“Think of Phoebe Keeran as a modern-day Mother Teresa.” That’s how James Green, a British-born reporter, described the 32-year-old church member in this feature report for a Canadian cable station. (The first time I watched this, I thought it was a car commercial and quickly clicked away from it. It’s not.)

Roberta Edwards, who oversees the Son Light Children’s Home ministry in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was named “Woman of Hope” for 2011 at the annual Women of Hope conference in Nashville, Tenn. Nearly 400 women, representing 75 churches in 17 U.S. states, attended the conference, hosted by Healing Hands International.

New on The Christian Chronicle’s website, an extended report on Churches of Christ in Haiti, one year after the devastating, 7.0-magnitude earthquake. The video is from Son Light Children’s Home in Port-au-Prince, which I first visited in February 2010. A wall at the home fell during the quake, killing a 15-year-old boy named Nicky. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to visit the home — and it’s overseer, Roberta Edwards — a year after the quake. I also learned about the downside of American aid to Haiti.

Harry Hames spoke briefly at the Delmas church and compared the trials of Haiti to the trials of Job in the Old Testament. “Why? Why the earthquake? Why the hurricane? Why the flood? Why the cholera? Why the demonstrations?” Hames asked, as Elmera translated his words into Creole. “God taught Job that it’s better to know God than just the answers.” “Suffering can strengthen our faith or it can destroy it,” Hames said. “We have to make the choice. I see by you being here that you’ve made the right choice.”

I’m back nearly a year after my first visit here in February 2010. I am covering Churches of Christ and their ministries as the one-year anniversary of the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake approaches. Right now I’m sitting on the veranda of a nice hotel full of aid workers and folks with non-governmental organizations. Across the street, there’s a tent city.

WSMV channel 4 news in Nashville, Tenn., ran a brief feature on the Haiti relief work of Nashville-based Healing Hands International.
Watch the video.
I am scheduled to be in Haiti later this week to see some of Healing Hands’ work in person. I will be following up on stories we published about Haiti in 2010:
Online exclusives from January 2010:
Quake claims up to 150 from one Haitian church
Churches send doctors, medicine, food to Haiti
Ministries collecting funds for Haiti relief
February/March 2010 issue:
‘Each one of us has lost someone in Haiti’ (report from Haitian …

Suppose your church hosted an after-school homework program and, after a while, the students stopped coming. Would you give up the program? Members of the Mona Church of Christ in Kingston, Jamaica, took a different approach. Instead of giving up their homework program, they took it to school. And the principal couldn’t be happier, the Jamaica Observer reports:

A shipment of relief supplies traveled from Abilene, Texas to Miami recently. From there, it will be shipped to Haiti. The shipment represents “a new collaboration between numerous Churches of Christ,” said Dave Heath, onsite coordinator
for World Radio Gospel Broadcasting and WFR Relief Ministries, both ministries of the White’s Ferry Road Church of Christ in West Monroe, La. Ben Adkins is the director of the ministries. Appropriately enough, the effort is called Haitian Collaboration.

This morning NBC’s “Today” show featured a report on 15-year-old David Senatus, a boy from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, who was injured in the Jan. 12 earthquake. While treating the boy for a cut, doctors discovered a heart murmur that led to the diagnosis of a serious heart condition — and eventually resulted in valve replacement surgery at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. David was one of the young Haitians sponsored by Hope for Haiti’s Children, a Texas-based organization supported by Churches of Christ. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor, followed David as he was transported to Arkansas for the life-saving surgery.