Haiti (MNN) — July
12 is the six-month anniversary of Haiti's earthquake, and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations
Committee just released a report showing the rebuilding effort is
stalled.
The report praises
both donors and Haiti's government for rising to the challenge in the days
following January's magnitude-7 quake.
Observers also
noted that as the crisis ebbed, the sense of urgency also waned in
tackling the job of putting the country back together. The risk, warns the report, is a gradual "return
to the dysfunctional, unsustainable ways of life past."
However, not
everyone is in the same boat. Kathy Redmond with Compassion
International says all of their child sponsorship programs are
back up and running. "Out of
22,000 children, we have been able to locate all but 350. Probably
those 350 kids have been displaced; they've probably left for a different area
with their families."
Schools are up and
running. But for the older
students, it's a little slower. Leadership Development Program participants face a more complex issue. "It
requires that the student actually go to a university, but there aren't any
[universities] standing. We do have one LDP student from Haiti that is up here
in the United States now." That student is on scholarship to attend a school in
Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Redmond says
Compassion is not a relief agency, but they have to get their programs to a
functioning point. From there, "we
are looking at 14 different long-term strategies to include more counseling, building homes, building our church projects back up, food
security, etc."
"God has been
doing supernatural things in Haiti," explains Redmond. Through their work with the churches, the Gospel
is changing the landscape "in terms of healing, in terms of the movement of
the church, in terms of bringing people to Christ."
There's a bright
future ahead. Planning, tasking, and
moving forward are part of it. Redmond
observes that plays a role in rebuilding, but there's the "other" element that
drives everything they do. "It's one
thing to put everything on paper and to come up with an agenda; it's another
thing to have God totally take over."
