Not all heroes wear capes; in fact, Pam Reifsnyder would prefer a floral blouse.
For the past 15 years, Reifsnyder has traveled to Bwa Pen, Haiti once a year for seven days at a time as a part of her own personal ministry.
She travels with her sister and her husband, who is a doctor, her daughter, who is a nurse, and another nurse.
She said, “We help as many people as the Lord impresses us to help while we’re there and with the money we have. ...
“We only stay seven days. For our group, that’s as long as we can really take it mentally.”
While there, the group stays at the Upward Bound Ministry house. The ministry started up in 2011 and provides schooling, food and church to locals at no cost.
Reifsnyder’s group holds a free medical clinic where they perform anything they are capable of while they’re there. She said most of the problems natives come to them with include dehydration, worms, urinary tract infection and pneumonia.
Before leaving the United States, she and her sister Vicki send 55 gallon barrels to the mission house full of toiletries and clothing for the locals. They also conduct activities for children, which draws in loads of people.
When they get there, they go to a local market and purchase 50 pound bags of rice, beans, pasta, tomato sauce, garlic and oil and package the items to take to friends they have met over the years.
“Everyone is hungry in Haiti,” Reifsnyder said. “Everyone.”
The Reifsnyder’s daughter Jennifer had a friend who knew of someone who had an orphanage in the country – a French man, Reifsnyder said, who was fundraising and looking for sponsors in the United States. When Jennifer told the Reifsnyder’s about the cause, they decided to make the first trip.
Of Haiti, Pam informed, “The government is corrupt and the common people are resisting it and wanting to get some change. ... They are just rioting and polluting and putting cars on fire and having roadblocks, and it’s very dangerous.”
Because of this, she had to postpone this year’s trip from February to June.
Additionally, her church supports an orphanage of 14 in the country as well. They pay for the children to go to school each year and send money for food each month.
She said, “That’s a really big blessing because, I mean, in Haiti you have to have some sort of education to even expect to make it or you’ll be just begging on the streets all your life.
“Being able to sponsor 14 children to be able to go to school is a really big blessing for us.”
While there, Reifsnyder likes to walk the village and visit friends that she’s made over the years.
On the trip this year, she and her comrades came across a man named Mr. Charity. He is an elderly man who lives in a two room shack with dirt floors and a “campfire kitchen” in the back.
After meeting him, Reifsnyder said she couldn’t help but cry on their walk back to the mission house, but thankfully, after talking to one another about what they could do for him, a lady who lives at the mission house agreed to bring Mr. Charity two meals a day and clean drinking water.
“We went back,” Reifsnyder said. “We took him a really nice mattress with clean sheets and a real comfy pillow. We took him clean clothes.”
She went on to explain how he came to their mission church the following day and expressed how he wanted to learn more about their faith. Three weeks later Mr. Charity was baptized.