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News & Reporting
Two weeks after Haiti's historic earthquake, the stories of survival are beginning to flood out. At the time of the quake, there were hundreds of Americans in country on short-term missions trips.
Ann Klein, during a detailed interview with Christianity Today, told her story of survival and post-quake ministry. She was in Messailler, Haiti, on Tuesday, January 12, on a short-term mission trip. This community is located 20 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince and was not as devastated as Leogane, a major community at the quake epicenter.
During the 7.0 magnitude quake, Ann Klein was aroused from an after-clinic rest to violent shaking. She wondered if the concrete around her would crumble. "I lay there praying, ‘Lord, I pray this house is as solid as I think it is.' "
Klein, 71, has been a regular volunteer to medical missions work in Haiti since 1990, traveling to the impoverished nation up to six times per year. After nearly a minute (53 seconds to be exact) of violent tremors, the earthquake subsided.
There was, "loud wailing everywhere. People in the village were hysterical," she said. Upon stepping outside, she saw that all of the buildings on the mission campus, where she was staying, were spared major damage. But every other two-story building in the area had collapsed. The reason for this was the fortuitous fact that most of them had been over-designed by her husband, Jeff Klein, who knew the Haitian penchant for skimping on concrete. The nearby town of Cabaret was all but flattened, but providentially there were few fatalities—none on the Presbyterian Mission in Haiti campus.
Prior to the quake, Klein and her team had an average visitation rate of 80 patients per day. After the disaster, the flow slowed down, as many regular patients delayed or deferred their visits.
But on January 13, the day after the quake, the medical clinic treated a nonstop flow of around 50 seriously wounded patients, and stayed open from 7 am to 7 pm (normal hours were 9am to 4pm).
"We ...
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