Pétion-Ville, 18 January 2010

Dear Father General and Council,
Dear Brother Oblates,
Dear friends,

I am in a cybercafé (in a less damaged area of Pétion-Ville) to read your messages. Many thanks for your support. There are three of us here: Frs. Maxime Eugène, Albert Cator and I. Besides the information that I have already sent and which can be read on the Oblate internet site (www.omiworld.org), we are now in the process of evacuating Port-au-Prince. Some residents of the provincial house have already left for Mazenod, Camp-Perrin. The scholastics in theology have been sent to Oblate parishes on the Southern Coast. Those in philosophy are waiting for the opportunity to move to the North.

Our sympathy goes out to the Oblates who have lost members of their family. For most of the other Oblates from Haiti, their close family members are relatively all right and have found shelter somewhere. In Port-au-Prince, everyone is still sleeping outside, a situation that will most likely last at least another month. Now there is the exodus towards other towns.

There is no hope of being able to return to academic activities this year in Port-au-Prince, nor even for public life, since most of the state offices and commercial establishments have either collapsed or have become unusable.

We are planning to move the administrative center of the Province to a safer city, but for that, we are awaiting for specialists to better assess the situation, for they are foreseeing an eventual dominos effect in the other cities as well. And then we need to save what we can at the provincial house and the theology house.

The government has decreed a state of emergency and a month of national mourning (January 17-February 17). It is also promising rapid steps to bring into operation the banks, the communications services and the service stations, but we are still waiting for that to happen.

Again, thanks to Father General and his councilors, to all our Oblate confreres and our friends for your support.

United in prayer in Jesus Christ and Mary Immaculate,

Fr. Gasner Joint, omi
Provincial