Timothy Stoner

Death and Life and Haiti’s Audacious Hope

Posted on 19. Jan, 2010 by Tim Stoner in Blog, Life

Only 14 months ago I was on the balcony of a luxury hotel overlooking the skyline of the capitol city of Port au Prince. I was on a cell phone talking to my wife, Patty. That conversation was the source of moments of extreme worry for her and, when I got back home, laughter on both our parts.

My battery was running low and it died before we ended the call. The last thing Patty heard before the phone went dead was loud and threatening barking. It sounded as though I was being mauled by a pack of rabid animals. The reality was that the phone was picking up the sounds of some guard dogs behind the walls of an adjoining house 30 yards beneath me. Unfortunately, I was out of communication for several days during which time she tried to suppress vivid and upsetting images.    

We don’t laugh about that call any more. The deck, which once offered hotel guests a stunning nighttime view of the sprawling capitol, is gone. The Montana, one of the most comfortable and attractive hotels in all of Haiti, is now just another large pile of mismatched slabs of concrete in an under-developed country whose capitol has been left desolate.

Had the earthquake hit when I was there Patty would have had no chance to laugh, the last thing she would have ever heard would have been the cracking of cement and screams of terror as the balcony plunged down onto the barking dogs below.

On their website there is a simple rectangular box that declares: “The Hotel Montana, Haiti is closed until further notice.” Yes, it is closed but the reality is that it is destroyed taking many lives with it. But, there were lives saved.

One of them was Daniel Woolley, program manager for Compassion International. He was in Haiti working on sponsorship videos. The collapse had trapped him in an elevator shaft for nearly 65 hours. He and bellhop Mondesir Luckson, in a nearby shaft, kept their spirits up by talking and praying.

A photographer caught the moment when Woolley is being carried out on stabilizing board. In the frame you can see the bellhop’s hand resting gently on his new friend’s and fellow survivor’s cheek. 

Though these two miraculously survived there are many who will not be found for a long time. Mark Stone, with the Virginia team that found both men, said that even though crews had cut holes in the mass of concrete using jackhammers, concrete saws, metal saws and picks, much of the devastated six-story hotel could not yet be searched. Only 100 of the 300 guests have been accounted for.

There is life but there is death as well. There is devastation but also praise. As I read reports of crowds worshiping and declaring in Creole “Jesus is Lord” (charismamag.com/index.php/fire-in-my-bones/26003) and as I watch Haitian’s marching down the street clapping and singing out their joy and thanksgiving, clearly, there is also an astonishing hope. 

Our brothers and sisters are showing us the way to live with an unshakeable hope that God truly is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in time of trouble. Therefore, they have been freed from fear even though the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea (Ps. 6:1-2). That is the definition of a hope that truly is audacious.  

Tags: Add new tag, audacity, death, earthquake, Haiti, hope, Hotel Montana, Jesus is Lord, praise, rescue