By Lisa Magers/CISD Community Services
On Sunday, Dannielle Nunley was sitting in the airport at Port-au-Prince waiting on a flight to Miami.
On Tuesday, the Cleburne High School graduate spent most of the night sitting in front of the television and at her computer trying to learn all she could about the earthquake that had hit the southern portion of Haiti, where she had just spent a week as a volunteer at Jacob’s Well Christian Youth Camp.
“I received a text message and saw a report on television about the same time,” Nunley said. “My host family and one of the camp translators live in Port-au-Prince. I heard last night that the family is all right, but I still haven’t heard about our translator.”
Nunley, now a junior at Dallas Baptist University, was part of a team of 19 college students who spent a week working with children and teenagers at the camp, located in Limbé, near Cap Haitian in northern Haiti.
“One member of the team stayed behind as a camp intern,” Nunley said. “She was staying right outside Port-au-Prince. I was concerned she was right where the earthquake hit. We have heard from her and she is OK.”
Dannielle planned to spend a lot of time on Wednesday tuned in to the news and in prayer.
“I’m very interested in what kind of aid America will be providing to Haiti,” she said. “Last night, when I watched the news, I felt very helpless. There was nothing I could do from here. I wanted to help move rubble, to comfort people.”
“Our family prayed together for the safety of everyone there,” Nunley said. “We are also praying for God’s help for those involved in ministry in Haiti and that his love will shine through them.”
Nunley’s week in Haiti came through her work as a summer counselor with Frontier Camp, a Christian childrens’ camp located west of Crockett in east Texas. Frontier Camp has been assisting with the Jacob’s Well project for several years.
“We were able to facilitate the first overnight camp Jacob’s Well has ever hosted,” Dannielle said. “We had more than 250 campers, ages 5-14.”
“Four years ago many of these children were in training to be voodoo priests and priestesses,” she said. “It was amazing to hear them singing songs to God. The village of Limbé has gone from worshipping voodoo to worshipping together as a Christian community.”
“This was the fourth year for a group from Frontier Camp to go to Haiti,” said Nunley’s mother, Deanne Nettik. “This was Dannielle’s first mission trip to a foreign country, and I admit we were concerned about her safety. Apparently, the main concern they had for those making the trip was malaria.”
“Dannielle also serves as a leader of a volunteer group that works with children through Mission Arlington. She visits several apartment complexes in Grand Prairie on Monday evenings to work with children. That’s almost as scary as her going to Haiti.”
Deanne and husband, Brandon, knew when their only daughter and the oldest of four, left for the trip it wouldn’t be her last journey to a foreign land.
“When she left, we knew it was the start of what was to come,” Nettik said. “When she stepped off the plane in Florida, she called us and the first thing she said was ‘I want to go back.’”
“In sixth grade Dannielle told us she knew she was supposed to work with children,” Nettik said. “She worked in Vacation Bible School and with anything else at church involving kids. She didn’t want to just help — she wanted to work.”
“I’ve always thanked God she came five years before the boys,” said her mother, referring to Dannielle’s brothers Ryan, Kendall and Michael. “He knew I needed the help with them and she always gave that help.”
As a teenager and member of the First Baptist Church of Cleburne youth group, Dannielle served on mission trips to Michigan, Louisiana, Colorado and in Texas. And while she wants to be a part of the team scheduled to return to Jacob’s Well a year from now, she feels her true mission is to work with children in America’s inner cities.
“I know that I will go on several overseas mission trips and hopefully back to Haiti,” she said. “I think I will also serve a short term overseas, possibly two years. But my heart has been broken for inner city children. Drugs, broken homes, gangs, violence — there is so much they have been exposed to from the time they were babies.”
As the 20-year-old waits for the latest news on the aftermath of the earthquake, she hopes for the best for an island that has experienced some of the worst.
“Haiti is beautiful,” Nunley said. “It’s so green, lots of palm trees, beaches, old French ruins. It’s gorgeous. But when you go into the cities, many of the houses were already a disaster. They make them from concrete without using rebar, so they are crumbling. After the earthquake, I can only imagine how bad the damage must be.”
“While we were on our trip to Haiti, we talked to the pastor of a church in Port-au-Prince,” she said. “Many of the government officials go to his church. Our prayers are these officials will rise up and, as Christians, make godly decisions as the leaders of their country. Haiti is still a voodoo nation. My hope is that the people will see God’s power is bigger than their god’s as their lives, homes and country are restored.”
