Leogane Plain, Haiti. Tuesday, January 12, 2010, almost 5:00 p.m.
My fourth day in Haiti with the Florida-based outreach group New Missions. We’d been up before sunrise visiting villages, handing out shoeboxes filled with toys, school supplies and other necessities. Now it was almost dinnertime. I sat in the New Missions dining room—a screened-in porch with rows of wooden tables and chairs.
There were about 40 of us on this trip, mostly high school students and some churchgoers from Orlando.
One of the students, Faith, had just met her sponsor child and we were getting to know the family. I captured as many moments as I could with my camera. It was only four days into my first-ever mission trip, but already I knew I’d never look at things the same way again.
Faith was about to sing for us when boom! A powerful primal force surged beneath our feet. The roof shook. The concrete floor rippled like it was made of water.
“What do we do?” Faith cried. I did the only thing I could. I held on to Faith. Literally. I grabbed her and ran outside. The force threw us to the ground. I desperately tried to shield Faith’s body with mine and began to pray.
I’m a reporter and anchor for News 13, a TV station in Orlando, but it wasn’t a story that brought me to Haiti. It was a billboard. Crazy, right? That’s what I would’ve thought a year ago if you’d told me I’d be going on a mission trip abroad.
I was committed to volunteering, but there was so much to do in my community. I didn’t need to go to another country. Then last fall I got a sense God wanted me to go farther to help people. I prayed, asked him for signs.
One day in December I was driving down Route 441 when a billboard jumped out at me: “Share a little Christmas with Haiti. shoeboxdrive.com.”
I didn’t know much about Haiti, though it was only 700 miles off the coast of Florida and some of my coworkers were from there. It looked like a group called New Missions was sending shoeboxes of supplies to Haitian children. That might be a good story to cover, I thought.
Reporting is my passion. I’ve known that since I was a girl growing up just outside the Bronx. My parents were handicapped. We didn’t have a lot, but they had an amazing faith.
Dad had type 1 diabetes and was in and out of the hospital. Still, one thing we always did together was watch Good Morning America. “That’s what I want to do,” I said, pointing to the TV one day when I was nine.
“You can do anything, if you put your mind to it!” Dad said. He died the next year. I held on to my dream and majored in broadcast journalism at Syracuse. When I landed an internship with Good Morning America freshman year, I knew Dad was looking on proudly from heaven.
I worked my way up from filing tapes to reporter then anchor at TV stations in New York. I loved telling people’s stories, feeling like I’d made a difference.
Still, three years ago I needed a change. Physically, I was tired of the cold so I moved to Florida, to News 13. Spiritually, I felt like my compass was off. God, I’m done doing things my way, I prayed. Show me where to go, what to do.
And show me, he did.
The morning after I saw that billboard, I was on Interstate 4. I reached down to turn on the radio when I heard God say loud and clear, “Look up.” I glanced up. Another billboard for New Missions! Just then, an announcement came on the radio…for that very same shoebox drive. Whoa.
I called New Missions. “Hi, I’m Christine Webb with News 13. I’m interested in doing a story on your shoebox drive for Haiti.”
“That’s great,” a woman said. “I’d be happy to help you set that up.”
I heard God’s voice again: “Ask her about mission trips.” I thought he was leading me to do a story, but I obeyed. “Do you know who I can speak to about mission trips?”
The woman laughed. “I’m the mission team coordinator. If you’re serious, there’s a trip in a couple of weeks.”
“I would love to go,” I said. This was wild. I didn’t even have a passport!
I talked with my boss. “I’d like some vacation time to go on a mission trip to Haiti. I’d love to take a camera.” She was all for it. She had a family member with an orphanage in Haiti. The plan was to take pictures and maybe do a story or two. I’d also try to send in blogs for our website. “Through my eyes I hope you get to see what life is really like in Haiti,” I wrote to viewers right before I left.
Saturday, January 9, our group landed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. Then came a bumpy bus ride 25 miles west to the coastal Leogane Plain and the New Missions headquarters.
Parts of the Plain were lush and green, but right in front of me the ground was littered with trash. Children, barefoot, their clothes in tatters, played in garbage dumps. People piled into tap-tap buses. Chickens, dogs and goats ran wild.
I grew up poor, but I always had clothes on my back and shoes on my feet. I’d seen photos of Haiti, but to see the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere in person was jarring.
We pulled up to the New Missions compound, a cluster of simple buildings on the beach. I dropped my bags in my room and went straight to work.
Two open-air trucks carried us to the villages of the Plain. We handed out our shoeboxes, clothes and food. “Merci,” the children said. The only thing greater than their gratitude was their need. I wished I could do more.
The next few days we visited New Missions schools and churches. “It’s a miracle I’m here,” I told the group of how I was led to Haiti. “I want to help as much as I can.”
I’d heard one of the best ways to help was to sponsor a child. Faith was a sponsor. A monthly donation helped pay for food, education and medical care and gave a child a chance at a new life. I filled out the paperwork. Monday afternoon a girl, about 10, her hair tied with yellow ribbons, showed up.
“This is for you,” I said, handing her a toy lamb and a shoebox filled with goodies. She took the gifts, but there wasn’t even a flicker of a smile.
“Do you like to draw?” I asked. I pointed to some paper and crayons. A few minutes later, she set a picture in front of me: a rainbow-colored ship, with “I love Jesus” written across the top. Suddenly I saw a smile as bright as her name, Miracle.
Tuesday we delivered more shoeboxes. Mid-morning we stopped at another New Missions elementary school, Brache-Milot. The principal, Milo, was wonderful, devoted to his students. “My sister,” he said, “thank you.”
I was still thinking about Milo and how I’d blog about him when we got back to the compound that afternoon. Faith’s sponsor child had finally arrived. Faith gave her some presents and was just about to sing for us.
Boom! That’s when everything started shaking—the roof, the chairs, the floor. I grabbed Faith and ran outside. Then came the eeriest sound…chh, chh, chh. Right in front of us, the ground zigzagged open like something out of a movie. The earth split in two.
Finally the tremors stopped. One of the trip leaders led us to the beach behind the compound. We did a headcount: 44 people, all safe. There was no cell phone service, but several people got a flurry of text messages on their phones: “Get out! Tsunami threat.”
We piled into the trucks and headed to higher ground, taking turns using our one satellite phone. The first person I reached was my boss. “I’m in Haiti,” I said. “There’s been an earthquake. Please tell my mom I’m okay.”
We spent the night in the trucks. By morning the tsunami threat was over; the tremors subsided enough for us to drive back to the compound. Entire villages looked like they’d crumbled, but the compound buildings, though damaged, were still standing.
Somehow we had a Wi-Fi signal. My reporter instinct kicked in. I couldn’t use my iPhone to call out, but I could film reports and e-mail them. I quickly shot reports about the quake and sent them to the station. If people at home saw the human face of this disaster, they’d want to help. All I wanted to do was tell other people’s stories. I never thought I’d be reporting my own story too.
Later that day, Tim DeTellis, president of New Missions, told us Port-au-Prince had been devastated. Thousands were feared dead. The roads weren’t safe and no planes were flying in. We’d need to be rescued. Our warehouse had flooded, but we dried what we could and delivered the supplies to nearby villages.
“Do you know where we are?” one of the men from our group asked me. We’d stopped by a decimated building.
“Um, no,” I said. “This is the school we were at just before the earthquake,” he said. The Brache-Milot School. The children had already left for the day when the quake hit. I hoped the teachers and the principal, Milo, had too.
Thursday morning as we were getting more supplies out of our warehouse, Milo showed up. He’d walked more than 10 miles. I was so relieved, I burst into tears. “I have lost everything,” he said. “My family. My house. My school. Please pray for me.”
Then he looked at me intently. “Please, my sister, don’t forget about me and don’t forget the people of Haiti.”
“I will never forget.” It was as much a promise to God as it was to my friend.
Friday morning U.S. Army special ops teams evacuated our group by helicopters. I felt guilty leaving so many desperate people. But our supplies were gone and I knew the best way to help now would be to return to the U.S. and keep telling their stories.
Back home, I learned Leogane was the epicenter of the quake. Over 200,000 people lost their lives. Another one million were left homeless. I found out I was the first U.S. reporter to send reports back to the States. My iPhone reports had been broadcast all over CNN.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about those I met in Haiti—especially Milo and Miracle. I still haven’t heard from her. I’m holding onto faith and praying that she and her family are okay.
You might think surviving the earthquake really changed me. Actually, God was working on me long before that, showing me how all of our stories are connected, woven into a larger story of such complexity perhaps only he has the wisdom to understand it completely.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to help one another—near or far—and grow in our understanding. Maybe it was a story that brought me to Haiti after all.
