LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Like many church leaders in Alabama, Father Tom Ackerman of the Catholic Diocese of Birmingham was caught off guard by the toughness of the state’s new immigration bill.

FATHER TOM ACKERMAN: I think there was some surprise about how extreme it was and how really sort of vicious it was, particularly some of the vicious rhetoric: “We want to affect every aspect of their lives. I’ll do everything short of shooting them.” These are senators and representatives saying these things.

SEVERSON: Here’s what Mayor Lindsey Lyons of Albertville, Alabama had to say about the bill’s critics.

MAYOR LINDSEY LYONS: When they say that we’re cruel or heartless or however they want to word it, you know, the fact of the matter is, we have rights. We have rights to protect our citizens, and what is wrong with coming up with solutions to protect our citizens, to protect our jobs. and to protect our quality of life?

SEVERSON: The solution the legislature came up with has caused quite a commotion. A federal judge temporarily blocked the enactment of House Bill 56 because of several lawsuits filed by four Alabama bishops of different denominations, the Justice Department, the ACLU, civil rights groups, joined by county sheriffs and 16 foreign governments. But some of the loudest protests came from church leaders like Pastor Angie Wright of the Beloved Community United Church of Christ.

PASTOR ANGIE WRIGHT: If I have ten undocumented persons in my church for an English-as-a-second-language class, or for worship, or vacation bible school. and I know that they’re undocumented, I can go to prison for 10 years and pay a $15,000 fine.

SEVERSON: In a nutshell, the bill, as it stands now, criminalizes working, renting, having false papers, shielding, harboring, hiring. and transporting undocumented immigrants. It also deprives them of most local public benefits. As it was intended, it punishes just about every aspect of illegal immigration.

FATHER ACKERMAN: The reason why we’ve filed this suit is because we want to keep the government out of our business. The government is trying to tell us what we can or can’t do in terms of works of mercy, works of charity, which are fundamental to our faith.

REPRESENTATIVE DAN WILLIAMS: Coming up on the left is where most of the Hispanics worked in town. This was the poultry processing plant.

SEVERSON: Representative Dan Williams was Mayor of Athens, Alabama for 18 years until he ran for the legislature 3 years ago. He supports House Bill 56.

REP. DAN WILLIAMS: The vast majority of people, when I was running for this office, the number one or two issue with them was illegal aliens. That’s it. Illegal aliens: “You need to do something about them. We want something done about them.”

SEVERSON: Williams was elected with the first Republican sweep of both houses in the legislature and the governorship in Alabama history. The new legislators quickly hammered out an immigration law, one that terrifies Janeth, an undocumented mother of two from Mexico who has been in the US for more than ten years. She’s a cashier in a store. Her husband works in construction.

JANETH ( with translator Helen Rivas): It’s terrorizing. Ever since they passed this law we don’t go out. We don’t go to restaurants, we don’t go to the park. We see a patrol car, and it terrifies us to think they may stop.

SEVERSON: She and her husband are buying their home at a very high mortgage rate. The new bill would allow the bank or anyone they have a contract with to cancel the contract, and they would have no recourse.

JANETH: I came here because my family didn’t even have any way to eat. To get this we’ve worked day and night, three jobs. If I have to leave here, one day to the next, if this law goes into effect I’m going to have to leave my house, my car. We’re going to arrive back home in our home countries in worse shape.

PASTOR ANGIE WRIGHT: Why make criminals out of people who have been our neighbors and our brothers and sisters and really are not causing any problems for any of us?

SEVERSON: An Alabama criminal justice survey found that violent crime in the state is down 10 percent over last year and below the national average. Property crime is also down. But Albertville Mayor Lyons says those statistics don’t hold up in his town.

MAYOR LINDSEY LYONS: When you have people coming from other countries that’s never driven a car before, and they start driving here with no insurance, no driver’s license, etc, causing multiple, many accidents.

SEVERSON: But, he says, that wasn’t the worst of it.

MAYOR LINDSEY LYONS: Because invariably you’re going to have the underlying current of crime and criminals come in with an influx of illegal immigrants, and that all is based on prostitution and brothels, your drug activity and your drug gangs, which have been present here in Albertville. That’s like it is in any community where you have the immigrant issue.

SEVERSON: He says hundreds of illegal immigrants moved in after Albertville-based poultry companies advertised in Mexico looking for cheap labor.

MAYOR LINDSEY LYONS: We had probably with our large two poultry plants here 2500 employment. They were vast all white and black American citizens, okay, and as the years went on and they were able to conduct business with the illegal alien population, well that just dwindled down, dwindled down, dwindled down.

SEVERSON: The Pew Hispanic Center estimates there are between 85,000 and 120,000 undocumented immigrants in Alabama, comprising a little less than 4 percent of the workforce. The state’s unemployment rate is above the national average at about 10 percent.

FATHER ACKERMAN: We have high unemployment not because the Hispanic immigrants are here. We have high unemployment because the housing market went bust, and we had a credit crisis. The immigrants have nothing to do with the high unemployment here. I think it’s primarily politicians preying on the fear of people. When economic times get tough, people often look for scapegoats.

REP. DAN WILLIAMS: You know, I go back “it’s the economy stupid,” that’s what it always is and people can say what they want to, but when you got a job and you’re making some money and your family is doing alright, you don’t have problems. But when my children lose their jobs, and I start having to help my children and my grandchildren, and maybe if I lose my job, I’m concerned about a guy who’s illegal coming here working. He’s doing okay and I’m not.

SEVERSON: The legislation authorizes police to demand papers from people they stop who they suspect are undocumented, something opponents say will lead to racial profiling. That’s already happening, according to Father Ackerman.

FATHER ACKERMAN: One of our priests actually has been stopped several times, pulled over. And then once they see that he has a collar on, “Oh, Father, go ahead.”

SEVERSON: Religious leaders are concerned that they will be breaking the law if they transport members they know are illegal to church.

FATHER ACKERMAN: If we’re transporting illegal immigrants, that’s a violation of this law, and those vehicles can be confiscated.

SEVERSON: Representative Williams says he thinks religious leaders’ opposition to the bill is overblown.

REP. DAN WILLIAMS: I don’t think you’re going to see policemen stopping the church buses to see if there’s somebody with brown skin riding to Sunday School.

FATHER ACKERMAN: If that wasn’t going to happen then they should have written that into the law. I’m talking about how the law is written, not how they expect it to be applied.

SEVERSON: Williams says he and his Republican colleagues have been called racists and that it’s unfair.

REP. DAN WILLIAMS: People still look at Alabama, and they see those grainy films from the 1960s and the police dogs and the water hoses in Birmingham. Well, Alabama is not like that anymore, but they’re trying to bring this back, that that’s what we are.

Speaker at rally: I myself overwhelmingly love this country.

SEVERSON: The young man speaking here, Victor, was brought here by his parents when he was a toddler. Victor is undocumented and part of a group of high school kids calling themselves Dreamers, who have been very vocal against the law because they’re the one’s who will likely suffer the most if they or their parents are deported. This is Jose. He’s undocumented. He says his dream was to become a teacher or a doctor.

JOSE: I came here at the age of 3. In all honesty, Mexico, it seems like a foreign world to me, and with all the problems it has now it’s frightening, the thought of having to go back there.

SEVERSON: Eduardo has his papers, unlike many of his friends.

EDUARDO: I’m mostly sad because I’ve got papers and then my friends, most of them are going to have to go back to their country or whatever, and I’m here lucky, being able to have the education and all the benefits they can’t.

REP. DAN WILLIAMS: You know, we’re all trying to get along. We’re all trying to raise our children, our grand children and everything. It’s just, you got that “illegal” word there that makes a difference.

SEVERSON: The judge who stayed the enactment of the law says she will issue her decision by September 29^th. Regardless of the outcome, it is likely to be appealed.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Birmingham, Alabama.

ELIZABETH (speaking in Stephen Ministry training session): I just don’t know what to do.

DEBORAH POTTER, correspondent: Sometimes you just need someone to listen.

ELIZABETH: I just don’t know how to resolve this in my head. I’m just really upset. I can’t forgive myself.

POTTER: Sometimes you need something more—a hand to hold, and maybe a prayer.

PAMELA (praying with Elizabeth): Dear Lord, Thank you for watching over all of us today. In your name we pray.

ELIZABETH: Amen. Thank you. I feel so much better.

POTTER: At Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, parishioners are training to become caregivers.

STEPHEN MINISTRY TRAINEE: The key thing that I saw is you leaned into her. You engaged her and told her, “I’m listening to you.”

POTTER: They’re learning to be Stephen ministers, named for Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr who cared for the poor. Parishioners are recruited and interviewed by the pastor, then trained to offer one-to-one care to people in and around their congregation. They commit to be available as needed for two years, but many serve longer. Pam Montgomery has been involved for two decades, balancing Stephen Ministry with responsibilities at home. But sometimes the caregiver is the one who needs care.

PAM MONTGOMERY (Stephen Minister): This is my dad and my mom.

POTTER: Seven years ago, Pam’s father died of cancer. Just two weeks later she lost her grandmother. As she grappled with her grief, a friend surprised her with a suggestion: What if Pam herself asked for a Stephen minister?

MONTGOMERY: When you’re so close to it I didn’t even think about me having one, and that Stephen minister was the best gift I could have given myself. She came week after week after week when other people, even my wonderful neighbors, even my wonderful friends, stopped asking, “You doing okay?” She came and she prayed for me, just for me, and that’s really powerful.

REV. KENNETH HAUGK (Founder, Stephen Ministries): When a person allows you into their life and shares their feelings and their hurts with you, they are giving you a fantastic gift, and I think when you listen to them and when you accept their feelings and when you love, share Christ’s love to them, you are giving them a similarly powerful gift.

Rev. Kenneth Haugk

POTTER: Kenneth Haugk started Stephen Ministries in 1975, when as pastor of a church in St. Louis he found he just couldn’t do it all. So drawing on his background as a clinical psychologist, he enlisted and trained a handful of lay people to offer confidential care to their fellow parishioners. And then it spread, becoming a nonprofit juggernaut.

Good Shepherd is one of 10,000 congregations around the world where parishioners serve as Stephen ministers. More than 150 Christian denominations have adopted the program.

HAUGK: Christianity is not a spectator sport. It was never intended to be a spectator sport. God gave to the church apostles, evangelists, and pastors and teachers whose job is to equip the saints for ministry.

MONTGOMERY (speaking to trainees): How did it feel to have your confession treated in that way?

POTTER: Stephen ministers go through 50 hours of instruction and practice, learning to help care receivers express their feelings, to listen without judging, and how to bring faith and the Bible into the conversation.

ALLAN (speaking in training session): Can we pray? Dear God, give Rene the absolute confidence of his forgiveness…

POTTER: They also study specific situations, like dealing with grief and divorce. But Stephen ministers are not counselors, so they also learn when to call in professional help from a pastor or therapist. Their work is supervised at the parish level, and if a care-giving relationship doesn’t work out, which does happen sometimes, either party can be reassigned.

Good Shepherd’s senior pastor, David Sloop, introduced the program here in 1987.

REVEREND DAVID SLOOP (Senior Pastor, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Raleigh, NC): It took a while for people to say, instead of “I need to speak to the pastor,” to also say, “Or can I have a Stephen minister?” And that’s a cultural shift, but it did occur, and we’re grateful it did. That old Lutheran concept of the priesthood of all believers—Stephen Ministry helps you live that out.

MONTGOMERY (speaking to trainees): Consider your stewardship of a precious resource: God’s gifted people…

POTTER: To enroll in the program, parishes pay a one-time fee of about $1700, giving them access to materials and leadership sessions like this one in Orlando, Florida, where experienced Stephen ministers and pastors learn how to train more care givers back home.

JACLYN HICKS: I was a care receiver, and I tell everybody, even before I became a Stephen minister, about my experience.

POTTER: Jaclyn Hicks and her husband were struggling with infertility when her pastor at Church of the Savior United Methodist in Cincinnati suggested a Stephen minister.

HICKS: It changed my life. It changed my life just having somebody be there for you, supporting you.

POTTER: After becoming pregnant and having a daughter, Hicks became a Stephen minister herself.

Jaclyn Hicks

HICKS: It’s huge to be on the flip side, to be able to just care for someone during their time of need. It’s been a tremendous blessing, and I get, as a Stephen minister, just as much out of it as I feel my care receivers do.

POTTER: Care-giving relationships are always same-gender, and the program tends to attract more women than men. Rene Anctil of Good Shepherd wasn’t sure at first that he was cut out to be a Stephen minister.

RENE ANCTIL: I tended to rely on myself a lot, and throughout this process I’ve kind of learned that I’m truly the care giver. I’m not the cure giver, and that’s God’s part.

POTTER: While Stephen Ministry relationships are strictly confidential, Anctil’s care receiver, Ed, said we could sit in on one of their weekly sessions. They started meeting more than a year ago, after Ed’s wife died.

ANCTIL: You mentioned that your daughter mentioned to you that she thought you were depressed.

ED: Yeah, oh yeah.

ANCTIL: How did that make you feel?

ED: I don’t think I’m depressed, but you get moody once in a while. Your body wears out when you get old. You always want to do something that you can’t do. That’s the hardest part.

ANCTIL: I think I recognize God in my life a lot more than I had in the past, and a lot of it is because of Stephen Ministry. I see God working not only with my care receiver but with me, which I never saw before.

POTTER: In the 35 years since the program started, half a million people have been trained as Stephen ministers, each one touching at least one other person—and being touched in return.

ANCTIL: I’m not going to go away. I’m going to be there as long as he needs me. I don’t know where the end’s going to be, but we’re going to do it together.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Deborah Potter in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Since its inception 10 years ago, the ministry of congregational care and counseling at Union Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, has made Stephen Ministry a vital component of its continuum of care.

“The Good Samaritan” by James Lesesne Wells (1902-1995)

Union—a thriving, predominantly African-American congregation of about 4500 members—enrolled in Stephen Ministry in the spring of 2000 and sent me to a leadership training course in Orlando. When I returned to North Carolina, I conferred with Union’s pastor, Kenneth R. Hammond, and began recruiting additional Stephen leaders from the church. Six months later, Union’s first Stephen Ministry class began with nine trainees.

One of the most appealing aspects of this model of ministry is its ability to balance attention between both the spiritual and emotional needs of care receivers. Stephen Ministry trainees receive 50 hours of preparation over four months in areas such as listening non-judgmentally, managing care receivers’ feelings, practicing assertiveness, establishing boundaries, observing confidentiality, and recognizing the limits of the care they can offer. These practical skills help to establish a trusting bond between the Stephen minister and care receiver, and they also provide a superb foundation for the care receivers themselves to cope with challenging circumstances in their lives.

Because Stephen Ministry trainees are encouraged to establish prayer-partner relationships with one another, they too are formed spiritually by their work. Specific training on using scriptures when providing care and identifying ways that Christ cared for others augment the spiritual experiences Stephen ministers have as they devote themselves to what is a two-year “calling.” While Stephen Ministry is unapologetically Christ-centered, it allows space to accept care receivers at their specified point of need, which often is not articulated as faith-based. Stephen ministers can openly reflect their own Christian identity without proselytizing.

Stephen Ministry is well-suited to our congregation in Durham for theological as well as pragmatic reasons. It recognizes the inherent value of the laity in ways that have not always been emphasized historically. While traditional models of pastoral care stress the role of the pastor in shepherding the flock, Stephen Ministry complements the pastoral role by equipping the laity to work alongside the pastor and provide care to the hurting. This is especially meaningful to individuals who require ongoing attention in ways that are challenging for pastors, who often must move from one crisis to another. Stephen ministers offer countless hours of care that meet real needs. They embody what they believe is a responsibility for the hurting that is shared by clergy and laity alike.

Shared responsibility is a central scriptural and theological emphasis of Stephen Ministry, which encourages Christians to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Such biblical wisdom runs counter to the messages of North American Christianity and culture, where individualism and autonomy often reign supreme. Stephen Ministry, in training and in practice, teaches the laity valuable skills for how one bears another’s burdens without ever losing sight of one’s own burdens (particularly as lay leaders share them in biweekly supervision sessions and the prayer-partner relationship).

Union’s Stephen Ministry has partnered with other ministries in our own congregation (the diaconate ministry and women’s ministry, for example) to provide education and skills to their members. It has also served our local Durham community well in multiple ways. Whenever we experience a lull in requests for care from members of our own congregation, we are able to assign Stephen ministers to organizations in the broader community. Our church has forged relationships with local homeless shelters, social service agencies, nursing home facilities, and their individual members and constituents. We have established a deeper sense of partnership and community with several local churches, collaborating on Stephen Ministry training for the past five years with Duke Memorial United Methodist Church, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, White Rock Baptist Church, the Congregation at Duke Chapel, Aldersgate United Methodist Church, and Westminster Presbyterian Church. This ecumenical fellowship has resulted in more efficiency in our training efforts, ready referral partners across churches, greater understanding of and respect for other denominations, and ongoing relationships with Stephen leaders and ministers that extend well beyond the training season. The Triangle Area Stephen Ministry Network has provided resources and continuing education opportunities with our counterparts in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and surrounding areas as well.

While there are aspects of Stephen Ministry that can be improved, such as greater multicultural sensitivity in training materials and more attention to meeting the needs of youth (who are not served under the current Stephen Ministry model), we remain convinced that it has greatly enriched the quality and quantity of care we provide to church and community members alike.

One of the most powerful narratives of the New Testament is the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), where the “ordinary” Samaritan lay person (rather than a member of the clergy) demonstrated care and compassion for the victimized Jew. Instead of resorting to overly spiritualized discourse, the Good Samaritan responds to the victim’s multilayered needs in a manner that brings healing and provides encouragement. This narrative underscores the importance of meeting the needs of the oppressed and marginalized in tangible ways. It broadens our understanding of who our neighbor actually is and illustrates what it means to show mercy. Most importantly for Stephen Ministry, the parable of the Good Samaritan affirms the tremendous value of the laity in joining God’s healing work, beginning with our immediate communities.

Tonya D. Armstrong is the minister of congregational care and counseling at Union Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, and adjunct assistant professor in pastoral theology at the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Sudan’s Western Darfur province is considered one of the bleakest places on the planet. A state of humanitarian emergency has been in effect for more than seven years, since conflict broke out between the Sudanese military, government-backed militias, and various rebel groups. Hundreds of thousands of Darfuri civilians have been attacked, raped, and killed in what many in the world consider a campaign of genocide. Millions have been displaced. The Sudanese government has expelled most international relief groups. But dotted along Southern Darfur’s dusty terrain there are signs of ongoing aid, surprisingly, from a United Methodist church half a world away called Ginghamsburg.

REV. MIKE SLAUGHTER (Lead Pastor, Ginghamsburg Church): We see the purpose of the local church of going out into the world, being the hands and feet of Jesus to the hurting, the oppressed, the poor, and being the empowering center in that local community.

LAWTON: Ginghamsburg Church is located in Tipp City, Ohio, a predominantly blue-collar suburb of Dayton. The church has partnered with the United Methodist Committee on Relief, or UMCOR, for its humanitarian work in Darfur, and since 2004 the congregation has committed $4.4 million to those projects. Ginghamsburg lead pastor, Mike Slaughter, says his congregation members felt morally compelled to get involved.

SLAUGHTER: Often the church remains silent in the face of injustice, whether it’s slavery, segregation, genocide. I don’t have time as a pastor to just do religious services where people come and feel better about themselves. I want to lead a movement of people who want to make a difference, a God-difference, in the world.

LAWTON: About 4,500 people come to the Ginghamsburg Church every week. Their donations have built 173 schools in Darfur. Those schools serve about 22,000 students. They’ve also sponsored a sustainable agricultural project, which has now helped to feed an estimated 80,000 Darfuris. They’ve built water systems to provide clean water and sanitation to more than 60,000 people, and they’ve begun micro-enterprises, such as a brick-making factory, to help fund the projects. The programs are run by local staff on the ground. Most Darfuris are Muslim, but Slaughter says his church is not there to convert them to Christianity.

SLAUGHTER: Compassion doesn’t have any strings attached. You serve people because they’re human beings created in the image of God, loved by God.

LAWTON: Still, he admits, his church members don’t hide what motivates their work.

Rev. Mike Slaughter preaching to his congregation

SLAUGHTER: People ask us why sometimes, and at that point I share because I do this out of my faith, that I believe this is what it means to follow Jesus.

LAWTON: Because of the security situation, it’s difficult for outsiders to get in. But Ginghamsburg tries to send groups as often as possible to see the work firsthand. Slaughter led a delegation there late last year.

SLAUGHTER: I share with my own family that I need to do this kind of experience. I need to get into where these people are, you know, in dangerous places, about once a year for my own soul-health, and I really come back and realize what’s important.

LAWTON: Slaughter believes the Sudan work has had a profound impact on the Ginghamsburg congregation. When he proposed the first Darfur project at Christmastime in 2004, some people were apprehensive.

SLAUGHTER: I said, “Hey, Christmas is not your birthday. It’s Jesus’ birthday,” because Christians have made Christmas one of the biggest, hedonistic kind of self-focused, materialistic feast. What would Jesus really desire? So I said, “Whatever you spend on yourself, bring an equal amount for this agricultural project we’re going to do in Darfur.”

LAWTON: They raised $318,000, and in the following year it yielded 18 bags of food for every seed planted. Slaughter says his people learned what a difference they can make. It’s a lesson they begin learning here at an early age. The children’s programs hold special projects not just to raise money, but to teach about life for kids in Darfur.

NICKOLAS STEFANIDIS: It’s rough. There’s a war going on, and some of their parents are dead, and they have to live by themselves and take care of their younger siblings.

Waiting in line for water

HAYDEN HARTMAN: They walk many miles to get their water, but it still might not be very clean.

HANNAH BINGHAM: It’s just nice to help them, because they don’t have all that stuff that we have.

LAWTON: This past December, the church’s “Christmas Is Not Your Birthday” campaign raised almost $700,000 for Darfur. Slaughter was especially impressed because the community, which was heavily dependent on the automotive industry, has been hard hit by the recession.

SLAUGHTER: These people are serious in their commitment to follow Jesus in sacrificing for the needs of others.

LAWTON: The work in Darfur is not done at the expense of helping people locally. Unemployment in the Dayton area is about 15 percent. Ginghamsburg runs two community food pantries, and Slaughter says while they were serving about 300 people a week last year, now the number has jumped to about 1,500 people a week. The church also has a nonprofit arm called New Path that includes a car ministry, in which donated vehicles are fixed up and given to the needy. There’s Anna’s Closet, which provides used clothing and shoes and actually makes money to support the work by selling items to those who can afford them. And there’s JJ’s Furniture, which provides household goods especially to women coming out of domestic violence situations. In all of it, the operating philosophy is that everyone has something to give.

MARCIA FLORKEY (Director, New Path Ministries): So we’ll have folks who come to us for needs, but then they see what this does and how it has impacted their lives and then they come back to us and volunteer. So it’s a really neat cycle to see people who are the receivers become the givers.

LAWTON: Slaughter believes it’s a holistic view of helping your neighbor, wherever that neighbor may be.

SLAUGHTER: So you need to look at the needs in your local community, your city, your county, your country, and then out into the world as events continue to unfold in places like Darfur.

LAWTON: For Slaughter, helping people in Darfur is more than just hands-on humanitarian work. He also supports an interfaith coalition that advocates for Darfur at the national and international levels. Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all part of the effort which has been pushing the US Congress and the Obama administration to do more to intervene in the situation.

SLAUGHTER: So it’s very important that the faith community keeps reminding our governments, our economies, that there are moral mandates that we have as human beings toward the treatment of other human beings.

LAWTON: Many in the coalition worry that Sudan’s upcoming elections will not be fair. They fear it could result in even more violence and instability. Slaughter has another worry as well: that in the face of so many seemingly intractable problems, people will grow weary.

SLAUGHTER: But it’s for churches, synagogues, mosques, people from clubs or organizations to really focus on a place of great need and become involved with that place and stay in that place, you know, until we begin to solve some of the world’s problems.

LAWTON: From the devastating earthquake in Haiti to the ongoing problems after Hurricane Katrina, there are many places of need competing for the world’s attention. But Slaughter says Darfur must not be pushed to the backburner.

SLAUGHTER: There’s much still to be done in the Gulf, but the work’s not done, yet money is running out. Haiti? There’s going to be a need in Haiti for years. So you know, again, compassion fatigue is what we have to fight in our own life. Faith is not easy. It is hard work.

LAWTON: Hard work, he says, that cannot be abandoned.

I’m Kim Lawton in Tipp City, Ohio.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: In the dusty Dominican Republic border town of Jimani, there’s chaos trying to get into—and out of—Haiti. The two sovereign nations may share the island of Hispaniola, but they’ve never been easy neighbors. Nonetheless, the DR has become a major staging point in the international effort to help Haiti’s earthquake victims. In the midst of it all, Dominican and Haitian church leaders are waging an unprecedented joint campaign to make sure the aid gets where it needs to go.

LORENZO MOTA KING (Social Services of the Dominican Churches): As the country closest to Haiti, of course we have a responsibility in serving them, and as the organizations that are here during the earthquake come and go—before, during, and after—we will always be the country closest to them.

LAWTON: Lorenzo Mota King is executive director of Social Services of the Dominican Churches or SSID. The ecumenical coalition is supported by international humanitarian groups including the US-based Church World Service. Mota King says when the earthquake hit, SSID immediately activated its network of churches.

MOTA KING: I’ve now been working 24 hours a day. It’s completely changed my agenda, and it’s been completely crazy, but at the same time it’s been a welcome craziness in that I’m able to serve and help the people of Haiti in some form.

LAWTON: The Christian Reformed Church of Santo Domingo is one of the local congregations mobilizing to help. It’s a relatively poor congregation that struggled to find a generator to power the Sunday night service. Many of the members here are of Haitian descent, and Pastor Pierre Philippe says they’ve been giving sacrificially to help earthquake victims in Haiti and those who are now in the DR.

REV. PIERRE PHILIPPE (Christian Reformed Church of Santo Domingo): Even I’ve been surprised with the help that the church has sent. They don’t give to the church in that way, but with this they feel like they have to. The people are giving from the little that they have.

LAWTON: Philippe, who was born in Haiti, has been trying to help displaced earthquake victims. He delivers hygiene kits packed by US churches, and he finds out information from the victims so that when he travels to Haiti, he can let their families and their pastors know that they are still alive.

These women were released from Dominican hospitals but still need a place to recover. They’re now staying at a local church in Santo Domingo. One of them is Suzette Fanfan, who was treated for an injured arm and leg but also has serious internal injuries. She needs surgery, but the hospitals won’t do it until they can identify someone to pay for it.

PHILIPPE: I feel a lot of pain for the people who are suffering, but at the same time God gives me strength to continue helping them.

LAWTON: And as director of the DR branch of Bible League International, he tries to offer some spiritual comfort.

PHILIPPE: In this moment, people have very severe emotional damage. This has been caused in part by the earthquake and also by the confusion afterward.

LAWTON: In the border town of Jimani, the Good Samaritan hospital has set up massive tents for the patients who are overflowing the two buildings on the compound. This has been one of the headquarters for teams of doctors who have come from around the world. It’s also a headquarters for faith-based volunteers who have brought food and other relief supplies. Pastor Fidian Orlando Martinez is one of the SSID leaders at the Jimani border.

REV. FIDIAN ORLANDO MARTINEZ (Church of God of Jimani): We’ve had some people come from as far away as Germany, some really tall people. We’ve also some short people come here from Mexico and Peru. We’ve had people here from Argentina, Korea, and really people all over the world have been coming here to show their support for Haiti.

LAWTON: The DR has been a major corridor for getting relief supplies into Haiti, which is no small feat, given the conditions on the ground. Large stretches of the main road are in poor shape. The border is a five-to-six-hour drive from Santo Domingo, depending on traffic and construction projects. SSID has a warehouse compound next to the border in Jimani. It’s a place to store and load relief supplies and to coordinate the logistics for international faith-based aid groups. That’s part of Alex Morse’s job. He’s a volunteer who will be working here for the next six or seven months with Church World Service and SSID. The first shipment from the warehouse went into Haiti within hours of the quake, and they’ve been stocking up ever since. On this day, the warehouse has a donation of crutches and wheel chairs.

ALEX MORSE (Social Services of the Dominican Churches/Church World Service): With the number of amputations that have happened, it will be really useful to have this as people get used to their prosthetics.

LAWTON: There are 1,500 mattresses for the emergency camps of displaced people and some 40,000 bottles of water just donated by World Vision. These supplies will go from the warehouse directly across the border to pastors inside Haiti.

MORSE: The pastors in Haiti that know their communities and know their needs are able to call us up with whatever things they need, and we’re able to secure those materials for them within 72 hours.

LAWTON: SSID either sends the supplies into the pastors by truck, or the pastors come and get them. Either way, thatcan be a complicated prospect. The border crossing is often clogged with vehicles, including those from religious groups. It can take hours just to cross into Haiti. I’m here on the road between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and traffic is really snarled up. You can see why it can be difficult to get aid into the country. Inside Haiti, SSID delivers food and water to five different emergency camps, including one with 10,000 people. The group says their camps haven’t seen the food riots other places are reporting.

MORSE: It’s just organized by the Haitian pastors, who understand Haitian culture and are able to communicate easily with the people.

MOTA KING: One thing I feel is happening is that a lot of Americans are sending resources to Haiti through sources that may not have established lines of distribution there, so there’s been a lot of wasted resources that have been lost in that method.

LAWTON: The key, SSID believes, is empowering Haitians to take the lead.

PHILIPPE: I’d say to all the people who want to help, they have to put their faith in the leadership that’s in Haiti. They shouldn’t go and do things for the Haitians with the idea that they can’t do anything for themselves, but to let the Haitians play a role in the reconstruction of their country.

LAWTON: SSID is already trying to move more operations into Haiti. Since the earthquake, Haitian schools have been closed indefinitely, even in areas that weren’t damaged in the quake, such as here in Fond Parisien. Except for the occasional game of pickup basketball, not much is happening on the campus of this church-run school, so SSID is turning it into a temporary hospital for the overflow Haitian patients in the DR.

MORSE: It’s very important to have a place inside Haiti because a lot of people want to finish their recovery in places where their family can come and visit them, where they feel a little more comfortable, and where it’s easier for them to get basic services that they’re more familiar with.

LAWTON: The hospital will be ready to go once they find three Haitian doctors who can speak Creole, French, and Spanish, in order to work with their Dominican counterparts. For centuries, there’s been animosity between the DR and Haiti. Leaders here say the earthquake and its aftermath are changing perceptions on both sides of the border. Pastor Martinez’s Church of God in Jimani sponsored a round-the-clock prayer vigil for Haiti, broadcast across the DR with the help of cell phones and the Internet. There was an outpouring of goodwill.

MARTINEZ: To be honest, at this point I really don’t know who’s Dominican and who’s Haitian, we’ve been working so closely here, and I think it might be one of the ways that God was working here to bring both sides of the island together. So now instead of being two countries, we’re just one island.

LAWTON: One island that still has enormous work ahead.

Reporting from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, I’m Kim Lawton.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: The news from Haiti remains grim. Officials are estimating the earthquake killed 200,000 people and left some two million homeless. The UN humanitarian chief said three million people have been affected. Foreign governments have pledged one billion dollars for recovery, but logistical problems on the ground are preventing much of the aid from reaching the most vulnerable. The US has sent in thousands of troops to try to help coordinate the relief effort. The UN is trying to take the lead in a country that now has a barely functioning government and where many religious institutions have been destroyed. But the UN, like other humanitarian and religious groups, is still recovering from its own losses. At a special memorial service for the dozens of UN workers killed by the earthquake, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called it the “gravest single tragedy” in the organization’s history. People around the world have responded with an outpouring of donations. Americans have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars. At the Haitian Embassy in Washington this past weekend, workers were inundated with bags of clothes and supplies. One of the busiest centers of aid is in south Florida, which has one of the largest concentrations of Haitians in the country. Kim Lawton reports that church officials and volunteers are working tirelessly to provide food and medical supplies. They are also grappling with the often-asked question: Why did God let the earthquake happen?

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At a small airport in Fort Pierce, Florida, a Christian aviation ministry called Missionary Flights International (MFI) has been working around the clock trying to get desperately needed help into Haiti. Hundreds of volunteers from local churches are sorting and packing donations that have come in from across the US, from food and water to medical supplies, clothes, and even fuel, and MFI pilots are flying in the cargo and emergency personnel as fast as they can.

DICK SMOOK (Missionary Flights International): It’s a great feeling. You know, most people like to help each other, and we found that here. It’s just amazing the things that have come together here. People want to help do something, and you find out what they do and what they can do, and pretty soon you’ve got a job for them.

LAWTON: For more than 40 years, Missionary Flights International has been providing air support to missionaries and church personnel in Haiti and other Caribbean nations. They regularly fly in mail and supplies and help transport personnel.  Since the earthquake, they’ve been in all-out crisis mode.

SMOOK: Because we are well known by all the mission communities and all the churches that support these missionaries down in Haiti, they know that this is the place to call and to locate, so it’s not like somebody has to figure out who to call and what to do. They already know.

LAWTON: And MFI has been well-positioned to respond. Because of the type of planes they fly, they are landing on a smaller air ramp in Port-au-Prince, avoiding the massive back-up of military and other humanitarian planes on the airport’s main runway, and they say their longstanding local connections make them especially efficient in delivering the aid.

SMOOK: We also have a network of missions in Haiti that is distributing it for us, so our stuff gets out twhere it needs to go. It’s not being held. It’s out within a few hours after we get it down there.

LAWTON: For days now, people wanting to help Haiti have been lining up outside MFI’s hangar, hoping to get a spot for themselves and their relief aid. Haitian-born Israel Francois and a team from his Hollywood, Florida, church were among them.

REV. ISRAEL FRANCOIS (Sheridan Hills Baptist Church): Definitely, it makes a big difference, personal touch, just letting people know that we care. It’s one thing to say, but it’s one thing to go there and say we’re in this with you. It’s a calling for me. God called me to do this, and I’m going to do it.

LAWTON: On their return trips, MFI pilots have been bringing people out of Haiti, including injured earthquake victims and evacuated missionaries and, on some occasions, Haitian orphans. For three years, Brian and Karen Patterson from Omaha have been in the process of adopting two little girls from Haiti. After the earthquake, they were terrified about the girls’ fate.

BRIAN PATTERSON: The phones were down for the first day, and so it took quite a while before we even found out whether they were okay, so that was good news.

LAWTON: Then, with less than a day’s notice, they learned that the adoptions had been expedited. Three-year-old Carlina arrived in Florida Tuesday (January 19), with her sister soon to follow. Missionary Barbara Walker brought Carlina and several other children from their orphanages in Haiti, but she says the situation she was returning to is increasingly dire, with resources disappearing quickly.

BARBARA WALKER (Ruuska Village Orphanage): We get up in the morning, and we get together and decide who’s going to go looking for fuel oil. The generator has to be fed, and the truck has to be fed. And who’s going to be going for food?

LAWTON: She says fear is taking an emotional toll.

WALKER: We’ve got so many babies right now that are scared. These children are scared every time they hear a loud noise, and including myself, if I’m laying down at night and I hear a loud noise I jump up and run out of the house. You know, I’m sleeping in a house that is unsafe, but I have to get some sleep, so…

LAWTON: Fifteen miles outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti Gospel Mission is also scrambling for resources. Despite some property damage, their small medical clinic is still treating injured people, including many who made their way there from the city. They are also trying to help displaced people who are taking refuge in the mission compound. From here in the US, Jesse Hales with the mission has been able to get them some food and medical supplies, but not enough to meet all the needs. Hales has set up shop in an RV near Fort Pierce so that he can help coordinate more shipments, as well as teams of volunteers who want to go in. He says there are rising concerns about security, and the chaotic situation makes planning very difficult.

JESSE HALES: You can’t depend on anything right now. It keeps changing by the minute. You know, every minute I get a phone call, and we find out something new and it kind of throws another wrench into play.

LAWTON: And so many still haven’t gotten any help, especially in the hardest hit areas outside of Port-au-Prince. Sharen Deroseney has been desperately trying to get aid to her father and to some 200 people, including 50 children, at his church-run compound.

SHAREN DEROSENEY (The Good Samaritan Project): What’s happening now is that we are running out of food. The stores don’t have any, and they’re tripling their prices. I myself kept calling different places, different companies for help, and nobody has covered that area. To know that they’re okay I’m very glad, but to know that they may die of hunger, that’s not good.

LAWTON: Meanwhile, pastors are also struggling to meet spiritual needs in the wake of the earthquake. This group of Protestant pastors in Fort Lauderdale wrestled over how to help their predominantly Haitian congregations deal with the crisis.

REV. CLAUDE NOEL (Partners with Haiti): There is nobody that I talk to or that have called me who have not lost close relatives in Haiti, and so it hurts. It hurts a lot.

LAWTON: Reverend Claude Noel believes he’s lost his 22-year-old grandson.

REV. NOEL: He left to go to town just to buy some books two hours before the situation happened, and he never came back, and we have not found the body.

LAWTON: Churches are setting up counseling services to help people cope with the loss of loved ones and the loss of so much of their homeland.

PASTOR CALEB DELIARD (Victory of Grace Christian and Missionary Alliance Church): Everything is gone. Remember this is things that people worked hard for, years, for 200 years, and you look in one minute, just 35 seconds, it’s all gone. So deep down, you could call, it hurts us deep down. We are, as a people now, wounded souls.

LAWTON: Many pastors say their congregations are asking theological questions that don’t have easy answers.

REV. NOEL: They are struggling with this question: There is nothing that’s done without God’s permission. Why did God allow this to happen?

LAWTON: Churches beyond the Haitian-American community are grieving as well.

REV. JOHN LAWRENCE (Interim Rector, St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, preaching): We realize our radical dependence on the God who alone can overcome the depths of our despair…

LAWTON: St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC has had a relationship with Haiti for nearly 30 years. St. Pat’s parishioners have gone on short-term mission programs there for decades. They supported a church and a school with a music and arts program. Those were destroyed, and they still don’t know what has happened to many of their friends in the area.

MARCY FERENCE (Haiti Partnership Program Coordinator, St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church, Washington, DC): I feel very much part of that community as a part of a family, and we don’t have any word, and it’s very hard. It’s very hard.

LAWTON: Despite the overwhelming tragedy, many churches are urging their members to focus on hope.

REV. DELIARD: To know that there is hope beyond the rubbish, there is hope beyond the destructions. The Lord will see us through.

LAWTON: Dick Smook of MFI says he’s already seen glimpses of that hope in the massive response to the crisis.

SMOOK: The church sometimes is thought of as the walls and the steeple and the people, that’s good, in our comfortable pews with the air conditioning going. But in reality what we’ve seen here in the last week is the church, Christians on the front line. That’s where we should be.

ABERNETHY: Kim, welcome back. What impressed you the most about what those volunteers are doing?

LAWTON: Well, I was impressed by the magnitude of the operations, you know, people, retired people, people from all over the country had gone there to try to be personally involved, and they were working day and night. They were working so hard. They’re so concerned about the situation there and trying to do whatever they can, whether it’s looking at expiration dates on food that had been donated or sorting and packing things. So it was that kind of grassroots effort that was really interesting to see. Also just the emotional exhaustion with the Haitian-American people, the pastors and churches here trying to provide comfort for their people while they themselves were grieving from everything that they lost themselves and everything that’s still happening in Haiti. People are worried, they’re exhausted, and that really came through in all those efforts.

ABERNETHY: That aid is not nearly as massive as what the governments are doing, but it sounds, from your piece, it sounds as if it was very effective, very efficient.

LAWTON: Well, these are groups that have been working down in Haiti for decades, and they know the people, so it’s, it’s again, it’s not just a relief operation, it’s helping their friends and their family, and they know that that aid, they know where it’s going. They know where to fly, they know where to land, they know who to give it to, and they know that when they give it to those people it’s going directly to the suffering, to the people who need it. So it was very efficient, but they just don’t have the capacity of the big operations.

ABERNETHY: But do they want to go there?

LAWTON: So many people I talk with are so frustrated to be stuck in south Florida. They’re desperate to get down there to help, to see their families, to do what they can, and right now logistics are just so difficult that they can’t do it, but they’re still down there in Florida doing what they can from there.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.