Mountains Of Support Needed For Mountains Of Hope Team

By Nancy K. Crevier

After enduring several days without easy access to power and water due to Tropical Storm Irene, it does not seem possible that any Newtown resident would be excited about the prospect of paying $1,300 each to spend another eight days without power or running water. Yet “excited” is exactly the feeling repeatedly expressed by several of the nine members of the Newtown United Methodist Church group that is planning to travel to Furcy, Haiti, January 20–28, where electricity and water are rare or nonexistent.

Mike Beaudry, Don Singer, Betsy Kraushaar, Dom Corsi, Brad Tefft, Dr Bernie Cieniawa, Lynn Cieniawa, NUMC Senior Minister Rev Mel Kawakami, and the first teenage Newtown Methodist Church member to travel on an out-of-country mission, 16-year-old Tami Corsi, will form a team of ten — one spot remains open — on a “Mountains of Hope for Haiti” mission to the rural Haitian village of Furcy, southeast of Port au Prince. There the team will provide continuing support to the village that has been in the care of the United Methodist New York Annual Conference (NYAC) for the past eight years.

“We’ll be doing a lot of things. This time, I don’t think there will be any building,” Ms Kraushaar said on Wednesday, September 7, as the group met to continue planning for the trip.

“Most likely we will be doing some repairs and painting, cleaning the clinic, and helping with planting,” Rev Kawakami said. They also plan to run an adult English-Creole exchange, and feed the children. The group hopes to bring with them some over-the-counter medications and other needed supplies to help the families of Furcy, where the average income is $2 a day. That income must cover the cost of food and clothing, as well as pay for education, as Haiti does not provide free education to its children.

The Mountains of Hope mission of the United Methodist Church NYAC has sent numerous teams from New York and Connecticut to Furcy since 2003, establishing a school, a health clinic, a farmer’s co-op, and a store in a village where none of those things existed before.

Amy Thomas, a member of NUMC, has traveled twice to Furcy, and while she is not going on this excursion, she is providing support to the team members.

“Over the past eight years Furcy has changed from being a village where everything was about each individual surviving day to day, to one where we are building a community,” she said. This mission will further those efforts.

Mountains of Hope provides meals for children, school supplies, staffs the clinic with a full-time nurse, and sponsors a doctor once a week at the clinic. The Newtown United Methodist Church has been a sponsor of the weekly visit by a doctor, and has also sponsored scholarships for students in Furcy.

The villagers have been assisted with supplies of seeds and farming techniques to grow their own vegetables, and the farmer’s co-op has encouraged a community for sharing and helping one another. The Furcy model has been so successful, said Rev Kawakami, that the NYAC and Haiti Methodist Church plan to use it as an example for developing other rural communities in Haiti.

“Think of it as a wheel,” suggested Don Singer, who has traveled previously to Haiti, but not Furcy. “A center hub, Furcy, has finally been established. Now we think of spokes going out from there. The goal of each spoke is to take what they want to do and help each other,” he said.

Time For Donations & Prayers

The Newtown Mountains of Hope team has set a goal of raising $15,000 by January, to be used to offset the cost of travel, supplies for the village, and food. Individual team members are responsible for other personal costs, including a series of shots that are required.

“We need donations and prayers for our team, and support from the community for our fundraisers,” said Valerie Corsi, who is chairperson for a Sunday, October 30, Harvest Luncheon that will follow the 10 am service at the church that morning. The homemade soup and bread lunch is open to the public, for a freewill donation, and is one of several upcoming fundraisers the group is planning. Team members will be distributing fliers at the October 9 rescheduled Labor Day Parade, they said, and will set up an information booth about Mountains of Hope at the NUMC Annual Craft Fair, scheduled this year for Saturday, October 15, at Reed Intermediate School.

“We do need donations,” said Tami Corsi, “but we want people to donate and talk about it. If you donate and don’t talk about it, you are just giving money.”

By providing information to the community, the Haiti-bound team hopes that others, not just their own church members, will be interested in volunteering for future visits to Furcy and other needy Haitian villages, as well as to donate to this mission.

Tami Corsi anticipates that the Furcy mission will be very different from summer Work Camp programs in which she has participated, and thinks that the lack of electricity there will be more bearable than when it was thrust upon her family during Connecticut’s recent storm.

“There, there just is no option for power, so I don’t think you crave it. It’s not like sitting and seeing your TV and knowing you can’t use it,” she said. “I’m not sure if I’m prepared, but we’ll see,” said Tami, and added that it was her idea to go on the 2012 mission. “I talked my dad into it,” she laughed.

“It will be nice to meet the people,” Mr Corsi said, “and to see what they feel and what their needs are.”

For Ms Kraushaar and Rev Kawakami, the January trip will be the first time either had been part of a mission outside of the United States.

“I was in Biloxi, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina,” said Rev Kawakami. “I see the importance of being in Furcy, and I’m looking forward to being there. These people in Haiti have been through the mill,” he said.

“I can’t wait to help,” agreed Ms Kraushaar. “I’m sure we’ll come back feeling we’ve gained more than we brought with us.”

To find out more about Furcy, visit www.MountainsOfHopeForHaiti.org.

To donate to the Newtown United Methodist Church Mountains of Hope trip in January, send checks made out to the Newtown United Methodist Church, memo “Haiti Trip,” to 92 Church Hill Road, Sandy Hook CT06482.