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| Terrie Eisenmann is pictured with some of the orphans she befriended during her eighth trip to Haiti. |
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1/23/2010 8:41:00 AM
'They've got a long road ahead of them'
Elisabeth Waldon
Staff Writer
EDMORE - A catastrophic earthquake won't keep two local missionaries from returning to Haiti.
In fact, Terrie Eisenmann and Nick Main now have an even greater passion for the Haitians.
Eisenmann, 61, of Blanchard, and Main, 18, of Edmore, recently returned from a mission trip to Haiti. The journey was Eisenmann's eighth and Main's second.
"I am so glad I wasn't leading this trip because I would have lost my mind," Eisenmann admitted. "It was so chaotic getting out."
'A very friendly people'
Eisenmann and Main flew from Detroit on New Year's Day with 15 others on a United Methodist Volunteers & Missions team to Miami, Port-au-Prince and finally the port city of Jeremie.
Eisenmann and Main both attend Faith United Methodist Church in Edmore, which supports a church, orphanage and school in Roseaux, about 16 miles from Jeremie. Thirteen children live at the orphanage and 45 children are fed there every day from an outdoor kitchen.
The Rev. Don Gotham, pastor of St. Clare United Methodist Church, led the team, which has been rebuilding a church for the past seven years after the building was severely damaged in a hurricane eight years ago. The weather stayed at about 80 degrees each day, along with frequent bursts of pouring rain.
Eisenmann first visited Haiti in 2003.
"After my first trip I had to go back," she said. "Those people have got my heart.
"Haitians are a very friendly people," Eisenmann added. "Their whole culture is based on relationships. In the U.S. we tend to focus on money and power and relationships come last. In Haiti, relationships come first. If you make a friend in Haiti, they're a friend for life. The Haitian people are very strong, very resilient. These people have survived 200 years of oppression and starvation and dirty water and no electricity and their faith is so strong because all they have is God. That's why I keep going back. They're such an inspiration."
Eisenmann encouraged Main to join her last year. The two knew each other from church and Main also works at Moody Blueberry Farm in Blanchard, owned by Eisenmann and her husband, "D." Main graduated from Montabella High School last year and leads the church's youth group with his girlfriend.
In Haiti, Main stayed busy painting the church and playing soccer with the local children. He taught them English and they taught him Creole.
"The kids just swarm around you," he said. "They just want any little minute you can give them. You're going there to work, but you're also going there to make relationships with people there, just to let them know you care."
'Is this an earthquake?'
At about 4:50 p.m. Jan. 12, the missionaries were packing their duffle bags. They were planning to leave the next morning for Port-au-Prince to do some more work before flying home on Jan. 16.
Main was sitting on the porch of the orphanage, playing games with the children and visiting with other adults.
"All of a sudden the house started to shake, the ground started to shake," he recalled. "We jumped up, we started saying, 'Is this an earthquake? What should we do?' It felt like you were on a pontoon boat and it was kind of rolling."
Eisenmann was stacking a pile of duffle bags on the porch when she lost her balance.
The earthquake lasted several minutes. Not much was damaged near Jeremie, but tremors continued throughout the next few days and nights.
"You'd lay in bed and all of a sudden the bed would just shake," Main said.
'Wow, this is real and people are dying'
The missionaries were able to get word to Michigan that they were safe, but they didn't realize how destructive the earthquake had been until the next day.
"When it really struck us all hard was the next morning, because there was no TV and only two radio stations broadcasting in Creole," Eisenmann said. "We couldn't get on the Internet and our cell phones were out. We had just eaten breakfast and we were talking and laughing and we heard this wailing and sobbing coming from the porch. It was our painting boss and he had learned that his oldest sister had died in Port-au-Prince. That really sobered us all up. It was like, 'Wow, this is real and people are dying.'"
A local man had taken a pastor to Port-au-Prince earlier that week, a 12-hour drive through the mountains. Main recalled the driver's arrival home.
"He started walking up and I ran up to give him a great big hug, but his face - it was just so sad to see him, I don't even know how to explain it," Main said. "He just had this pale, devastated look on his face. You just knew that he had seen things that no one should ever have to see. For me, that's when it really set in, because he's a pretty tough guy."
"He couldn't even talk," Eisenmann added.
"We were never in any danger," she said. "We were safe the whole time. I think it was harder on our families. We didn't see any of the damage and we weren't there in the midst of the chaos but we did see the pain in the people's eyes."
The missionaries didn't know how they were going to get home, so they kept working on the church.
"We wanted to stay busy," Main said. "The group we had was a really unique group. We knew we had a lot of people praying for us back home. We were all just like, 'OK, we'll just roll with it.' We were calm."
'Alabama Dave and His Flying Sardine Can'
The missionaries eventually realized they could not fly home from Port-au-Prince. After numerous attempts, they found two volunteer pilots from aid organization Bahamas Habitat who agreed to fly them out from Jeremie's airport, which consisted of a dirt runway often covered with roaming cows.
The missionaries stuffed themselves into two tiny planes and flew three hours to Nassau in the Bahamas. One pilot had to return to Jeremie to pick up a third group of the missionaries.
Eisenmann said they nicknamed their pilot "Alabama Dave and His Flying Sardine Can."
When the group arrived in the Bahamas, they saw television footage of the earthquake's damages for the first time.
"We knew it would be on TV, but we weren't prepared for the images that we saw," Eisenmann said.
"It was really surprising how much damage it had caused and how it was still on the news," Main added.
'They've got a long road ahead of them'
The missionaries landed in Detroit on Tuesday afternoon. As they walked off the plane and into the airport, they were surprised to see TV cameras and interviewers along with family members, including Main's mother, Serena Anderson.
"I was ecstatic," she said. "I couldn't sleep at all the night before."
Eisenmann and Main both look forward to returning to Haiti a year from now.
"If anything, it definitely energized me to go back," Main said.
"They've got a long road ahead of them," added Eisenmann of the Haitians.
"As connected as they are, friendship and relationship-wise, it's especially going to affect them," said Main of the earthquake's devestation.
Main's parents, Al Main and Anderson, show no signs of holding their son back.
"There's no way I could stop him," said Anderson with a proud smile.
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