Allison Davis made her first of six mission trips to Haiti as a member of Hope Presbyterian Church in 2000.
The relationships she built in the village where she worked, and within the Presbyterian Church organization, led the Presbyterian mission board to invite her back again to serve its mission in Messailler, Haiti, after the earthquake.
Davis said she didn't hesitate when the call came.
"All I could do was think of the people I knew and wonder if they were OK," she said, "and so I was thrilled with the opportunity to do something about it."
Davis works in management for Greensboro Industrial Platers, which provides metal-finishing services to manufacturers. She uses her vacation days to do her mission work.
She arrived in Haiti on Jan. 26 and left on Feb. 1. During that time, she took up residence in Messailler, a village which is 20 miles from Port-au-Prince and has a population of fewer than 10,000. The Presbyterian Mission in Haiti consists of a church, dorm, school and orphanage. Ten tents had also been set up as makeshift housing for families who had nowhere else to go.
Before she got there, the Rev. Charles Amicy, the church's pastor, had taken the church bus into Port-au-Prince, filled it up with the sick and brought them back to the church, where he set up a makeshift 40-bed hospital. Flying Doctors of America staffed the hospital, Davis said. They set bones, cleaned wounds and tried to get help for those who needed additional care.
Davis helped in the hospital and pharmacy that had been set up and did administrative work for Amicy. She said that she considers herself an ordinary person with a gift for organization who has been moved by the poverty and need in Haiti over the past 10 years.
She was somewhat frustrated by the bureaucracy involved in getting various forms of aid, she said.
"It made Charles happy that I could answer the phone and e-mail," she said, "but I guess it's the American way to want immediate results."
Among the people who have stayed in her mind since her return was an 11-year-old orphan girl named Armani. The girl was picked up in Port-au-Prince with a broken femur and had been left to fend for herself. Doctors at the clinic in Messailler were able to put a new cast on her leg, Davis said. The girl has since been settled in an orphanage where she can have the six weeks of bed rest she will need to heal her leg.
The Rev. Clyde Godwin, the pastor of Hope Presbyterian, said that he has known Davis for about three years. He went on one of the mission trips with her in the spring of 2008.
He said that Davis is a good example of a servant leader.
"She's the person who organizes, administrates, leads everybody," he said. "She's one of these very soft-spoken but gifted people who likes to lead by putting other people out front."
Davis said that she had traveled in Europe, the U.S. and South America, when the idea of going to Haiti was first presented in 2000.
"It's getting a bit out of my zone," she said. "It's a Third World country where the need is great."
But the people she has gotten to know have kept her coming back.
She has watched children grow up, she said, and she didn't want the friends she had made there to think that she had forgotten them when the earthquake came.
She and other members of Hope Presbyterian plan to return to Haiti in early March, she said. This time they will help run the community health clinic that provides health care to the village of Messailler. The trip will also give Davis a chance to check in with the families who are living in tents.
She doesn't foresee a day when she will stop going to Haiti, Davis said.
"I like a system, I like routine. There's a draw there. There's friends," she said. "I don't think their needs are going to be solved in my lifetime."
mgiunca@wsjournal.com
727-4089
To read more about Messailler and Presbyterian efforts there, go to www.presbyterianmissioninhaiti.org.
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