Local church shows Luv for Haiti

A Halifax church is doing their best to help the people of one of the world’s poorest countries.

Deep Water Church started the LuvHaiti initiative in 2009 and has been sending church members down to Haiti to lend a helping hand a couple times a year.

Assistant pastor Jerry Wurnig made his first trip down to Haiti a couple weeks ago. Wurnig and a colleague were on an exploratory trip to find out how much help and in what areas his group could help in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.

“The income inequality, the disparity between rich people and poor people is what shocked me the most.”

“I went down there with the expectation that everybody was going to be impoverished and everybody was going to be just barely scraping by,” he says. “That really wasn’t the case.”

Port-au-Prince, a city with a population of around one million people, was decimated by an earthquake in 2010, where an estimated 230,000 Haitians died. Haiti is largely considered the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere.

In the past, Deep Water Church generally helped out with medical treatment and administration on the island of La Gonave. Wuring says the group has “run its course” in La Gonave and is now shifting their efforts to Port-au-Prince.

Rather than building infrastructure, the team focuses on what they can do best, medical care and administration.

They help with minor surgeries and bring down medication. The people without a medical background generally focus on the administration side of things.

“We’re actually sending people down that have specific skills and abilities and can teach Haitians how to do things,” said Wurnig.

Wurnig says his church has yet to come up with an action plan for their next trip down, but says he has some meetings scheduled for this week with church members to see exactly how his church can best help out.

The group has two locations, one in North-end Halifax and another in the Park Lane movie theatre.

For more information on the church or the LuvHaiti program, visit deepwaterchurch.com.