Five Oaks Church Haiti Mission Work

Photo: Five Oaks Church

Jeff Schwartz volunteered with the Five Oaks mission program in Haiti.

More than five years before a 7.0 earthquake struck Port au Prince on January 12, 2010, Five Oaks Church in Woodbury sent its first mission team to a Haiti orphanage. In fact, the earthquake occurred while one of the teams was there.

When a group from the church first visited All God’s Children Orphanage in 2004, it was located on leased land in Fedja, some 40 miles northeast of Port au Prince. Approximately 30 children lived there in a 20-square-foot barn with a dirt floor, sleeping sideways on mattresses that were hosed off each morning.

“As soon as you got near the property, the smell was unbelievable,” says Jerry Meras, outreach director at Five Oaks Church. “The kids had rashes on their skin, and they all had red-tinted hair from malnutrition.”

In partnership with Wichita-based Global Vision Citadelle Ministries (GVCM), the church began efforts to provide a new home for the children. GVCM had purchased land nearby, and Woodbury architect Mike Mularoni took on the building project as a volunteer, drawing up plans and making multiple trips to Haiti to lead the construction teams.

Senior Pastor Henry Williams recalls, “I was there for the first time when the only building on the land was a bathroom and shower. The heat index was 119 degrees  . . . I was overwhelmed by the heat and the conditions, and was so thankful we were going to make things better for them in due time.”

Construction began in 2005, and the church sent teams each January for six years. Occasionally, a second group will go during spring break in March. The Five Oaks teams worked alongside Haitian laborers on the building, which was completed in October 2009.

Woodbury resident Jeff Schwartz, who made four trips to Haiti from 2007 to 2010 and was there during the 2010 quake, says that especially memorable to him were “the relationships made with the staff and interpreters, my three little buddies from the village that hung around while we were there, and most of all, to see how God is working in Haiti—how he is changing lives, how happy and healthy the orphans are now compared to my first trip. It is amazing to see.”

As many as 70 children, from infancy to age 16, live at the orphanage at any given time. The new building where they reside includes bathrooms, a professional kitchen, classrooms and a multipurpose room. A church from Texas has been working on the construction of a separate, computer-equipped virtual classroom.

After the earthquake, Five Oaks turned its attention from the buildings at the complex to helping meet the needs of those at the orphanage, including staff members and refugees from Port au Prince. Tents were set up on the grounds for nearly a year, with as many as 140 refugees living on the complex at a time. The influx strained the orphanage’s resources as food and gas prices soared.

Today one of the objectives of Five Oaks is to use the orphanage complex as a hub to reach out to the poor in the surrounding community. Teams from Five Oaks work in conjunction with GVCM to deliver food and to help meet other needs, such as providing backpacks and school supplies for students at the orphanage’s school.

“They have come such a long way,” says Meras of the children living at the orphanage today. “Their level of life is way above the Haitian median now. They are fed well; they are well cared for with medicine, clothing and everything they could really need. They’ve grown up well. They look a lot healthier, and they have for years now since we started this effort.”

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For information about participating in a future trip to Haiti with Five Oaks Church, email Haiti@fiveoakschurch.org.

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