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Published Sunday, March 14, 2010 in Local

Quake victims receiving relief from Coweta

By Winston Skinner

The Newnan Times-Herald

Efforts are taking place in Coweta County to help people traumatized by the January earthquake in Haiti.

St. George Catholic Church sent food to Haiti, and a group from St. Paul's Episcopal Church actually visited the island country following the Jan. 12 quake. Western Baptist Association churches took part in a statewide effort last week to collect and send plastic buckets filled with food.

The Coweta County Christian Community Outreach, sponsored by Mount Vernon First Baptist Church, held a planning meeting on Saturday to make plans for a children's clothing drive for Haiti to be held locally. That effort is expected to be completed April 3.

The Mount Vernon project is being undertaken in conjunction with the U. S. Agency for International Development and organized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. For information on the clothing drive, contact Barbara Starr at 770-251-5806.

The women of Emory Chapel United Methodist Church assembled 24 health kits. Barbara Gorvett said the kits will "be distributed to survivors of the earthquake in Haiti." She explained, "The kits were taken to LaGrange First United Methodist Church where they were combined with hundreds of other kits assembled by other United Methodist churches in the LaGrange District."

Emory Chapel is a historic church in the rural Dresden Community in western Coweta County.

Carrollton pastor Dewey Digsby will be part of a team of missionaries who will be leaving for Haiti on March 25. The group will take supplies to help with relief there.

A gospel singing to help fund the project will be held at Digsby's church, Trinity Worship Center, on Friday at 7 p.m. Singers will include Tri-City Quartet, the Prodigals and the Digsbys. Clear Vision Drama will also participate.

Contributions to help with that effort may be sent to Trinity Worship Center, 1485 Center Point Road, Carrollton, Ga., 30117. Checks should be marked "Haiti."

People involved with relief efforts have reflected on the need for long term, ongoing help to the people of the poor country in the Caribbean. The National Council of Churches, responding to the "pressing needs of Haiti and the deep sense of call to respond," is calling representatives of its member communions to a meeting on April 6 to begin planning for "our long term engagement with the renewal and recovery of the people and nation of Haiti."

The gathering will be held in St. Paul's Rock Creek Church in Washington, D.C. This meeting is the first step in a listening process that will involve all the constituencies, in particular, our Haitian brothers and sisters," said Sullivan in a letter of invitation signed jointly with the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, NCC General Secretary. "We expect that this process will result in the identification of the work we can do together and the resources we can bring to the projects we identify."

Preliminary plans for the meeting call for identifying the needs of the Haitian communities in the United States, with particular attention to people who emigrated as earthquake refugees, consulting with religious leaders in Haiti to learn how they envision a response to needs, and caring for the spiritual and emotional needs of Haitian religious leaders who have lived through the disaster.