Mission of mercy

Greg Webb Weatherford Democrat

WEATHERFORD — Crystal Brown

cbrown@weatherforddemocrat.com

Just days before the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, crumbled, a missionary group from Trinity Bible Church in Willow Park had returned from one of their many journeys to the poverty-stricken nation.

They have been planning a return trip ever since. Their mission ­— to bring the people much-needed medical supplies and food and to unite orphans with adoptive families in Parker County.

Two families from Trinity Bible Church have already adopted children they have been sponsoring from the All of God’s Children Orphanage located in Fedja about 40 miles from the epicenter of the Jan. 12 earthquake. John and Christi Barnes have adopted 2-and-a-half-year-old Ava, and Jessica Carter is now the mother of Judenci, 10, and Beverli, 4.

Christi is a mission trip leader and John is the youth minister at the church. The Barneses are no stranger to adoption. While they have one biological daughter, Terah, 8, they also have an adopted son Jordan, 2. Christi is also adopted.

“Growing up I wouldn’t have imagined adopting,” John said. “No one around me had ever adopted. For Christi is was a different story.

“We moved to Colorado and had some close friends who adopted from Haiti,” he continued. “We traveled to Haiti and began to see the adoption thing is pretty cool. But we decided we’d never go foreign adoption because it can take so long and be so expensive. So we went domestic and that’s when we adopted Jordan.”

The Barneses adopted Jordan from Tupelo, Miss., when he was 7 days old. Now he’s trying to play big bother to Ava, who is actually several weeks older than him.

Ava was the youngest of 63 children in the orphanage that Trinity helps fund. A new building to house the orphans was completed a few months prior to the earthquake. Christi said the new structure was not damaged in the earthquake, but the old building was destroyed. The concrete slab recently poured for a new basketball court was also unharmed in the quake and has served as a helicopter pad since the disaster.

On their last trip to Haiti, the mission group from Trinity assisted with medical clinics. Terri Jo Edwards, a doctor of hearing and dizziness in Weatherford, was among the group and helped patients with hearing problems.

Like many in the group, Edwards wanted to return when she heard about the 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

“I was thankful that I was home for my family, but I thought if I could have significantly helped, I would have been on a plane back the next day,” she said. “Every day I cry.”

Christi was distraught for days following the quake not knowing if her friends were OK; not knowing if Ava was OK.

“I would have given anything to be back there,” she said. “Our campers, our family friends, our ministry is there.”

Nearly a week later, Christi received a call from Yves Prophet, the director of Global Vision which operates the orphanage. Prophet is a native Haitian who is one of the few able to attend college in the United States and decided to move back to Haiti to help his people.

Prophet told Christi he had secured seven visas to bring some of the orphans to the States, and told her he was going to spend the next day in line trying to get the children out of Haiti. He was also trying to obtain more visas.

To ensure Ava would be one of the children on the plane, Christi had to provide every detail of personal information about herself and John so they could pass a homeland security check.

She then called Carter and told her to provide the same information if she wanted to adopt the girls she had been sponsoring. She also called a family in Colorado who had been interesting in adopting and had worked with the orphanage see if they would adopt Ava’s older sister, Rosey.

In Oklahoma City, Belinda Lechenburg, who had been sponsoring two boys, received an e-mail from Prophet. Her excitement of adopting the boys was so great she tracked down a private plane and flew to Haiti. She called Christi to help her locate Prophet and spent the entire day looking for them.

“I told her to get her boys and not to come home without my little girl,” Christi said. “What I didn’t know was that line was 7,000 people of chaos.”

Lechenburg told Christi later about the stench of death in the air, her physical and emotional exhaustion and how when she was about to give up she turned a corner and saw the children.

Several more days went by before the Barneses heard anything from Lechenburg or Prophet. The next phone call came at 2:40 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 20. The U.S. Air Force had flown Lechenburg and 11 of the orphans to Florida including Ava, Rosey, Judenci and Beverli. From there they flew to Oklahoma City where the Barneses met up with them.

“It was a surreal experience to see them come around the corner, her and all 11 children,” Christi said.

The Barneses said it was always their desire to adopt Ava, and the government was just starting to change the process to where it could have been a reality.

By Haitian law, to adopt, the couple must be married 10 years with one spouse over 35 and have no biological children. The Barneses have a biological daughter and Carter is only 24 and currently engaged.

Following the earthquake, the Haitian government started letting children out of the country if they were orphaned prior to the earthquake, had all the necessary paper work to prove it and a pre-existing relationship established with the adoptive family. All other criteria was pushed to the side if the family passed a homeland security check.

“I told Jessica if she really believes God intended them to be with her, when it came down to it, money wouldn’t be an problem,” Christi said. “It would be a faith walk. That was a cool conversation now that her children are with her.”

This week, members of the church are returning to Haiti to bring back more children who members of Trinity have been sponsoring. Including the Barneses and Carter, 11 families qualify to adopt.

Christi said once the children are all placed with their families, she wants to start an organization so the community can assist in raising them and help support the families. Some of the children will need therapy while others will need help to catch up with their peers in school.

She said the ultimate goal of the organization will be to follow the children until they graduate from high school and have a scholarship fund established to send them on to college — a dream rarely reached by children who live in Haiti.

“But it doesn’t mean anything,” Christi said about receiving an education and living in Haiti. “You are still starving. You still have no job. You still have no future. You still have no hope.”

But the story for these children will be different.

“We really want to see this support group come together,” Christi said.

Over the past few weeks, the Barneses have been adjusting to having a new addition to their family. John said Jordan and Terah are adjusting well and they are learning just how selfless they must be as parents, especially now that they are out numbered.

“There is no longer a moment for yourself or each other,” John said. “It’s such a joy, though. We don’t have to try.”

“She’s a Barnes now,” Christi said about Ava. “The minute she got here, she was home.”