Utah man works to fulfill promise, helps in Haiti

In a tiny Haitian village known oddly as Batay 39, a Tennessee

doctor ducked into a dirt-floor hut to help a woman in labor while

Jeremy Johnson waited outside.

Johnson,

a wealthy St. George, Utah businessman, was at the village that January

morning as part of his quest to deliver relief to suffering Haitians,

but being squeamish, he had a hard time making eye contact with the

agony he saw all around him.

His

friends were in Haiti, too, elbow-deep in beans, smelling death,

confronting the stark difference of their lives to the people around

them. It was comforting to have them there.

Together,

they felt the catharsis of all-consuming charity, like being baptized

and forgiven in a conversion to helping humanity. Helping Haiti.

__IMAGE1__So

as Johnson and his friends followed Tennessee cardiologist Clint Doiron

through the muddy village, past pigs, turkeys, goats and smoldering

charcoal pits where sticks were blackened and sold across the lake as

fuel, they listened to the doctor's hard sell to raise $1.2 million for

a pediatric clinic.

"I'm an expensive guy," Doiron said at one point.

"We're a couple of expensive guys, too," replied Nathan Kinsella, one of Johnson's longtime buddies.

Johnson did not agree to front the money on the spot, but Doiron still sees him as a godsend.

"He's an angel from heaven," he said. "We needed help, and he was there."

It's

no big deal, Johnson would say. But his actions — generous, daring and