Missionaire Baptiste d’ Haiti), shared with us how God had given him a vision before the earthquake. He felt that the Lord was telling him He was going to break Voodu’s hold on Haiti. (By the way, I didn’t spell it wrong, there is just no official spelling of the word, and this is the one most accepted here.) God told him to expect 1.5 million Haitians to turn to Christ in the next five years. He told us how he has been talking to some of the voodu priests who have expressed that the power of voodu is broken and several have accepted Christ! Praise God on His mighty work even in the midst of tragedy.

The KBC medical team receives its assignment to minister near a tent city

Pray hard for us tomorrow. I’m so tired that I am having to constantly go back and fix mistakes so I believe I will hit the sack. Six o’clock will be early. As I get ready to shower I hear singing from somewhere in the neighborhood. It sounds like 30 or 40 people raising their voices in praise to our God, and by our God I mean the God of America, Haiti and the world. What a blessing!

Disaster Relief Associate Coy Webb briefs the 10-member medical team.

Please be in prayer for a 10-member Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief medical team that should be in Haiti by now if all is going as planned. The team left Louisville early Sunday morning and arrived in the Dominican Republic later that day. Today (Monday, Feb. 1), they were making an arduous nine-hour or more bus ride into Port-au-Prince.

The team is connecting with a similar team from Mississippi and teams from other state conventions are scheduled to arrive later this week. The doctors and other medical personnel on the teams will be providing vital life-saving services for the people.

The team will be staying in a mission house operated by the Florida Baptist Convention as part of their 15-year partnership with Haiti Baptists and working in makeshift facilities in Port-au-Prince.

Here’s more information about the medical team supplied by the Kentucky Baptist Convention:

LOUISVILLE – Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief is sending a medical relief team to Haiti from Jan. 30 to Feb. 8 to provide relief to those affected by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The 10-person team, which has been on standby for nearly a week, will travel to Atlanta, Ga., to join with another medical team from Mississippi and two Florida Baptist volunteers, said Kentucky Baptist Convention Disaster Relief Associate Coy Webb. From there, the teams will fly into Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and then travel by bus across the island to Haiti.

According to Webb, the volunteers will be providing relief in a hospital setting in Port-au-Prince, though the exact location is yet to be confirmed.

Glenn Hickey

The KBC’s team will be led by Glenn Hickey, a specially trained member of the KBC’s international response team. Butch Vernon, pastor of Thoroughbred Community Church in Nicholasville, will serve as chaplain.

Additional teams will be sent as plans are confirmed. Southern Baptists anticipate a long-term response with teams going regularly for months or even years, said Webb.

Those desiring to help are encouraged to give monetary donations through the KBC’s fund designated for the Haiti relief effort. Contributions may be sent to the KBC, P.O. Box 856300, Dept. 124, Louisville, KY 40285-9900. Please note “Haiti Earthquake” in the check memo. Online donations are also being accepted at www.kybaptist.org/dr.

Trained Kentucky Baptist disaster relief volunteers interested in serving on a team are being asked to express their interest by emailing cindy.henderson@kybaptist.org. Volunteers should indicate their availability, contact information and what type of volunteer work they are able to do.

Kentucky Baptists are part of a larger network of Southern Baptist volunteers trained to respond to disasters by manning mass feeding operations, using chainsaws to clear downed trees and limbs, clear mud out of flooded homes and more. Together, Southern Baptists comprise the third largest relief organization in the United States.

To learn more about Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief, go to www.kybaptist.org/dr.

The Kentucky Baptist Convention is a cooperative missions and ministry organization made up of nearly 2,400 autonomous Baptist churches in Kentucky. A variety of state and worldwide ministries are coordinated through its administrative offices in Louisville, Ky. including: missions work, disaster relief, ministry training and support, church development, evangelism and more.tist volunteers trained to respond to disasters by manning mass feeding operations, using chainsaws to clear downed trees and limbs, clear mud out of flooded homes and more. Together, Southern Baptists comprise the third largest relief organization in the United States.

To learn more about Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief, go to www.kybaptist.org/dr.

The Kentucky Baptist Convention is a cooperative missions and ministry organization made up of nearly 2,400 autonomous Baptist churches in Kentucky. A variety of state and worldwide ministries are coordinated through its administrative offices in Louisville, Ky. including: missions work, disaster relief, ministry training and support, church development, evangelism and more.