Maurine and Scot Proctor have been embedded with the Utah Hospital Task Force in Haiti.
To donate to Foyer de Sion orphanage, click here.
Orphans are an epidemic in Haiti. Sometimes these are children without parents, but often they are children given up by parents, too tired and helpless to know how to feed them anymore. It may be a baby tossed over the wall of an orphanage, whose malnourished mother no longer can produce milk. It may be a disabled child whose teenage parent cannot cope.
Now, since the earthquake, the number of orphans has swelled from an estimated 380,000 to more than 600,000. Nobody knows for sure. But they are everywhere.
A couple of years ago 40 4-year-olds were found fending for themselves in a drainage ditch.
Waiting in line at the airport, two women tell us that two children have been dropped off at their apartment in the week they stayed in Haiti. “She is yours now,” the mother says. In the other case, they had to talk the parents out of selling their child into slavery.
So those Haitians who step forward to protect and nurture orphans have a heavy mission, especially since the earthquake when it is difficult to find food, and two Latter-day Saints are foremost among them.
Sister Majorie Mardy
Guesno and Majorie Mardy have three orphanages called Foyer de Sion in Haiti where they are currently caring for 70 children. Known by everyone with affection as Bishop Mardy, he is currently a counselor in the mission presidency in Haiti and she is the Relief Society president. They have plenty to do without adding orphans to the mix.
When the Utah Hospital Task Force first arrived at midnight, Bishop Mardy was at the airport, dressed in a white shirt and tie to greet us, while Majorie, both legs injured when she was pinned for three hours during the earthquake, waited in the car.
Kidnapped!
In the next few days, they were to become our teachers about the plight of orphans in Haiti as we tried to help them, but they were also to teach us something more about how one can maintain grace under pressure, faith when tormented, charity when your own need is furiously calling.
Bishop Guesno Mardy has the face of an angel.
Their anguish began before the earthquake, when on Dec. 6, their three-year-old son Gardy was kidnapped right after an LDS Church service, and they haven’t seen him since. Since the Port-au-Prince police department saw 51 of its members killed in the earthquake and havoc reigns in this nation, you can be certain that the police are not able to follow up on the loss of this one sweet child.
While the Mardys have heard through an informant, that their son is still alive, their hopes of his return seem diminished day by day. How do you live with such an enormity of pain? Where is the nation’s outcry against this kidnapping?
Rain Falls on the Just
Then came the earthquake, and in a further demonstration that rain falls on the just and unjust, Bishop Mardy lost his mother, his sister, his brother-in-law, and a close friend while the world heaved and hurled. They also lost one of the buildings where their orphans were staying and their downtown administrative office.
Bishop Mardy was standing here when the earthquake struck.
Bishop Mardy had just picked up one of their children from school and was walking back toward their office, when not twenty feet from the front door, he felt the earth quake and roar, a choking dust fill the air, and saw his office collapse like a stack of pancakes before his eyes.
Bishop Mardy climbs across the rubble of his former administrative building where his loved ones were killed and his wife was trapped.
His loved ones had passed away as he stood, helpless, before the building. He started to scream in terror, “My wife is dead. My wife is dead.” Then in the cacophony he heard her voice, “Mardy. I’m alive. I’m trapped.”
From her perspective, she was in the office, when the ceiling began to collapse and the earth shook. Pieces of ceiling were falling everywhere, and she cried out, “Jesus, I will not die.” She was thrown to the earth, trapped in place, and her feet were lodged at a painful angle. She was stuck there for three hours until they were able to pull her out.
An earthquake of this magnitude not only provides terror in the moment, but the sick feeling that you cannot know what is happening elsewhere. Has the whole world been destroyed?
No sooner was Majorie free, then Bishop Mardy walked on foot to check on all of their orphans, whom he found to be safe, though one of the orphanages was destroyed. He had to crowd the orphans into the remaining two orphanages. He knew if they were to survive, they had to work as a tightly-organized unit.
Reeling with all this loss and pain, the Mardys have not lost their faith or confidence in God. “I refuse to believe I’m living this kind of nightmare,” Bishop Mardy said. He said he will not be defeated because he knows the plan of salvation.
The Heavy Burden
Still, the burdens are immense in caring for the children, especially in a Haiti that has become completely broken. “When you are running an orphanage,” he said, “you never have enough of anything, and you are always worried about renewing the store of food and goods, which we go through quickly.”
After the earthquake, he had to buy food on credit from good-hearted local business owners and pick his way across a fractured city to find enough water for the children.
“If I could, I would run away,” he laughed ruefully, speaking of the immense burden he carries. “It’s too late for me now. When you put your hand to the plow, you cannot look back.”
When we arrived at the orphanage, the UN was just delivering a large truck full of water. Food was much more scarce, a rare commodity. If parents are willing to give up their children because they cannot provide for a single child, you can only imagine how much more difficult it is to provide for 70.
Bishop Mardy said, “An orphanage is not an ideal place to raise a child, but someone has to do it. We are meant to be a bridge until these children can be adopted.”
Majorie Mardy said they have placed some 500 children with families over the years they have had the orphanage, many of these are with LDS families.
The Beginning
The Mardys began taking in orphans not by design, but responding with compassion to the needs of the helpless. Majorie was in social work in college and was asked by a lady, who ran an orphanage, to take her place during her six-month leave of absence.
Majorie found she was good at it, gifted at giving compassion to these children forgotten and left behind. At that time, a woman came to her who was going to abandon her child who said, “I can’t take care of her. This child is yours.” Then another woman came with a baby, only three days old, who said, “If you don’t take my baby, I’ll leave it in the street.”
She could not let that happen. With those two children, it all began and within the first year, the Mardys were watching twelve children. All of these were adopted by families in America, and they keep in touch with them all to this day.
So it went, little by little, they could not refuse the children who came. They began to be supported by those who came to see what they were doing—including two former Haitian mission presidents, and now, among others, the Morrell Foundation.
They have run the orphanage for 12 years.
Some children live with them a long time, unchosen by an adoptive family. Some children live with them a long time because the Haitian adoption process which used to be only two to three months has stretched to 18 months and sometimes much, much longer.
“Most of the children can be adopted,” Majorie said, “but as they get older, it gets harder.” What happens if they are not chosen by a family? The Mardys keep them and let them become helpers of the younger children. They have several who are in their older teens. “Bishop Mardy becomes their father,” Majorie said.
“This child has been here since 2002,” Bishop Mardy said, nodding toward a child.
The adoption process is complex, because parents cannot take Haitian children out of the country until their identity has been documented, and it is certain that they have been given up by their family. They also have to assure that orphans are both physically mentally healthy.
They cannot, for example, take children who have been left on the street to fare for themselves for too long. These children usually suffer from abuse and post-traumatic stress disorders and have to be cared for at orphanages especially designed for their needs.
Lindsay Crapo, who just adopted 5 Haitian children and is on the board of Foyer de Sion said, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a woman relinquish her baby into my arms as she sobbed. One mother brought in her baby, completely dehydrated, so sick one of the nurses had to leave because of emotion. These mothers have to have amazing strength to do what they do, hoping for a better life for their children.”
Some of the Mommies became nannies at the orphanage. Most never see their children again.
A Visit to the Orphanage
We visited the Foyer de Sion orphanage on a steaming afternoon. Children were crowded into the two floors of the building because the other orphanage had collapsed. One room held 15 cribs with babies, some who were crying in a welter of tears, some looking weak. In another room, a pediatrician from New York, checked over the sick ones with coughs or aches.
One LDS man from America down in Haiti to see what he could do to help introduced us to the three-year old wearing a Superman shirt. “This orphanage has 59 children and one super man.” The boy looked proud, than swooped away.
Another told us the orphanage was short on food today.
We ventured upstairs where children were laughing and teasing, undulating toward us as we climbed the stairs and then falling back. Their faces were so bright and beautiful, the most alive and vibrant children we’d ever seen. The walls were full of the pictures they colored. One was a picture of Christ with the message, “Je suis un enfant de Dieu.” “I am a child of God.”
A little boy noticed we liked that sign and excitedly showed us that signs like that were all over the orphanage. “See,” he said, pointing with glee. “See.”
We sang “I am a child of God,” with the children, and many knew it. We tried other primary songs and they knew many of those as well—singing in French to our English.
Bishop Mardy said that he teaches the children the gospel and takes them to church each week. They love it. Majorie said that if they do something wrong, all anyone has to say to them, is that then they won’t be able to go church and they cry because they want to go to church no matter what.
They swell the ranks of the primary, when they arrive each week.
One little girl picked out Scot as her special friend and sat on his lap for two hours, while we were at the orphanage. Perhaps, she thought she might get to go with us when it was time to leave. Perhaps she just wanted gum, which they call generically call “Chiclet” after the brand name.
As we gathered our things to go and she had to leave his lap, her face crumpled, tears fell and she wailed.
New Orphanage
Bishop Mardy has been in the process of building a new orphanage for five years. Because it is built well, it survived the earthquake without a crack, while a nearby building completely collapsed. It is a spacious building, airy and cool, in these hot Haiti days.
It is scheduled to be finished in five months, if all goes well. Things don’t usually go well in a nation decimated by an earthquake. Meanwhile, to alleviate the crowding where they are, the orphans are going to move into the unfinished facility, and the construction crew of the Utah Hospital Task Force has finished several building projects on the grounds to make it livable, including an outdoor kitchen, a latrine, and a wall around the facility to secure the perimeter.
In the front of the orphanage are four new graves, the family and loved ones of Bishop Mardy, killed in the earthquake.
For Bishop Mardy, as director of the orphanage, there are a thousand worries in a land that is no longer functioning and at least seventy mouths to feed.
He gently handles these concerns, emanating a quiet peace and power.
But he cries when we show him the flyer that a task force member created, displaying a picture of his kidnapped son with a reward for his return. Some burdens—like the orphanage are difficult to carry. Some burdens—like a son who has been kidnapped—are nearly impossible.
