This is from a dear friend of mine, Laura Hess, who is currently serving as an English teacher in St. Marc, Haiti.  Please read and pray for her and the team.  I’ll try and find out more information and to see if I can put up a link to where people can donate or how they can help:

dear prayer team,

after a long night of pounding rains and gusty winds, we woke up to find out that hurricane Hanna indeed decided to hit st. marc.   apparently, she was supposed to head north up the coast and not bring more than a little rain to our city.   but last night, she turned south instead and nailed us.   lindsay and i were up most of the night, praying for family and friends and home, as well as the families in gonaiives, which we knew was getting hit much worse than us.  our new roommate janelle’s fiance is from gonaiives, so we prayed especially hard for his family.  we also felt led to pray for a hedge of protection around our school, as there are so many open walls where the driving rain could penetrate and ruin the newly organized bookshelves and cabinets…

around 7:30 this morning, lucy came to our apartment to tell us that we HAD to come see the school.   the roof was completely ripped off last night, exposing EVERYTHING in our newly set up rooms to the rain and wind.  almost all of our books are ruined.   the wind almost never blows from south to north here, during a storm, and yet last night it did.   the angled roof on the school made it a sitting duck…  yesterday, on labor day, we were having such a fun time putting finishing touches on lindsay and rhodes’ classrooms, the anticipation of a new school year and what God would through it, just building in our minds and hearts…

now we have to trust that God does have a plan in the midst of this chaos.   that he wants to bring good from this disaster.   we are definitely in need of a new roof.  maybe even a new school.   as i write this, the entire ywam staff is carrying furniture and supplies from the exposed classrooms to the safety of the cafeteria.   lindsay and i are going to go do what we can to help.   i know that illioney is feeling shell-shocked about now.   thank the Lord we postponed the start of the school year until next week, but still, one week hardly seems enough time to recover what has been lost.

and we hear that another hurricane is due to hit us this weekend.   please pray.   pray for wisdom.  for peace…  for God’s direction to be so clear to us that we’ll know exactly how to move forward from here.

i’ll try to write more later.   thank you SO much for praying!

only by His grace,

laura jean (for lindsay jo as well)