TONAWANDA, NY (WKBW) -- A group of missionaries from First Trinity Lutheran Church in Tonawanda who were working in Haiti during the earthquake made their way back to Western New York on Sunday. The missionaries were greeted with cheers as they arrived the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. The group of 15 were working at an orphanage some 80 miles south of Port-au-Prince when the earthquake hit.
"My stomach did a flip and I fell into the wall and I thought I was passing out or something. Then I realized the earth was moving," says Sue Stegge, one of the missionaries.
"I was up on the rooftop doing translations on puzzles for the kids to play with and suddenly the rooftop became more like a trampoline than a rooftop," recalls Renee Gietz, another missionary.
Everyone made it out of the orphanage safely. The missionaries managed to get one text message sent to folks back home to let them know they were okay. After that communication was cut off. The missionaries say there wasn't much damage in the region where they were, but they saw the devastation when they headed to Port-au-Prince. They describe imagines they'll never forget. "Thousands of people walking around with nowhere to go. There wasn't a home, there wasn't anything," says Dan Gietz.
"They need so much help in Haiti, so much help and we have to give it to them," says Renee Gietz.
The missionaries were well aware of Haiti's problems before the earthquake because they make annual trips there, and they hope now that others have seen the devastation and desperation there they will also offer help to those in the western hemisphere's poorest country. "I had a Haitian woman ask me in the airport, 'So you won't come back to Haiti?', and I said, 'Of course we'll come back to Haiti. You need us more now than you ever have', and she wept when I said that so I know we'll be back," says Stegge.
The group got out of Haiti on a military plane to Philadelphia and from there they flew home on a commercial airline. They left their pastor behind though because he's in the process of adopting some children from the orphanage. Parishioners tell Eyewitness News their pastor will be coming home on Monday with his adopted children.
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