6 HAITIAN ORPHANS TO ARRIVE IN KNOXVILLE

6 HAITIAN ORPHANS TO ARRIVE IN KNOXVILLE

By News Sentinel staff

Published Saturday, January 23, 2010

KNOXVILLE - Six Haitian orphan girls are about start their new lives in Knoxville.

Later today, they arrive in Knoxville from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where they'd earlier united with their adoptive families from Knoxville's White Stone Church. Pilot Corp. provided one of the jet planes used to transport the girls and their new families to Knoxville.

Stone Bridge Church missionaries from Knoxville went to Haiti this week and visited the earthquake-damaged Coq Chante Orphanage, which the church sponsors. A week earlier, missionary Brian Lloyd from Knoxville was the first outsider to reach the orphans.

Tearful family members on Tuesday had waved goodbye to six Knoxville men who departed McGhee Tyson Airport, bound for Haiti in a chartered propeller plane loaded with medical supplies, water and food.

Three doctors, an EMT, an Air Force veteran and the pastor of White Stone Church headed to Haiti to deliver supplies.

The team then met Lloyd, a fellow church member at White Stone Church, who over four long days made his way on foot and by hitchhiking to the church's ruined orphanage in Haiti.

The orphanage sustained heavy damage. The orphans had lacked water, shelter, warm clothes and food, according to Lloyd, and the girls are scared to go into any buildings.

The youngest orphan, Atanie, 4, died as she tired to escape the crumbling concrete building. A couple at the church, Lorie and Darrell Johnson, had been hoping to adopt her and bring her to Knoxville.

ProVision Foundation, a local umbrella organization for Haitian-based ministries, supplied a charter plane, fuel and a pilot for White Stone Church.

More details as they develop online and in Sunday's News Sentinel.

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