Jordan Sikkema served as the Volunteer Construction Coordinator for Lagniappe Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Bay St. Louis after Katrina, helping to rebuild 400 homes and coordinate 14,000 volunteers. Now he’s packing up to go give that same kind of help to earthquake victims in Haiti.

Sikkema will be in Haiti during the next week with an assessment team ministering to earthquake survivors. He reported to local media in Biloxi, “I feel like us from the coast that have been through Katrina have a lot to offer, did a lot of things right, did a lot of things wrong and hopefully will be able to advise on this.”

Sikkema is one of four people from the Presbyterian Church America who will travel together to Haiti. Mission To North America Disaster Response has an assessment team, including Ruling Elder Arklie Hooten, MNA Disaster Response Director, that will be traveling into Haiti Tuesday, January 26. Clearance has just been given for them to fly directly into Port au Prince airport. This team will remain in Haiti for the entire week.

They will be working with Dony St. Germain, a Haitian-born PCA pastor in Miami and Brian Kelso, a long-time South Florida PCA pastor who heads up a specialized education and training program that includes many Haitian students.

The purpose of the trip is to determine how best to assist with the tremendous needs there. They will also determine how best to provide the means for ‘staging’ volunteers who will come to serve. The lack of infrastructure in Haiti will limit opportunities for volunteer involvement in the early days of response and it will take some time to establish a base of operations and delivery system of assistance. However, those churches interested in participating when the time comes should make that known to Mission To North America as soon as possible: http://processor.pcanet.org/mna/events/signin.cfm?eventid=2

Sikkema added more specifics, saying, “We are going with people that are from the area. That’s who we want to take the lead knows the area that has a pulse on what’s truly needed and help from indigenous pastors and indigenous relief workers just people to help themselves and serve them. So they can help their own county.”

Editor’s note: Information for this story was taken from the Mission To North America website http://www.pca-mna.org/ as well as from the online edition of WLOX Biloxi http://www.wlox.com/Global/story.asp?S=11868478

[Editor’s note: One or more original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid; those links have been removed.]