I had known this day would come. My husband, a pre-med student, had been planning a month-long trip to northern Uganda for a social medicine course, and January 12 was his departure date. I thought that would leave me spending the month at baby showers, coffee dates with friends, and with time to catch up on old movies that he never likes to watch.

What I didn't know was that a 7.0-magnitude earthquake was about to crush Haiti and send me packing in the middle of the night to catch a January 13 flight to Port-au-Prince. I waved goodbye to my husband as I headed to the airport, while he packed his bags to catch his flight to Uganda that afternoon.

For three weeks, I worked side-by-side with Haitians and Americans who had come to help with relief efforts. As a disaster communications officer with World Vision, my task was to assist journalists who had flown in from around the world, helping them tell the stories of Haiti's survival. A previous deployment to Thailand during the Myanmar cyclone and work with World Vision in Ghana and Haiti in 2009 had prepared me for long days, sleepless nights, and the challenge of working in close quarters with colleagues for long stretches with little rest. Precious sleep was usually on a cot in a sleeping bag; other colleagues were on the floor or in tents on the lawn.

But what we were living with—or without—paled in comparison to the needs of Haitians we worked with every day. Nearly all were grieving the loss of friends and loved ones and struggling to find food and water for their families. They were fearful of a future quake and of a future unknown in a country fraught with political corruption and abject poverty.

I remember one young man, Patrick, whom I met soon after arriving in Port-au-Prince. He was living in an abandoned football field-turned-makeshift camp near World Vision's office. The sun beat down on families as they crowded underneath tarps and bedsheets stretched out over their heads. As our team approached to find out how we could help, Patrick spoke to me.

"I lost everything," he said. "My wife, my children, my family. Please help me."

I realized then that, even if we could provide him with food and water, there was little we could do to help him heal from this grief.

And it wasn't just the families outside our base who were suffering. Our staff had lived through the same terrifying 45 seconds; all, with God's mercy, come out safely on the other side. But many were sleeping outside because they had lost their homes or were afraid to sleep inside. When I offered my cot to a colleague, she said, "I'd rather see the stars in the sky" than the four, concrete walls of her home.

The daily commute of World Vision's local staff meant driving past rubble, surrounded by morbid reminders of disaster along the streets. "My friend died in that bank," one staff member said. "I knew the owner of that store. We haven't heard from him since the earthquake," said another.

For the staff in Port-au-Prince, there is no escaping; the capital is their home. Death and destruction are now a part of their everyday conversations, much like I talk to friends about dinner plans or the weather.

Yet I saw in them a deep faith. At the end of a particularly busy day, I heard singing coming from one corner of our team's compound. The familiar strains of "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" wafted over the concrete wall and into the parking lot where I was standing.

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning, new mercies I see.
All I have needed, Thy hand hath provided.
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.

What kind of mercies had they seen that morning? Fewer bodies on the street? One fewer child crying out for missing parents? A family finally "safe" under the shelter of a plastic tarp? I wondered how I might respond if the earthquake had hit my home here in Boston, and destroyed my town, killed my friends, and orphaned so many children.

I've been back from Haiti for a little over a week, and I haven't figured out the right way to respond to the now-familiar question, "So, how was Haiti?"

Depressing? Overwhelming? Challenging? Sure. But could I claim the words of James and "consider it pure joy" to "face trials of many kinds" (1:2)? Our teammates had already led by example, praising the Lord through their songs, their prayers, and their daily work. They believed Isaiah's words about the Lord bringing "a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair" (61:3). Now it was my turn to learn to exhibit the same kind of joy I had seen in my teammates the past three grueling weeks.

Laura Blank is a disaster communications officer with World Vision based in Boston.

Theologian Fleming Rutledge wrote for Her.meneutics about the question of theodicy in natural disasters in "Where Was God in the Earthquake?" The CT Liveblog has extensively covered relief efforts for and pastoral responses to the earthquake. Both Jedd Medefind, president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans, and Michele Bond, of the State Department, opined on the American Christians who tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the country last week.