 Port au Prince, Haiti - The Morgan Shepherd Charitable Fund has helped the underprivileged of Appalachia for more than 20 years, but the charity named for NASCAR veteran Morgan Shepherd expanded its reach to Haiti this year.
Shepherd’s charity has donated $2,000 to Mission Haiti, an outreach ministry headquartered in Swannanoa, NC, and overseen by Shepherd’s longtime friend Loren Lanter.
“We always check out where our funding goes and who benefits from it,” Shepherd said. “I know Loren and I know the money will go right to where it is needed most.”
Ask Loren Lanter, and he’ll tell you his recent trip to Haiti underscores the saying, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
The Swannanoa man returned home from Haiti last week after experiencing the earthquake and its aftermath, and is now working hard to raise money for the people there.
For Lanter, the dramatic chain of events that has unfolded in the news actually began before the earthquake, and before he ever left the United States.
“God had something,” Lanter said, and then paused. “He knew what was going on.”
Lanter, whose family operates the Brisco Inc. machine shop in Swannanoa, has visited Haiti “about 30 times” since 1993 with Mission Haiti, a missionary organization formed in Swannanoa.
Two weeks before he was to depart for Haiti with a group of first-time missionaries, every participant canceled. They all had different reasons, from finances to family. Even his wife had to back out.
It was unusual, but Lanter decided to go anyway.
He spent the first day there working on a church Mission Haiti has been building in Saint Ard, a small town north of Port au Prince.
Even that couldn’t be straightforward.
Transmission problems on his tractor forced him to quit early, and he drove back to town in second gear, making slow progress. It would be dark soon, and Lanter felt vulnerable on the plodding machine.
He was approaching a highway engineering crew when a large water truck jumped into the air, spilling water everywhere.
Thinking the operator was having transmission problems of his own, Lanter peered into the driver’s seat – but there was nobody there.
That’s when his tractor began shaking violently, and the ground began to buckle, as Lanter described it, “like ocean swells.”
He was in the midst of the earthquake.
 “It was a blessing I was in second gear,” he said. “If I would have been in fourth gear, going faster, I would have been thrown off the tractor.”
Lanter didn’t know the scope of destruction right away.
There is no television news in Saint Ard, the orphanage suffered only minor damage, and the mud huts of Saint Ard withstood the earthquake well.
He spent the next day repairing the tractor and wiring a local bakery. Word began to filter in about the destruction in Port au Prince.
It wasn’t until two days later when the gravity of the situation really hit him.
Prisoners who escaped from a prison were spotted in Saint Ard, and Lanter was unable to find gasoline for sale.
The next day, he went into Port au Prince to get fuel with some Haitian friends.
“The destruction was unimaginable,” he said.
A four-story building he knew with a grocery and apartments had been flattened. Rubble piled into the streets, blocking travel.
A police truck drove by. At first, Lanter thought it carried a load of mannequins. Then it clicked – those weren’t mannequins.
“You get the first fume and you gag,” he said. “Then you’re in it.”
They passed the American Embassy, which was swarming. Lanter spoke to an American soldier on guard, who told him their may be no commercial flights for weeks, maybe months. Haitian nationals with U.S. citizenship were lining up for outbound flights on cargo ships.
“If you need to get out,” the soldier told him, “you need to go ahead and go.”
Lanter was on the spot. He wanted to stay and help, but he couldn’t reach his wife back in the United States.
“That was the problem I had,” he said. “I couldn’t get word back to Heidi and say, ‘Hey, do you think I should stay here another week?’”
Equally uncertain of what lay ahead, his Haitian friends urged him to go.
Six hours later, at 12:24 a.m., he was taking off in a military transport plane.
Back in the United States, he hasn’t forgotten about his Haitian friends.
He is raising money for Mission Haiti, as well as for missionary Phyllis Newberry, who develops and operates churches and schools throughout the country. Newberry runs the orphanage where Lanter stayed.
And he is hopeful about Haiti’s future.
“God can turn Port au Prince around just like he can turn people’s lives around,” he said.
Photos compliments of Loren Lanter. Story in part published in Black Mountain News newspaper.
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