'You did it. You did it!' Haitian orphans heading to Utah soon

OPA-LOCKA, Fla. — An odyssey that began in Haiti for a group of orphans ended Saturday in the arms of their new parents who are free, finally, to take them home.

"We're just sitting here in shock," said Carol Carroll as she and he husband Roger sat on a bench outside His House Children's Center in this Miami suburb as their new 8-year-old daughter Mia munched nonchalantly on a granola bar. "It's real but it's not real at the same time . . . I don't have to give her back ever."

That sentiment played out all day as adoptive parents from Utah and other states trickled in to unite with their children. The nondenominational Christian children's home served as a processing center for the 50 who arrived from Haiti on Friday, ending a touch-and-go ordeal that began after the Jan. 12 earthquake scrambled the island nation's adoption protocol.

Children spent Friday night in cottages at His House's campus and were given new clothes, baths — standing up Haitian style — and fed rice and beans to ease the transition.

"We're the welcome party," said Iris Marrero, His House development director.

But the party, to the adoptive parents' relief, didn't last long. Some came anticipating a two-day wait.

The federal Administration of Children and Families expected most, if not all, of the kids to be released to their parents by the end of Saturday, said spokesman Jesse Moore. Families were scheduled to take commercial flights home Saturday and Sunday. The Carrolls, of Smithfield, will miss their son's LDS Church missionary farewell Sunday to allow their daughter a good night's rest before traveling.

Others were trying to arrange a charter due to the high cost of airfare.

"You did it. You did it," Lori Rosenlof said in a crying embrace with Chareyl Moyes, without whom the adoptions wouldn't have been possible. "Thank you."

Moyes, Wasatch International Adoptions program director for Haiti, spent the last week at the crowded Foyer de Sion orphanage changing diapers and dogging Haitian and U.S. government officials to grant the children humanitarian parole. With intervention on several government fronts, the Haitian prime minister signed the order Friday afternoon.

The signature effectively made Rosenlof and her husband, Brent, parents for the first time after 12 years of marriage.

"It's amazing how God can allow something so horrible (the earthquake) and pull something so beautiful out of it. These kids are special," Lori Rosenlof said. "Look at that little boy with head on his daddy's shoulder on American soil."

Two-and-half-year old Nathan makes the Rosenlofs a family of three. They're still waiting on a daughter as well.

For David and Candice Aitken, two out of three isn't good enough. Not when you're talking about children.
David Aitken could hardly contain himself while waiting at His House Children's Home to see his adoptive son and daughter who arrived from Haiti less than 24 hours earlier

Aitken and his wife Candice winged their way from Eagle Mountain to south Florida just a few hours after the airplane carrying their children landed, arriving Saturday morning with great anticipation

"I feel like my heart's going to beat out of my chest," he said.

Five-year-old Nerlande, chewing on a granola bar, arrived in a van. A little later, Aitken retrieved Yonelson, 4, on a golf cart.

But all is not complete in the Aitken family. Eight-year-old Fabrice was left sobbing uncontrollably at the Port-au-Prince airport because though granted humanitarian parole, his name was left off the approval list.

"Hopefully, it's something they can solve pretty quickly and get home," David Aitken said.

If not, he said he's prepared to wait in Florida or even fly to Haiti if he has to bring his son home.

Adoption advocate determined to bring Haitian children to families

By Brooke Adams
Published in SL Tribune

Miami Lakes, Florida » A day after seeing the last child she had shepherded from Haiti to Miami united with parents, Chareyl Moyes was finally slowing down. 

From the moment news broke of the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti on Jan. 12, Moyes worked nonstop to bring 66 children to families who were in the process of adopting them.
 

Looking back, it all seems like a movie, Moyes said -- one she would have never scripted quite like this. Those who know Moyes, Haiti program manager for Wasatch International Adoptions of Ogden, say no one else could have filled the role she played.
 

"When we heard she was going over, we knew everything was going to be OK," said David Aitken of Eagle Mountain, who adopted three children with Moyes' help. "She is truly one of my heroes."
 

The drama isn't over. Moyes, with help from Utah Hospital Task Force organizer Stephen Studdert, was able to get approval to fly just 50 children to the U.S. on Friday. She is still working on permissions for the remaining 16 children.
 

"I really feel confident, as long as the rules of engagement don't change, that we'll be able to get them out," she said.
 

On Sunday, though, she was concerned that the arrests of 10 Americans who had attempted to illegally transport 33 children from Haiti to the Dominican Republic might shut down those efforts.
 

One child's case is a priority -- that of 8-year-old Fabrice, who is being adopted by the Aitkens. The boy's paperwork, submitted in a stack of cases to be approved, was inexplicably misplaced on Friday in the crush at the Haitian prime minister's office. Moyes had to leave him behind at the airport. "I can tell you I have never, never in my life done anything that terrible," she said Sunday.
 

Fabrice sobbed as he was separated from the Aitkens' other two children. Moyes said the little boy kept repeating, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," as she tried to comfort the child and let him know he hadn't done anything wrong.
 

From the U.S. to Haiti, efforts continued through the weekend and are ongoing to bring Fabrice to the United States, she said. She is "as confident as I was when I went to get the other ones" that work will succeed.
Moyes' interest in helping children was first kindled while serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Philippines. She has worked for Wasatch International Adoptions, based in Ogden, for the past six years.
 

Since adopting a son from Haiti four years ago, the country has become "this passion of mine."
 

"It's just the kind of country that gets under your skin," she said.
 

She also works closely with Haitian Roots, a Utah-based nonprofit educational sponsorship program, and serves as the Haitian representative with the Joint Council on International Children's Services.
 

Moyes works with three different orphanages in Port-au-Prince, most directly with Foyer de Sion and Hope For The Little Angels of Haiti Creche -- the latter an orphanage Moyes helped start.
 

The Hope home was among buildings destroyed by the earthquake.
 

Miraculously, no children were harmed. Nannies who care for the children initially scattered to the surrounding countryside in the aftermath of the earthquake. Moyes' first task was locating and resettling the children at Foyer de Sion, which was damaged but intact.
 

She arrived in Haiti with an "obnoxiously" complete, foot-tall stack of adoption case files for each of her agency's children. Once on the ground, she swung between optimism and despair as she sought to clear bureaucratic hurdles. The lowest point came Friday, during a marathon effort to get the Haitian prime minister to sign the children's paperwork before the departure of a donated chartered jet.
 

"I thought, 'The plane is out there, the kids have been brought in, they are ready to go [but] he'll never sign that,' " she said. "Once our ride leaves, that's it."
 

Told that the pilot and crew aboard the Sun Country jet were not going to leave without the children, Moyes' thought, "Whatever."
 

She figured the military would demand that the plane depart.
 

Up against seemingly insurmountable odds, Moyes at one point laid on the tarmac at the Port-au-Prince airport in defeat.
 

But the plane was allowed to stay on the ground and Studdert stepped in and got the paperwork cleared.
Eighteen hours after it was scheduled to be airborne, the jet took off with Moyes, a small group of adoptive parents, Wasatch's 50 children and a separate group of parents and children.
 

Moyes was "hell-bent to get it done," said Nichole Hayden of St. George. 

"She was going to get them home no matter what," said Hayden, who has worked with Moyes and previously adopted three Haitian children before picking up 23-month-old Wyclif on Saturday in Florida.
 

After landing in Miami, Moyes helped officials clear every child through the initial immigration process. She also mediated between parents and federal officials, who initially weren't going to let parents who'd been on the plane accompany their children to a local foster care complex.
 

Moyes said that, since they earthquake, many people have asked about adopting children from Haiti. She is advising them that adoptions are likely to close temporarily while government and aid officials try to identify children who are newly orphaned, those who were separated from parents or lost parents but have other relatives able to care for them.
 

"I just don't know when adoptions will open up, but it will because the need will be humongous," Moyes said.
Until then, those motivated by the disaster to consider adoption should learn about the country, its culture and the international adoption process, she said.
 

"Adopting a child from another country isn't just 'I'll love them and they'll be good,' " she said. "For these kids, there is a lot for them to process," not only the disaster but also the circumstances that have surrounded them since birth.
 

For now, Moyes will focus on rebuilding destroyed and damaged orphanages and on efforts to give children access to an education, a key to the country's long-term viability.
 

"For any agency working in Haiti that should be our focus," she said.

Haiti quake orphans trapped by red tape

Lovely's adoption papers have been lost in the earthquake


Dozens of Haitian orphans have been airlifted to the US after authorities there said they would speed up the adoption process - but hundreds more are caught up in red tape. The BBC's Rajesh Mirchandani has followed the story of a girl called Lovely.


Haiti's earthquake destroyed not just buildings, but families too. Now in its chaotic aftermath, we drive through the crowded ruins of Port-au-Prince to the suburb of Carrefour, past corrugated tin shacks, now leaning into each other, and narrow side alleys choked with debris.

We are looking for one small child, trapped not by rubble but by bureaucracy.

At an orphanage I show them a photograph of a girl called Lovely.  It was given to me by the American couple who are hoping to become her new parents.

Anguish
At home in Los Angeles, Janelle and Bryan Benedict showed me a video they took when they last visited the girl last summer.

They have been working through the lengthy adoption process since Lovely was six months old. She turned two on the day of the earthquake and their anguish was clear.

"I worry about her," says Janelle. "About the fear she is experiencing. We just want to get her out of there as quickly as possible."

But they are in a difficult position.  Like hundreds of other Haitian orphans, Lovely's adoption papers were stored in government buildings that collapsed in the quake.

At the orphanage where Lovely lives, dozens of children have parents overseas, desperate to get them out.
Most seem oblivious to the destruction around them. Their smiles light up their faces - and ours. 

Lovely is carried out to meet us. She is tiny through malnourishment, her arm bears the sores of an infection and her eyes barely register our presence. But what horrors she must have seen.

The 70 or so orphans here all survived the quake.

We see only the front of the building but it does not look seriously damaged, and the level of care seems good.  But two sister orphanages in Petionville and Leogane were badly damaged and those children are now here, a house overcrowded with tiny evacuees.There are also American parents staying here. They felt they could speed up the evacuation of their little ones by coming here in person.  They need the Haitian government to give its stamp of approval for the children to leave.

But an already lumbering bureaucracy has been knocked off its feet.  Confusion reigns and leads to delays.  In addition, some aid agencies are calling for a halt to adoptions, because they believe the earthquake has provided an opportunity for child traffickers.

With papers lost, it's harder for would-be parents to prove they were already part of the adoption process before the earthquake, and the worry is criminals could take advantage. That means Lovely and hundreds more children must wait and endure.

The next day we visit the US embassy, guarded by armed American soldiers.   They patrol outside and across the street, weapons on show, even though this is foreign soil. Reporters are tolerated, Haitians moved on. We see more than 100 people queuing in the blazing sun to get in.

More on nearby street corners, being corralled by US troops. Many hold yellow manila document envelopes.
The US says it is cutting through red tape to speed up existing adoptions. Many want to go, but many are turned away.

I encounter a large group of very emotional women, all of them Haitian Americans who have travelled back to try to get loved ones out.

But they tell me officials won't let them bring all their family members back to America.

Mireille Plaisimond, from New York City, shows me some US home ownership papers - proof, she says, that she can support the four children she wants to take back to America.Christiane Joseph angrily brandishes her US passport, while Sandra Joseph Marquis from Florida wails: "what is the point of being a US citizen if our government won't help us?"  It is clear that emotions are running high in the dusty heat of Haiti's collapse.

While we are at the embassy, I get a text from a man called Randy Presley from Oklahoma. On my way to Haiti I had met him and his adopted Haitian daughter Eliana.They were on their way back to rescue her four-year-old brother Christopher. Now Randy tells me they and 40 more orphans are inside the embassy unable to get out of the country. He says they have been there for three days, sleeping on mats on the floor, refusing to leave.

Several hours and many confused text messages later (our phones don't work to make calls), he tells me they are boarding buses for the airport.

We wait. More armed guards appear at the gate and then two buses pull out of the compound.

On board are Randy, his family, and 40 more Haitian children and their carers are on their way to a new life.

They wave as we draw alongside.

"We made it," Randy shouts out of the window as they speed past.

We follow as the buses drive through the airport gates and straight on to the tarmac. This is what happens when the Americans speed things up.

Next to a giant US military cargo plane is a passenger jet. It has been privately chartered by a Mormon group, many of whom are adopting Haitian children.   The plane flew in the night before, loaded with supplies.
The children were supposed to be on it then, but were held up.  The pilot refused to leave without his precious cargo.   Now, there are no delays. Clutching documents that say "evacuated orphan", the children and their carers clamour to board the plane.

One woman stands on the steps to the cabin clutching her adopted baby girl. She looks around, choking back tears, as if taking in this scene of destruction for the last time.  Then we are told that Lovely may be among this group. We board the plane and start looking. It is a frenzied scene, the cabin echoing with the wails of nervous children.

A woman is crying. "Is that relief on your face?" I ask her. "For the ones that made it, yes, but for the ones I had to leave behind, no," she says. Many of the children from Lovely's orphanage are here, but we can't see her.

Confusion
I show her photo around. Some people think they have seen her, others don't know. There is confusion.
We get off the plane as the last children board. Still no sign of Lovely but we are sure she is in this group.
A US official tells us she has seen the girl and will take us to her.

We walk across the tarmac, away from the plane, through the terminal building and out to the front where a row of white tents stand, covering several people in hospital-type clothes. They are all cradling tiny children.
We find Lovely. Lee Everton from Utah Hospital Task Force is holding her. She is sleeping peacefully.
But there's a problem.

"The Haitian government didn't stamp her papers," he tells me, his eyes puffy and red.

"Does that mean she can't get on?" I ask him.

"Not today," he says.

She must go back to the orphanage while Haiti's crumbled bureaucracy runs its course.

Her new life in America must wait.

I am dreading telling her parents. As I pull out my phone, I see Bryan Benedict has already e-mailed me. They are crushed by this setback, he tells me.

All the while, Lovely has remained fast asleep in Lee's arms.

At least she is unaware of the chaos around her.

Haitian children in Miami, adoptive families en route from SLC

By Heidi Toth

Published in The Daily Herald

For the first time in months, Lori Rosenlof of Lehi is on the same continent as her soon-to-be-adopted son.

As of Friday night, they are not in the same time zone; 2-year-old Nathan was in Miami with Brent Rosenlof and a plane full of adoptive children from Haiti. But even getting to Miami was a victory.

Lori Rosenlof's blog, which she uses to update the other families who have been trying to adopt Haitian children for months and into years, was updated more than a dozen times Friday, as the story changed from the prime minister not letting the children leave the country to a pilot from the Utah Hospital Task Force who refused to leave without the children loaded into his plane.

The children will have to stay in Miami until they finish an immigration process, Rosenlof wrote on her blog late Friday.

There was good news for another Utah County family, the Aitkens of Eagle Mountain, and some bad news, too. They are adopting three children from Haiti, and only two of them were allowed to leave the country on Friday. Candice Aitken said Friday night that they're hoping their oldest son will be able to come to the U.S. within a few weeks.

Aitken said she was leaving Salt Lake City on Friday night and would arrive in Miami to see her two children by Saturday morning. It probably will be two to three days until the children are through the immigration process, but they will be able to visit them.

About 60 children were airlifted out of Haiti, less than the 100 or so that were initially scheduled to go. Many parents are using their blogs to post updates about what's going on with their adopted children in Haiti.

Tia Simpson, another mother waiting for 2-year-old Collin, wrote on her blog just before 6 p.m. Friday that customs agents had taken custody of the children in Miami and parents needed to go there.

And even with the rush of people leaving Haiti, there still are others trying to get in: Kathy Headlee-Miner, the founder of Mothers Without Borders, and five men who have spent time in Africa and other Third World countries helping the people. The American Fork woman is hoping the team can do the same now.

"We're just going to help out wherever we can," she said.

All of them have good survival skills and have been in scary situations before. She said they can erect tents, work through collapsed buildings or do other tasks to help the rescue workers already in place.

"They've also worked with kids in different programs, so they can pitch in and keep kids busy and happy and stuff like that," she said.

They leave at 5 p.m. Saturday.

Pictures from Chareyl's New Friends at CBP Miami

I'm so grateful they had the foresight to take some pictures of this and that they were willing to share them so that those of us who were following along at home can see what they went through.

I remember Chareyl telling me that they'd call the kids names up, one at a time, and then she or Brent or whomever would have to go find the kid and take them to the counter for fingerprinting and pictures.

You can see that the agents were very kind to the children and we're grateful to the Red Cross for getting food and supplies into them and for MIA staff for allowing the Red Cross to come in.  This is a very unusual situation - normally NO ONE goes into customs and they were able to work it out.

If I remember correctly, it took them about 14 hours to process all the children.

Trials don't make us great; it's how we respond to them

By Joseph Cramer, MD

Published in the Deseret News

As I write, the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere is digging itself out from under the rubble of a magnitude-7.0 earthquake. The North American plate and the Caribbean tectonic fault crashed and pulled, bringing down both house and man and even a nation. There are many lands of poverty, corruption and violence where children die from diseases Americans have forgotten and parents have never seen. There are hungry adults, parentless children, and there is oppression of all kinds. But Haiti was Hades before the quake; now it is pure hell.

Ah, but trials make us strong, they say. Right? No, problems do not. I am here to tell you that is a fallacy. Troubles themselves do not make us great. Instead it is how we think, act and feel in the face of tribulations that makes us a Lincoln or a Smith, an Esther or a Keller.

Good men die young. Righteous mothers do not survive childbirth; virtuous women are barren; hard-working fathers can't provide for their families. Trials are not limited to the deserving souls. Despots live long; dictators sleep in soft beds and grow fat on silver-platter delicacies not savored by their oppressed; most villains don't get ulcers.

Disasters are neutral. They don't care. They are numb to our cries. Earthquakes, storms, tsunamis are soulless. They result from magma moving and winds blowing and waters rushing. But we are not neutral. We care. We are not numb to the cries of the wounded. Nature has no soul, but we do. It is how we think, act and feel toward each other, our human brothers and sisters, that makes us strong. That is as true of the victim of a cave-in as it is of the liberator of the trapped. Disasters influence both the rescued and the rescuer.

We have never been buried in a fallen building, pulled under by a tsunami or rescued from a rooftop by a National Guard chopper. But we have seen pictures; we have seen the faces and we have had photographs bear witness to the suffering. Therefore, our problem is knowing and still sleeping in clean sheets. We can choose or not choose to do something. Our possible reactions are limitless. We could leave our family and personally bind the wounds. We could dedicate a paycheck or more to the rescue and devote the earnings of that week to the cost of others serving at the epicenter of the crisis. We could give to agencies organized for such catastrophes. We could call upon others to do the same. We can vote for political leaders who act with charity on a governmental scale for those who suffer in our own community. We can show compassion to others who have their own earth-shattering problems: trapped by abusive spouses, not fallen concrete; drowning from drugs, not water; or thirsting for drink or ultimate personal worth.

Still, we are not dirty from the mudslide or hungry from the famine. Can we expect others to be brave when we run from our minuscule fears? The resilience during a crisis is not random. There are characteristics that can be learned and practiced like a character fire drill. Rehearsing solutions to simple problems teaches us to overcome bigger ones, and while problems themselves won't make us great, believing they will does. Believing that trials train us for greatness causes us to react differently when the big one really hits. It is the attitude about challenges that makes solutions possible. It is being able to ask for help when there is no individual hope, only communal survival. It is believing in a purpose to life beyond the moment; it is giving succor when others are hopeless.

Problems are agnostic, inflicting indiscriminately. To Abraham, Joseph, Esther and Helen, it didn't matter; they prevailed. They freed a people, revealed a message, rescued a nation, and saw and heard more clearly because of their problems.

Utah orphans come to U.S. and face another delay

Reported by Barbara Smith

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) Today more than seventy orphans, with adoptive families waiting in Utah and other parts of the nation, waited at the airport in Port ‘O Prince. The plane, that carried Utah volunteers to Haiti Thursday, waited empty nearby. Meanwhile, there was flurry of activity to finish the children’s adoption paperwork so they could get on the plane. A dozen were denied their flight from the earthquake zone because it couldn’t be finished in time.

Thursday, waited empty nearby. Meanwhile, there was flurry of activity to finish the children’s adoption paperwork so they could get on the plane. A dozen were denied their flight from the earthquake zone because it couldn’t be finished in time.
 
The 66 children who got on the plane are headed for Miami and new future. Normally, with paperwork completed in Haiti, they would enter the United States as citizens, but because of the status of their adoptions at the time of the quake, a majority will now enter as refugees and must be processed as such. Laura Trinnaman, Director of For Ever Child,  says” We are just trying to make sense of how these kids will be coming, who has custody of them, and what the process is for adoptive matched families to go through to finalize and adoption.”
 
Some of the parents with children on the flight have already received letters from a federal refugee organization saying their children will be taken by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement to a children’s home in Miami. Trinnaman says “The kids will come through and be cared for until the point, that could be hours, or that could be days, until the point the U.S. government can deem the adoptive families appropriate to take custody of the kids.”
 
The adoptive families have already met all of the U.S. and Haiti requirements for adoption. “Not only have they gone through meeting all of the requirements for adoptive families,  for the U.S. and the state in which the reside, which includes home studies, and criminal background checks, they have also now all completed Homeland Security Refugee Services documents that duplicate their criminal clearances. They have now been through three very strict processes to get to this point.”
 
There is hope the children will be allowed to leave with their new families within the next three days. Until then, the children will be cared for in Miami.
 
Meanwhile, For Every Child continues to struggle to care for the hundreds of orphans in their Haiti orphanages who must stay there for the foreseeable future. They live from shipment to shipment, sent down wherever they can find room on humanitarian planes. Yesterday, they received word their infants were out of formula, and were being fed water to keep them alive. Today, a pallet arrived with enough to get them through until next week. Next week another corner of a flight has been dedicated to the orphans. They hope to collect enough milk-based formula, and cloth diapers to keep the children going until next time. They need formula and cloth diapers on-hand so they can put them on planes at a moments notice. If you can help them provide formula and diapers send them to their office at:
 For Every Child Adoption Services
Foyer de Sion Orphanage Relief   
125 East Main Street, #204
American Fork, Utah 84003

Haitian Orphan Rescue—The Story behind the Story

By Maurine Proctor

Photography by Scot Facer Proctor

Originally published in Meridian Magazine

When a team of 125 Latter-day Saint volunteers flew to Haiti last Thursday, they intended to send back the empty plane to the United States full of orphans ready for adoption.  These were not the children newly orphaned by the earthquake, but orphans whose hopeful, adoptive parents had been working three to four tedious years to try to bring them out of the broken country where orphans languish and die for lack of nutrition and care.

What the LDS team could not have anticipated was that rescuing these children and saving their shattered lives would become a harrowing, dramatic race against time, where every minute counted and events had to come together in a perfect orchestration.

Some background:
Haiti teems with orphans, brown-eyed children, who scramble for survival.  Orphans are Haiti’s most flourishing crop.   Even before the earthquake, of Haiti’s 8.3 million population, it is estimated that 380,000 of them were orphans.  Now, no one can be sure of the number, as these children roam the streets and crouch untended in hidden corners, but guesses are that number may have doubled.

Our LDS team has seen a truck bed full of babies, too dazed to whimper, too hungry to cry anymore expecting that someone will care for them.  Two boys, newly orphaned by the quake, come into the military camp where we live, hoping to tell a joke or sing a song to find a meal.

So with this heart-rending problem, one would think the Haitian government would expedite the adoption process, and get these children into homes where they could be cared for.  Not so.  The adoption process in Haiti is gummed up with red tape, hurdles to cross, and frustrating delays.

One woman, clutching a three-year-old, she was adopting, told me that she had begun working on the adoption process since her child was two-days old. Scott Gordon, a father from Bellingham, Washington, who is adopting two little girls, said it took him fourteen months to get a single signature that he needed on a document.

Scott said they had tried to adopt one little girl named Gracie.  She was to be Gracie Gordon, but she died of sickness and malnutrition before they could clear the Haitian adoption hurdles.  They tried again to adopt a little girl and as time went on, she too, became sick.  The frantic Gordon family sent down a special medical and nutrition regimen for the child that would save her life, but the orphanage where she lived passed the food out as a treat to all the children, and she, too, died.  “I’m not going to lose another child,” he declared, holding the hands of the two little girls he had been working hard to bring home.

At this time, the prime minister, himself, has to sign the papers on each child that is going to be adopted from Haiti to other countries.

The plodding of this process is, in part, the way developing nations function with defeating and sometimes heartbreaking inefficiency. Since the earthquake, it is worse as the shattered seat of government has been moved from the collapsed palace to a police station in Port-au-Prince and hardly can begin to meet the needs of a bleeding country.

In part this glacial adoption speed, however, is Haiti’s way of expressing concern for its children.  Human trafficking abounds in Haiti, and Lear jets, land on hidden airstrips transporting the innocent, who have been rounded up from Haiti’s streets, into the most despicable human slavery.  Others are whisked away to have their organs harvested. These beautiful children have their body parts taken by the highest bidder.

Robert Henry Louis, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff said that the day before, an executive from UNICEF had been yelling in despair in a meeting because so many children are being whisked away into the darkest night.
Yet the glacial movement of the adoption process is not Haiti’s alone; the rules by which the United States operates are full of hurdles and their plate is full dealing with Haiti’s chaos.

This past week adoptive parents, seeking for documents they have struggled years to obtain, have camped out in the halls of the U.S. embassy unable to get movement.  Lindsay Crapo, who is on the board of an orphanage run by Guesmo Mardy, a counselor in the Haiti mission presidency, said she had spent every day, all day at the U.S. Embassy, including 16 hours the day we arrived with no progress. 

Part 2

No Orphans

We left Salt Lake for Haiti with carefully-detailed plans for bringing out orphans.  Many of them would be from President Mardy’s orphanage.  Of the three buildings that make up his center, two have been utterly destroyed in the earthquake, and the swelling number of orphans are now crammed into one building and some tents.  Though the documentation on the children we had hoped to rescue had long been in process, the lives of these children are on the line.

Calls were going back and forth between our jet and Haiti as we flew from Salt Lake City to Port-au-Prince, but the word came back that despite every effort, the papers still lacked signatures, including the key one from Haiti’s prime minister, who was currently in the Dominican Republic.

“We will not be bringing out the orphans.  No orphans.”  The word traveled back through the airplane with heaviness and burning disappointment as we flew closer to Haiti.  The plan had been for the orphans to be loaded during our plane’s hour turn-around in Haiti, but it seemed that it just could not be. Timing had to be precise.

Planes had to take off.  These papers, long in process, still lacked signatures.

But we are Latter-day Saints on this plane who know how to pray.  It is nearly unheard of for a chartered plane full of passengers to pray together before they leave for a destination or to have a devotional featuring a song, “Because I have been given much, I too must give.”  Yet, we are travelling as a community, already connected by our shared faith and unspoken bonds.  We are united by a willingness to volunteer for something that we all know could be very difficult.

Before we left Florida we decided to join our faith and heartfelt yearnings for these orphans and pray again.  We said, “Dear Heavenly Father, please give us a miracle.  Please orchestrate events so this empty plane can be filled with orphans.  Please save their lives. Please orchestrate events so we can save these children.  Please be in the details.”

Still, the situation seemed impossible. 

The LDS team arrived in Port-au-Prince after midnight, the city dark except where an occasional generator lit up a patch.  The plane had to turn around and go.  No orphans.

Steve Studdert met with the President’s own body guards at our camp.

But Steve Studdert, who spear-headed this expedition and gathered these 125 doctors, translators and construction workers, was not about to give up.  He has served in the White House with three administrations, and his team member, David Hoopes, has also served in the White House, overseeing among other things the flow of documents.  They have seen how to get things done, and with lives on the line, they were not about to stop now.

They had been in contact with the Utah senator’s offices. Senator Orrin Hatch called the owner of Sun Country from whom the plane had been chartered.  The plea was a big one.  Instead of having your pilot, crew and plane leave immediately, could they just wait until morning? 

Remarkably, the owner agreed.  This just doesn’t happen when an airline has a schedule to keep and a plane due somewhere else.

After the plane unloaded, Steve sat down with the pilot to get his buy-off and the series of remarkable events continued to fall into place.  It “just so happened” that this pilot had a friend with a child adopted from Haiti, and he had great sympathies for our plight.  He had a heart for the orphans and did not want to leave without them.  Though they had federal regulations to follow, they could stay until tomorrow at 11:00 AM.

That was not enough.  The U.S. Air Force officers currently administering the Port-au-Prince airport are dealing with an overloaded and strictly scheduled airport.  Would they agree to have a plane sit there until morning?
 

Except for a 20-minute nap, lying on concrete, Steve stayed up all night having conversations with key people in the military and in Washington running the airport, asking permission for the plane to stay.
 

With the plane’s owners and pilot in sympathy and agreement, this bought precious time for Steve and his team to meet with the prime minister in the morning at 9:00.  

Part 3
Meeting with the Haitian Government

The clock is ticking, the deadline looming for the plane’s take off as Steve and a few others taxi to the government offices at the police compound the next morning.

Off we went in a police escort and taxi.

Everything has to work together with precision, down to every detail, to get the papers signed and the travel documents for these orphans.
 

We are hoping for signatures that others have been seeking for weeks and months.  How could we possibly get them in a few minutes? So many things had to go right in a convergence to get these orphans out.  These variables are things beyond our ability to control, things that all the strategy, skill and effort in the world cannot bring to pass.

The seat of the Haitian Government is now located in an old police station.  The Presidential Palace collapsed in the earthquake.

Time has run out to get these papers signed unless heaven intercedes.

It was duly noted that we had arrived.  Leo Montes is on left talking to Steve Studdert.

We checked our watches and tried not to feel tense, thinking about the lives of these orphans on the line as we wait in the hot, bright sun of the police compound for the prime minister. 

That we even have this meeting, exactly when we need it, is something nobody could have planned. This meeting is made possible because “it just so happened” that one of our LDS team members, Leo Montes, a native and returned missionary from Haiti “just happens” to have a best friend who is the Prime Minister’s personal body guard. 

Then we saw, in a divine orchestration, how God can be in the details. It was as if it were a dance, with each player called on the stage at the perfect moment to say his speech. It was as if all the stars aligned and sung, all things working together as each played his part, and then, in turn, introduced the next necessary player in the sequence.

It was the parting of the Red Sea.

Part 4

Within minutes we met the Minister of Cultural Affairs,

And the chief of staff for the Prime Minister.

Then, enter stage right, came the U.S. ambassador over USAID in Haiti,

next the U.S. ambassador,  Kenneth H. Merton, whose signature we also needed.

(l-r) Steve Studdert, Ambassador Merton, David Hoopes, Robert Henry Louis and Leo Montes. 

He signed the orphan’s papers and initialed every one, lest there be a mistake.

We are waiting on the Prime Minister.

Then, as if on cue, came the nation’s President, Rene Preval.

The President was warm, friendly and in a great hurry.  His nation is in ruins.

Next appeared the gracious First Lady,

and, by her side, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

We are waiting on the Prime Minister and the clock is ticking.

We shook our heads in disbelief at the constellation of people who have come to our aid as if heeding an invisible call.

“This just doesn’t happen,” said Steve.  “I’ve represented the President of the United States in 100 nations and things still never come together like this.  It doesn’t happen.”

The elegant First Lady was wearing a smart green suit.  She told us that she has chosen it as a symbol of hope.  “We have been through tragedy and much is lost, but our strength is in our children,” she told a reporter.  “ We must give every assistance we can to our orphans.”

“We have come to try to help,” says Steve Studdert.

It was 10:00 now.  The Prime Minister should be here any minute, but, if these orphans are to make the plane, they have to be at the airport. His chief of staff promises that when he comes, he will surely sign the document with all these leaders behind it.   That is fine and good, but where is he?

Another plane flew overhead, reminding us that planes fly, planes leave on a schedule.  You cannot hold a Sun Country plane forever, nor keep the forbearance of the U.S. Air Force who are lending us the airport space.

We called the orphanage and told them to ready the children and hustle them to the airport.  The only possession they will bring, as the legacy of their meager lives, are the bright wrist bands marked with their names and the names of their new parents.

As we wait for the Prime Minister, we were given documents for 141 orphans.  Knowing that every detail must be correct, we pored over them, checking every line.

The U.S. executive, who thought he signed them all, accidentally missed two.  One of them is the two-year-old Lindsay Crapo is working to adopt.

At this point the group split up.  Steve Studdert waited for the Prime Minister.  David Hoopes  rushed to the U.S. Embassy to have these last two papers signed and obtain the travel documents.  Some of us were sent to gather members of the LDS team to make a mad dash to the airport to watch the orphans while they are waiting for the plane.
 

Part 5
Orphans at the Airport
 

Those LDS team members at the airport each take charge of a couple of orphans to entertain and hold, while we wait for David and Steve to bring the paperwork that will set them free.

Eleven o’clock has now long past.  The intense heat of the noonday tropical sun baked us as we counted the minutes.  We strained our eyes looking for any sign of those bringing documents and hoped that the plane would stay.
 

We checked our watches.  Time is relentless; it does not stop, even for orphans.  12:30, then 1:00.  No documents.

“It feels surreal,” Lindsay said, “that we have any chance of bringing these kids home.  I won’t believe it until we are actually on the airplane.”
 

Meanwhile our hands were full of toddlers and children, who fell on each of us as if they were in love.  They were eager to hold our hands, nuzzle their small heads into our necks.  They clutched our hands as if for dear life.

If we put them down for a minute because our arms were aching, they held up both hands begging to be held again.
 

I was holding a handsome little boy with wide eyes, named Sneider. “Be careful, he is a runner,” one of the helpers from the orphanage told me.  He was holding so tightly to me, I didn’t worry that he’d wander.

They clung to us like rag dolls, flopping their heads across our shoulders.  Some were worried, tearful and disoriented.
 

The noise of the C17’s starting up on the runway blasted every tender eardrum and Lindsay Crapo passed out ear plugs for the children.
 

Some members of our team made balloons out of the surgical gloves we have brought with us to help the children pass the time in the sweltering heat.  Some sang songs or did finger games.

Scott Gordon told me that one little girl, peacefully asleep on my lap had been already used as a domestic slave and treated very badly.  It will take her much to heal.
 

It is 1:00, and then 1:30.  The immigration agents, called ICE, have waited with us for all this time, and they announced that they were going to shut down the operation.  They could wait no more.  Understandably, they had other work to do.  We begged and pled for a few more minutes.

Finally, in a frantic cross-town, careening drive where it seemed only two wheels were on the road and the other two on the curb, Steve and Dave arrived with all the finished paperwork, including the Prime Minister’s signature.  141 orphans had been cleared and 66 of those would be on this plane.

As each orphan is processed, his or her relieved and tearful new parent carried them to the plane, if they were in Haiti.  If not, these fragile children were wrapped up in the arms of the burly ICE agents, who carried them with marked tenderness to the plane.

A feeling swept the little crowd taking the orphans to the plane.  It was a mix of happy tears and laughter, of relief and disbelief.  This was impossible, and yet it happened before our eyes.

God had heard the prayers of so many for these children.  He had spared them in a convergence of events that was too remarkable to be anything but his signature.  Our clumsy, mortal efforts could never have created this orchestration.

A joyous team in tears at the base of the airplane ready to leave with the precious cargo.

I stepped into the cockpit to thank the pilot for his patience and concern.  It was 3:00 and we had the orphans and their parents and caretakers ready to leave.  He said, “The company just called to say they would give me two more minutes before I am yanked out of here.”

The timing had been perfect.  Of course.

We waved goodbye to the orphans as they flew away and said, “You’re going home. Now you have a home.”