Mission workers from Holmes County who provide aid in war-torn and impoverished countries are among at least 17 people kidnapped in Haiti Saturday while returning from building an orphanage.
Christian Aid Ministries, which resumed mission work in Haiti in 2020 after staying away for nine months due to gang violence and political unrest, sent a special prayer alert message to members this weekend.
“Pray that the gang members would come to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ,” the one-minute message said, according to copies obtained by the Associated Press and Washington Post.
In a statement released on its website Sunday, the organization said it has handed the matter over to its God.
"We are seeking God’s direction for a resolution, and authorities are seeking ways to help," the statement said.
"The group of sixteen U.S citizens and one Canadian citizen includes five men, seven women, and five children. Join us in praying for those who are being held hostage, the kidnappers, and the families, friends, and churches of those affected. Pray for those who are seeking God’s direction and making decisions regarding this matter.
"As an organization, we commit this situation to God and trust Him to see us through," the statement continued.
For decades, the Christian group of Amish, Mennonite and Anabaptist denominations has worked in Haiti as part of its global mission “to minister to physical and spiritual needs.”
A gang blamed for kidnapping five priests and two nuns earlier this year in Haiti is accused of kidnapping the 17 missionaries, including a 2-year-old, police said Sunday.
The gang controls the Croix-des-Bouquets area that includes Ganthier, where they carry out kidnappings and carjackings and extort business owners, according to authorities.
Christian Aid Ministries facility near Berlin, Ohio, quiet Sunday morning
Sunday morning, the group’s main facility near Berlin in Holmes County was quiet. With 13 vehicles and a bicycle in the mostly empty parking lot, no one answered the phone or the door.
A woman walking from a nearby campground said she was unaware of the kidnapping crisis. A journalist from Reuters pulled his white Mercedes into the parking lot.
Nearby on state Route 39, James Beachy, 59, of Millersburg, held Sunday church in his large vinyl-sided garage. He said he's not a minister, but he lets his church pray from the New Testament inside his garage each Sunday.
None of the 39 families he worships with have family kidnapped in Haiti, he said.
Beachy said he's unaware of whether kidnappers have demanded ransom. His family and others volunteer at Christian Aid Ministries, sorting clothes or funneling donations.
"They do a great job in Haiti and third world countries to help people over there and also the natural disasters," he said. "We’re just glad to be a part of people who can help."
Beachy said there's a great deal of concern over the ongoing hostage crisis.
Workers returned to Haiti last year after concerns about safety
Established as a charity in Ohio in 1981 and receiving federal 501(c)3 tax-exempt status the following year, the group’s most recent financial report stated annual service to 14 million people in 133 countries in 2020. Workers returned to Haiti last year after staying away for nine months due to safety concerns stemming from gang violence that is increasingly responsible for hundreds of abductions each year.
The United Nations Integrated Office said at least 328 kidnapping victims were reported to Haiti’s National Police in the first eight months of 2021, compared with a total of 234 for all of 2020, according to a report issued last month by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti known as BINUH.
On Tuesday last week, Christian Aid Ministries blogged about a struggling Haitian student, an under-resourced educator and the humanitarian organization's Haiti-Sponsor-A-Child School Program. Donations to the program provide textbooks, school supplies and a warm daily meal for 9,430 students at 52 schools in Haiti.
In recent years, the Christian charity with assets of nearly $90 million has collected between $130 and $140 million in donations and grants to support three international programs, which together total more than $100 million in annual spending.
The Medicines-For-Multitudes program, which runs $57.3 million, distributes medicines and medical supplies to 380 sites in Eastern Europe, Liberia, Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador and other parts of the world costs. The Bibles-For the-World-Program ($39 million in spending) translates, prints and distributes Bibles and biblical literature to needy families, the elderly, widow, widowers and abandoned wives. The Clothing Bundle Project ($10 million in spending) ships used clothing, footwear and comforters around the world to impoverished and war-torn countries like Nigeria, Ukraine, Nicaragua, Syria and more.
The need for international aid ramped up in Haiti this year following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse at his home July 7 — creating a political refugee crisis as people fled for security — and a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 2,200 people in August.
Christian Aid Ministries was on the ground in Haiti more than a decade ago during the last major natural disaster, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck in January 2010. Christian Aid Ministries sent medical staff to treat the wounded and help prevent the spread of infectious disease in Haiti’s Port-au-Prince.
The effort was described by staff as rewarding but grueling. Across from the mobile clinic setup to treat the ill and wounded, workers watched six dump trucks haul bodies to a mass grave as they cleaned and stitched wounds to prevent infection among the living.
Previous child abuse reports hurt organization
In 2019, the organization’s good will suffered with the report of a worker abusing children in Ohio and Haiti.
Former employee Jeriah Mast, of Millersburg, was sentenced to nine years in prison for molesting boys in Ohio from 1998 to 2008. The former employee also “confessed to molesting boys while working for our organization in Haiti,” the board of directors of Christian Aid Ministries said in an open letter in 2019.
That same open letter stated that two managers at the ministries knew of the sexual abuse since 2013. By then, Mast had been working for six years to deliver hurricane relief, support for school children and other projects in Haiti.
The board of directors said Mast confessed his illegalities to the church upon returning from his most recent mission trip to Haiti in 2019. Citing "political unrest," Christian Aid Ministries then made the decision to pull American staff out of Haiti for nine months.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Reach reporter Doug Livingston at [email protected] or 330-996-3792.
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