Ironically, the earthquake decimated the funeral business in Haiti. Funeral parlors in Port-au-Prince line Rue de l'Enterrement, or "Burial Street," which ends at the cemetery gate. After the tremors subsided, unidentified bodies were left outside the morgues and as they piled up rules requiring preparation by the parlors were suspended. Garbage trucks picked them up and brought them to mass graves.
One grave was created by the city government when it knocked down a wall that surrounded the cemetery, dug a hole, dumped bodies near it, instructed the regular workers to toss them in and promised it would cover them. The bulldozer didn't return and the pit remained open under the blazing sun.
Graveyard worker Cereste Achille, quoted by Christopher Rhoads in The Wall Street Journal, surveyed the pile of decomposing corpses and said, "Only God can help them."
Where WAS He? Why did He forsake Haiti? Or did He?
God is there and will be there long after rock concerts to benefit Haiti fall out of fashion. Far from ignoring the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Christians have been building and healing there for decades. It's telling that when the earthquake first struck, the U.S. news media relied upon on-the-scene reports from missionaries. Christians are always there.
Bill Martin is a family man, just an average person serving God. His avocation is going to Haiti with other Christians who pay their own expenses and purchase building materials as well. This time he went with his son, Nikolai, and fellow First Central Baptist Church member Dan Appleton.
After landing in Port-au-Prince, the volunteers rode in a truck bed for seven hours over rough, unpaved roads to an orphanage. With no equipment, the workers mixed concrete on the ground by hand and shoveled it into 5-gallon pails that were passed hand-to-hand up the stairs to pour a second story floor. In the sweltering conditions, old hands like Bill jockeyed for prized shady spots in the bucket brigade.
It's hard manual labor, but they keep coming back because they go home with great memories and the priceless knowledge that they're doing God's work. Hundreds of Christians like these were already on the ground when airlifts started arriving from a suddenly sympathetic world.
They were there before the earthquake, they're there now, and they'll be there after the headlines fade, political posturing stops, and foreign aid tapers off. They'll continue to help because they're emissaries from a God who commands them to help the less fortunate.
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