Haitian orphanage director visits Clayton

CLAYTON -- In a packed fellowship hall last week at Horne Memorial United Methodist Church, Yvon Pierre shared a slideshow of his life's work.

Smiling school children peered over their desks and out from the projection screen.

Even dinner time at the children's home - the meals provided by some of the people in that very hall - looked pretty good.

For many in attendance, this was not the first time they had seen photographs of the Ryan Epps Home For Children in Miseau, Haiti.

In fact, many in the audience giggled with embarrassment as they saw their own faces appear on the projection screen.

A dozen or more Horne Memorial members as well as guests from across the state have adopted the Ryan Epps Home as their preferred charity, mission trip or volunteer project destination.

Pierre, the home's director, attended seminary in the states after meeting Clayton locals Valerie and Al Carpenter in Haiti in the 1980s.

After earning his degree, the Carpenters helped Pierre achieve his goal of going home to his wife and children and founding a charity-focused church in his home county - the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

Pierre barely had to speak to promote his nonprofit. Those who had been to Haiti, like Paula Heidrick, who will soon have been to visit three times in six months, could barely stay seated before finding a chance to grab the microphone and share their stories of loving children and raucous soccer games.

A new community center is a top priority of the major projects supported by the Ryan Epps Home. The goal is to give area youth access to a free, safe place to play sports and learn marketable skills.

"I want to see the Haitian people in the future stand on their own feet," Pierre says.

Once jobs are to be had in Haiti, his hope is for these children to have the skills to fill them - or even to open their own small businesses.

Youth serving youth

Robbie Stubbs, a senior at Clayton High School, turned his summer 2011 soccer mission trip into his senior project.

With a slideshow behind him, his own face depicted as though drowning in a sea of ecstatic children, Stubbs about how much these children appreciate when they have so little.

His mother, Cathy Stubbs, related a story of how one little boy reacted when Robbie Stubbs gave him a new soccer ball; he was overjoyed.

"It's just a ball," she said, still amazed six months later, failing to hold in the tears which weren't the first to escape her that night.

When he graduates, Stubbs will continue to work on his Miseau soccer league, working with nothing but a dusty field, flooded with children eager to join a team and prove their worth.

But that's what brings so many people back each time - the sheer will of the Haitians with whom they work.

"It was such a good time to see all of the many people who had come from other churches and some for long distances to be together for a common cause - the children of Haiti," said Helen Little, a Horne Memorial Sunday teacher, Ryan Epps Home founder and board member.

Rev. Butch Huffman, who has led the mission trips to Ryan Epps numerous times, will lead another in February, and another group plans to go in May.

And while some people asked Pierre about the shower situation and the safety of drinking water, more hands went up to ask how soon they could make another trip and see their old friends.