Oakland Co church mission returns safely after Haitian unrest
(WJBK) - After we told you about their plight Sunday, 107 members of an Oakland County church doing mission work in Haiti are on their way back home.
Cell phone video of Kensington Church students dancing with Haitians looks like jubilation. All around them chaos was erupting after the government announced a sharp spike in gas prices.
The unrest left at least three people dead. The Michigan students say there could have been fear, but there wasn't.
"You can see from the video we are having a blast from this dance party," said Richie Christie. "And two or three days prior to that, all kinds of chaos was going on around them in their neighborhoods and villages. I think that joy rubbed off on our students and our team."
Before demonstrations, burning tires and barricades, the high school kids put on a sports camp for village children, painted with them and helped with construction.
"Some of the stuff we had planned going into the villages we obviously couldn't do at that point,” Christie said. "We couldn't do at that point."
After the Haitian children were bused into their compound bringing the kids to the mission, while workers were on lockdown.
"We really started off and started off terrific," said Don Lee. "We have a great group of 44 people that were really serving the Haitians. And when the uprising came, we were in a lockdown. When that happened the Haitians in the community started serving us."
And while that teen group is at an airport in Miami a family mission team from the same church just got back after a few delays.
"We are like one big family right now, it's pretty cool," said Chris Barnett.
Both groups were there to help with recovery efforts after a catastrophic 2010 earthquake.
"There were times you know, where you wanted to be home no question," said Barnett. "We joked a lot, many of us are in the same clothes we've had on for a week or last four days."
The high school group's leader says the students should be back late Wednesday night.