“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.”

A boy adopted from earthquake-ravaged Haiti by an Oklahoma family is doing very well in his new country, the Ada Evening News reports. Duchaine Paul and his best friend, Ryan Dennis, were reunited in the United States after the Haiti earthquake a year ago.

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 …

As we wait for new reports from Haiti, one of our readers alerted us to a related disaster on the island of St. Lucia. The island nation of about 174,000 souls is part of the Lesser Antilles, southeast of Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. About a week before Tomas skirted the coast of Haiti, the storm caused major damage to St. Lucia, a popular destination for cruise ships (and the site of the 2011 Caribbean Lectures for Churches of Christ). Tomas killed at least 14 people on the island, and Prime Minister Stephenson King estimates that it could take half a billion dollars to repair the damage, according to caribbean360.com.

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.

Even before the earthquake, UNICEF estimates there were 380,000 orphans in Haiti. Now, relief officials can only guess at the total. An untold number of children lost their parents in the quake. Others were simply abandoned by families who could no longer care for them.Harry Hames knows all too well the desperation in Haiti. Moved by what he saw happening in the country, he retired from his job and joined Healing Hands International. He’s now the agency’s director of operations for Haiti.