Last year’s Heart for Haiti concert raised over £60,000 for urgently needed supplies and spurred dozens of people to sponsor children through Compassion. Shortly before Andy left for Haiti with wife Michelle and Ivy Manchester pastors Anthony and Zoe Delaney, the Message team donated a further £12,000 following an appeal on our Prayer Day.

The team’s trip took them to capital Port-au-Prince and nearby island LaGonave, to meet pastors and project staff working tirelessly to help the poorest of the poor rebuild their lives.

‘We set off with apprehension,’ comments Andy. ‘We knew things would still be very bad and we’d heard about the cholera epidemics. And sure enough, Port-au-Prince is still a scene of utter devastation, covered with crushed buildings. We drove past a mass grave of 100,000 people created simply to get the bodies of the street for public safety.’

But the team’s spirits were lifted when they arrived at the church of Pentecostal pastor Ivan, now operating out of a temporary structure in the heart of the capital city.

‘This pastor was full of faith. He talked about how they’d had 3,000 people added to their church in the last year. They’re seeing 50 to 70 people come to Christ every week and some spectacular healings – a real move of God.

‘He told us of how the community had been gripped by the soon coming of Christ. What a thing to say! People had been turning their back on voodoo and turning to Christ. The pastor there is believing for a church of 25,000 people in the heart of Port-au-Prince.’

The church’s ministry has also been extremely practical. They have mobilised volunteers to conduct training in cholera prevention, going from house to house in their community and speaking to thousands of people. As a result the pastor says the church hasn’t seen a single cholera death.

Child sponsorship charity Compassion has raised £25m around the world to assist the reconstruction efforts in Haiti. Part of this is rebuilding 44 earthquake-proof schools.

A great testimony to the power of child sponsorship was there right before our eyes,’ says Andy. ‘Heading up this whole team of architects, project managers and civil engineers, is a young man called Etienne. He’s a former sponsored child, from among the poorest of the poor, who’s got a masters degree and is now managing this major logistical exercise helping his own people.’

You can hear more of Andy’s stories and reflections by downloading the Message Podcast, Haiti Report.

Why not also do something wonderful today and sponsor a child in Haiti with Compassion? You can find out all you need to know on Compassion’s website.

The team have spoken of ‘apocalyptic scenes of heartbreak and hope’ during their visit.

Travelling with fellow Manchester church leader Anthony Delaney and a team from medical charity Lemon Aid, Andy Hawthorne took 1000kg of emergency medical supplies to an emergency surgical unit set up in Port-au-Prince and a destroyed hospital on La Gonave, an island west of the capital.

The men ended up at the centre of efforts to help badly injured people who had been pulled from the rubble, some after many days. At the field hospital in Petit Goave, crowds of patients waited for hours as medics battled to save lives.

‘We had to transport two young people with broken backs in a flat back truck over roads ripped apart by the quake. One of them, paralysed when his house fell on him, was carried to us on a door by his friends,’ said Andy.

Finally reaching a better-equipped hospital in Port-au-Prince, they found it overflowing with 2,000 patients. ‘It was unbelievable, but we were amazed to see medics from many nations and languages working together brilliantly to help the injured and distressed,’ he added.

The pair also went to the epicentre, at Leogane, to meet with a church leader connected through their links with child sponsorship charity Compassion, through whom they had both previously visited Haiti. ‘It was heartrending to see the pastor standing in the rubble of the school and church he had built. He had lost many pupils and close family.’

They followed a bulldozer down the street as locals were pulling bodies from the ruins, to join 700 in a mass grave nearby. ‘It was an apocalyptic scene, like a Hollywood disaster movie. You can’t imagine what these people are going through, but help is getting through and we must help the survivors rebuild a better life.’

Off the shore of Port-au-Prince stands the island of La Gonave. The already impoverished population of 120,000 has swelled with refugees from the mainland, and the only hospital is now unsafe. This was Andy and Anthony’s ultimate destination with the medicines, and they found staff having to look after casualties outside.

Justin Dowds, from Lemon Aid, is a pharmacist who was shocked to find shelves empty of antibiotics and other vital medicines. ‘We got there just in time to save some lives, but we will have to come back from the UK again next week or this will be an even greater tragedy’, he said.

The team then evacuated a nine year- old girl who had been buried for three days, whose injuries were too severe for the overstretched staff  on the island. She had half her foot amputated and her other foot was badly crushed.

‘As we flew on a small missionary plane back to the mainland, we were praying that amid the chaos we could find an orthopaedic surgeon. When we landed, the first people we saw was a group waiting to fly out. They were an orthopaedic team. We have to say that along with the misery, we saw miracles.’