Contributed photo/Nate BodenstabHOULTON — The Houlton Rotary speaker for the day at the May 9 meeting was Reverend Randall Burns, who spoke about the Strong Tower Orphanage in Haiti.
Burns, who has lived in Houlton for 25 years with his wife Melanie and their children, was the guest of Rotarian Travis Glatter. He is the pastor of the Military Street Baptist Church, also known as the Church on the Hill.
Reverend Burns travelled to Haiti 20 years ago to meet the pastor in the village of Caracol, a tiny fishing village on the north coast of Haiti. Caracol has a 90 percent unemployment rate. The natives either fish or process salt from the ocean to sell. After the earthquake in 2010 children fled over the mountains to Caracol where they had no one to care for them.
Pastor Burns had been very occupied with building the new Church on the Hill when the call came asking him to help with building an orphanage in Caracol. He had to decline. But the project kept coming back to him. Through a connection he came to know a woman named Lori Holt from the First Methodist Church in Sedalia, Missouri. Lori felt the project was extremely critical so Randall answered the call. He went to Haiti to visit.
The project had three immediate needs. The first step was to identify the children with the greatest need. It was decided that the girls needed them most. Second, they needed to find a piece of property. They found 5 acres belonging to a farmer who immediately declined their offer. Weeks later the farmer had a change of heart and approached the Methodist pastor and offered to sell for less than what they had offered the first time. The third step was the need to regrow, rebuild and revive the community.
Originally the churches would send volunteers who did all the work and then they realized that the people who lived there wanted to work. The model changed and locals were hired at a good wage so they could feed their families. Over the years the two churches in Missouri and in Houlton have built dormitories, septic systems, a guard station to protect the girls, hoop houses to grow vegetables to help make the orphanage more self-sustaining and they just purchased electricity for the complex.
There are now 18 girls in the care of the orphanage and they are encouraged to treat each other like family since there is presently no mechanism for an adoption process. The girls are encouraged to learn and grow, support each other and aspire to higher education so they can be an asset to the community. Everything is funded by church support and individual donations, bake sales, a “love run” in October and the Heart for Haiti Art Show in Missouri. There is a website labeled www.strongtowerorphanage.com for more information or to give a donation.
