Kim and Patrick Bentrott featured in video about Haiti, Conaspeh, the Earthquake, and the future

A new 9-minute video of an interview with Kim and Patrick Bentrott has been posted on the Disciples of Christ web site. Click HERE to access the page. In this edited YouTube version, they discuss what happened during the earthquake, their meeting with CONASPEH leaders, and their activities since evacuating to the United States with their two adoptive Hatian children.

Even better is the raw footage of the interview. If you scroll down the page, there are links to view segments of the interview in either Windows Media or Quick Time. In the last of the three, Patrick discusses at length what he feels are the misconceptions the "big countries" have about Haiti and Haitian character, as well as how the media slant has perpetuated them.

Also in the interest of pursuing All Things Haiti, especially of interest to Disciples congregations that have supported the initial effort to send Kim and Patrick as missionaries to Haiti, Global Ministries has posted a new report from Felix Ortiz about his recent visit to Haiti and meetings with mission partners there. You can access that page by clicking HERE.

Last night a friend whom we are visiting observed that I had gotten kind of intense about the situation in Haiti because of my frequent posts here, interspersed with the expected family news. He is probably right, but I have also seen that when bloggers repost this information, it gets to people who might not otherwise have found it. In the unedited video, Kim talks about how it felt, once they were able to get on the internet a few days after the disaster to read e-mail, to see an overwhelming number of supportive comments on her blog and messages offering hope and comfort in the aftermath of the earthquake. She mentioned how overwhelming it was to see people from all over the U.S. and in other countries following their fortunes. I've seen some of that myself, as people from Oregon to Massachusetts and Canada to Texas who are on search engines manage to see a reference to them here and then jump to the link I've posted. It reminds me somewhat of how ham radio operators relay information in a crisis. Bloggers who repost (as well as those on FaceBook who share and Twitter who retweet) keep the information moving. If 10 more people a day find the Bentrotts through these posts who would not have found them otherwise, I'm happy, and I'll keep feeding my Haiti obsession for a little while longer.