LDS relief: LDS Haitians attend church as relief work continues

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Sunday as a day of rest?

Hardly so in Haiti.

However, reminders of the Sabbath day were visibly apparent throughout the devastated capital city.

Men in crisp dress shirts, slacks and ties and women wearing clean dresses or skirts and blouses — with many also carrying their Bibles tucked under their arms — walked along the streets Sunday, headed to or from church services.

Too bad we couldn't make any ourselves.

Sometimes helping hands just can't catch a break.

Even on a Sunday.

Even with the best of intentions.

Deseret News photographer Jeff Allred and I continue to accompany the team of volunteer doctors and nurses sent to earthquake-ravaged Haiti by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Sunday morning, all the medical volunteers rode to a warehouse property the church operates on the outskirts of the city, where LDS relief supplies are slowly being stockpiled for distribution. There, we helped unload supplies — mostly water and food — from two recently arrived trailers into the storehouse.

A smaller group of us soon was dispatched with two purposes — to deliver food to a hospital and to try to attend the day's worship services at an LDS chapel.

From there, we traveled very s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y on narrow streets cluttered with rubble, lined with trash and clogged with ever-halting traffic.

All along the way, we continued to see signs of Haiti returning to some sense of normalcy less than two weeks after the Jan. 12 7.0-magnitude earthquake.

Haitians were out and about — seemingly everyone was either walking on the streets or driving their cars, trucks and motorcycles.

Those who sell the simplest of produce and products along the streets in hopes of eking out a hand-to-mouth living were setting up their stalls and spots along major roads.

Demolition efforts were beginning at sites of destroyed buildings — large tractors, trucks and front-loaders were starting to haul off the rubble, and crews were cutting through the rebar and sorting through the broken walls and ceilings to salvage whatever possible.

Arriving at the Haiti Community Hospital, it was easy to understand the hospital's desperate needs — the building seemed only partially completed, with many open-air rooms lacking walls or ceilings, let alone plaster and paint.

The injured were packed throughout hospital grounds under the trees, tents, blankets and makeshift tents.

We had brought some 50 boxes and cartons of food supplies — water, milk, juice, beef chunks, turkey chunks, crackers and sardines — from the LDS supply trailers. The much-welcomed donation nearly doubled the limited rations the hospital already had.