'A beautiful place, because of the people'

JACMEL, HAITI — Sofie Martin has always wanted to do mission work.

A 20-year-old college student from Barrington, Martin got her chance through Lutheran Church Charities in Addison.

Her first mission trip in Haiti already has her plotting to return with friends from Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis., where she is a sophomore.

“Words can't explain it or do it justice — it is like nothing I have ever seen,” she says. “For the overall destruction, it is such a beautiful place, because of the people.”

One of her jobs during her mission in January with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is to hand out plastic shoes and soap to refugees living in a tent city in Jacmel, a town in southern Haiti with a population of 40,000 that sustained heavy damage during the January 2010 earthquake.

From the very young running around naked and desperate for any article of clothing to the adults who are just desperate, all are badly in need of clean water, shoes and soap, Sofie says.

Lutheran Church Charities is in Haiti building houses — nearly 20 of them to date, according to Tim Hetzner, president of Lutheran Church Charities, based in Addison.

Despite many barriers, ranging from corruption to lack of documentation of land ownership, Hetzner and 14 others in his group are unrelenting in their convictions to move Haiti forward “one family at a time.”

Sofie plans to help with the house building, getting her hands into some freshly poured cement and lifting blocks into place.

She describes Jacmel and Haiti in general as “very overwhelming.” But she wants the people of Haiti to know there is still hope. She is moved by the appreciation of the Haitian people and the kindness they show for the aid workers even in the face of their own misfortunes.

Despite the many daily difficulties of living and working in Haiti, “you are still at home, because of the people.”