by Don Graham, posted Wednesday, April 14, 2010 (14 years ago)
FOND PARISIEN, Haiti (BP)--She doesn't remember much, but Louphine Demorcy won't ever forget the sound -- like a runaway freight train roaring beneath her feet.
"I heard the voice of the earthquake coming," the 31-year-old mother of three said. "I called out for Jesus to save me."
The next thing Demorcy knew she was lying under a pile of broken concrete that once housed her small sundries shop in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It was Jan. 13 -- the morning after Jan. 12's 7.0-magnitude earthquake.
Demorcy tried to move but couldn't. One of her arms had been crushed and pinned by a chunk of concrete the size of a dishwasher. A leg was also trapped under rubble. The pain was excruciating. She screamed for help, pleading for a doctor.
Two months later Demorcy sits quietly under a tree at a field hospital near Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic. Merry Holt, a 62-year-old nurse from First Baptist Church in Norfolk, Va., kneels beside her, gently wrapping fresh bandages around Demorcy's right arm, amputated above the elbow, and left leg, amputated above the knee.
Holt is part of a six-member medical team who have come to Haiti through Baptist Global Response, a nonprofit disaster relief and development organization supported by Southern Baptists, and a key partner in relief efforts with the International Mission Board (IMB). Their mission is to be the hands and feet of Jesus to those in need. Read More