Hugs, screams and plenty of celebrations marked the return of a handful of metro Detroit missionaries that were stranded in Haiti over the weekend.
Forty-four members of Kensington Church were in Haiti over the weekend when evacuations and a lockdown on flights began. As protests turned to riots near the capital, the U.S. State Department warned citizens not to travel and to shelter — that began a process of multiple teams through the missionary group Mission of Hope gathering in a centralized location for safety.
“They’re not mad at us,” said Chris Barnett, the Orion Township Supervisor who was part of the mission trip. “We really do feel safe.”
Barnett said they had been educating locals about clean water, ministering to the people of Haiti and doing a number of service projects. It’s something the church has been involved in since earthquakes devastated the region near Port-au-Prince in 2010.
In the past 48 hours passage has been hard to come by so the church, according to updates posted to their Instagram, have been finding flights for members of their various mission teams as they become available.
It appears the first group arrived home at Detroit Metro Airport around midnight.
The group posted a hopeful message, “We’re celebrating that several team members from the Orion Family team are back!”
Several other team member boarded planes in Port-au-Prince after travel warnings were no longer a concern. It’s not known at this time when the remaining members of Kensington Church will return home. As we learn more information, we’ll update this story.
