TERRE HAUTE — After surviving the recent earthquake in Haiti and experiencing a long wait at the U.S. embassy in the devastated Haitian capital, the Rev. Jamalyn Peigh Williamson – a Terre Haute native – is back home.
Williamson, a pastor at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Indianapolis and leader of a nine-member team of missionaries in Fondwa, Haiti, arrived at an Air Force base in Florida on Saturday and returned to Indiana on Sunday, she said.
She was with her family in Terre Haute on Monday and planned to return to Indianapolis today.
“It was a relief for sure [to return to America],” Williamson said Monday night, speaking from her parents’ home in Terre Haute. However, that relief was “personally difficult” because it was mixed with the feeling that she was leaving a lot of people with severe needs, she said.
“They [those back in Haiti] were going to have to figure out how to get food the next day,” she said.
Williamson was walking with other people down a hill on a footpath toward the orphanage in Haitian village of Fondwa when the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck, she said.
“It knocked us off our feet,” Williamson said. An exterior wall around the orphanage collapsed, but, thankfully, none of the children was hurt, she said.
The guest house used by the missionaries in Fondwa collapsed in the quake, she said.
Road damage made it difficult, but eventually Williamson and her team of missionaries made their way to the capital, Port-au-Prince. They arrived at the U.S. embassy there at about 6 a.m. on Saturday. As many as 3,000 other Americans or Haitian-Americans with family were also there waiting for assistance. It was about 10 a.m. before anyone came out to speak to them, Williamson said. In all, she and the others spent six hours standing outside the embassy in the blazing sun.
“I got a nice sunburn,” Williamson said.
Although help is badly needed in Haiti, Williamson and other missionaries would simply take up scarce housing and food supplies if they were there right now, she said. In a few weeks, however, her husband, David, who is also a pastor at St. Luke’s, plans to travel to Haiti and Jamalyn plans to return in the spring, she said.
WANT TO HELP?
• For those wishing to help Haitians in need, one option is to make a contribution through the Family Health Ministries Web site, Williamson said. The Web site is www.familyhm.org. Information is also available on the Web site for anyone interested in taking a mission trip to the Caribbean country.
Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.
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Valley missionary returns from Haiti
"It was a relief for sure [to return to America]."
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