Archive: News

On Tuesday Haiti was hit with a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake, the center of which was ony 15 miles west-southwest of Port Au Prince.  The city was devastated, and some are estimating 100,000 Haitians may have died in the quake, which could be felt as far away as Tampa, Florida.  The earthquake has continued there measuring over 5 on Wednesday and 4.8 as of noon yesterday (Thursday, 1/14).

Reenie Baker Sandsted gave a talk at the Lansing Community Library Wednesday to tell people about the mission that has been involved with building a school in Benique, Haiti, and has been trying to plant trees to prevent erosion that threatens the school.  She was scheduled to go to Haiti with a group next Wednesday, but now the trip is almost certainly cancelled.

"I'm pretty sure we will not be going.  The situation in Port Au Prince is absolutely devastating," she said.  "We have not been able to contact any of our friends in Port Au Prince."


Sandsted, who operates Lansing's Baker's Acres, leads a Lansing United Methodist Church (LUMC) mission that has sought to help a poor Methodist school in the village of Benique.  The mission began in 1998 when Sandsted found the school serving 80 children with no desks, chalkboards, books, or anything, really.  They sought to improve the facility, but soon realized that it didn't make sense to build and repair buildings until erosion from the nearby mountain was contained.  They sought to stem the erosion, and that effort is ongoing.

Today the school has 360 kids, and conditions are improved due to the mission.  But Sandsted says that making improvements is like taking a step forward and two steps back.  Recently her group has had some success in reforesting the hillside and improving agriculture, and the purpose of next week's trip was to check on progress.  Because the group has to fly into Port Au Prince en route to Benique it is unlikely that they will be able to go.

Instead she has spent much of her time on the phone trying to locate friends and students the mission has sponsored.  One boy that Sandsted has personally sponsored since 1998 has lived in Port Au Prince for the past three months.  Sandsted's daughter Sarah found him on Facebook where he reported he had decided to visit home on Tuesday.  The earthquake hit while he was in the bus and the road split open in front of them.

"He made it safely to Benique and was able to report that Benique was untouched," she said.  There were just a few shaken houses and nobody was hurt.  That was a huge relief for us all."

She says that the cell tower in Port Au Prince is gone, making communication next to impossible.  Despite spending most of Wednesday on the phone she wasn't able to gather much news.

"We have communicated with our friends in Benique," she said.  "But I am very worried about our interpreter, Joseph, who lives in the town where the center of the earthquake hit.  Of course we have had no word from him.  We have students who we have brought brought the school and are now at the university in Port Au Prince.  We don't know about them."


Sandsted's mother, Jackie Baker, sponsored one boy for years, who is now a doctor.  He works at the hospital outside the village where went to school.

"That hospital is overflowing with people, so he's working very hard right now," Sandsted said.  "He's working around the clock with no electricity."

Sandsted said that erosion and hurricanes continuously devastate Haiti.  She said her group needs help helping the Haitians with reforestation and agriculture.  She noted that In 2008 70% of Haitian crops were destroyed because of hurricanes, which meant they simply didn't eat.  She was anxious to get back to Benique to continue her work there.

"We will get through this devastating earthquake," she said.

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