Laura Silsby - Last Baptist

Laura Silsby who dropped everything in the middle of a personal financial meltdown to do God’s work and pick up and save “33” Haitian orphans is still in jail.

All Haiti 'orphan' children reunited with parents

PORT-AU-PRINCE — The 33 Haitian children at the center of a US abduction row have finally been reunited with their families, but the fact that not one of them turned out to be an orphan raised fresh concern.

SOS Children's Villages, the international aid group caring for the children since the drama erupted seven weeks ago, said Wednesday it was only right for them to be handed back to their families.

"It has turned out that all of the 33 children have parents. SOS Children's Villages is convinced that in most cases, the best place for a child to be cared for and protected is within the family," the group said in a statement…

The national director of SOS Children's Villages, Celigny Darius, suggested the high-profile case, which diverted valuable media spotlight off the massive relief effort in Haiti, had raised serious questions…

SOS Children's Villages, which has looked after the 33 since January 30, is now free to focus solely on almost 500 other children in its care, many of whom were simply handed to aid workers at the gates of the compound.

Ms. Silsby is the last of ten Baptist Missionaries in Haitian custody who arrived on a wing and a prayer to do missionary work on the natives whether they needed it or not - whether the children abducted were orphans or not.

Last Baptist held in Haiti faces new charge

Laura Silsby, a businesswoman from Boise, Idaho, and leader of the mission volunteers drawn from members of four Southern Baptist churches in Idaho, Kansas and Texas, faces a new charge of "organization of irregular trips" under a 1980 law restricting travel out of Haiti…

She already could stand trial on charges of kidnapping and criminal association in the Jan. 29 attempt to take 33 Haitian children to a temporary orphanage in the Dominican Republic without proper paperwork. According to the Associated Press, Judge Bernard Saint-Vil said he has until early May to decide whether to release Silsby or to order a trial.

This is on a more secular level where people think that “God’s law”, made up or real, trumps the laws of men and nations.

The same idea on another level is at work with the Vatican and its institutions that are currently in hot water over child abuse.

It would seem that in Christianity, that crimes against children are discounted when you put God into the equation of Charity. And at the same time, you take children and or the laws of nations and people out of the same social equation.

Christianity in theory and in practice sometimes does not appear to be uniform or the same across the board. Or at least that is how an outsider might look at it?

Hispaniola Has Many Fault Lines

There are after shock earthquakes hitting Haiti. There are people convinced that God through his outsourced servant is harassing and punishing the People of Haiti.

Pat Robertson, a man of the old south, with southern roots, and unspoken of black ancestors prefers the old Flip Wilson line "The Devil made me do it!" or we made a pact with the devil and we live by it two hundred years later.

It is strange to hear how you need the devil to throw off the white frog atheist of Napoleon Bonapart. You would think that you would have a backed up fill of God's grace to throw off that crazy dictator lunatic and Hitler's Idol.

But oh no, let's do it all half-assed and get a minor fallen angel on our team.

Another argument running think and deep through the fundamentalist blogosphere is that if the story about the pact with a devil in not true then why does Haiti have so much misery, poverty and earthquakes.

One scientific reason is that the center of the nation, the largest city Port au Prince sits right on a major fault line - EPGF fault line on map above. (click on map for better view)

The rest is exploitation by a handful of greedy "devil" capitalists. Ignorance is born by lack of education. Jesus said the poor and the ignorant will always be with us or something like that.

Jesus' statement is born of an obeservation of human nature in his primitive times. If he were here today he would marvel that his words reflecting the world of two thousand years ago have not improved into a poverty free, ignorant free world with ample resources and knowledge at our finger tips. If we cannot imagine or hope that we can overthrow the stone age that he lived in - then we as a human race and species are truly doomed.

There are several fault lines that run through the Island that Haiti and the Dominican Republic share.

The Dominican Republic has a link to the United States after we invaded it under LBJ to "git the commies". That's part of the link to some prosperity there. That and foreign investment and tourist dollars.

There have been many earthquakes in the Dominican Republic in the last century. There was a 7.0 earthquake in 1911. A 7.5 in 1918 and a 8.1 in 1946. There have been several 6.0 scale quakes in the decades up to the present.

The one in 1918 - 7.5 - took place on October 11, 1918 on the eve of Christopher Columbus Day, the founder of Hispaniola. So tramatic was that quake that when the population found itself digging out of it on Columbus Day - a Dominican Urban Legend was born about the use of the name Christopher which is considered an unlucky name there to this day with no one willing to name their child after the founder of the country after that quake of legend. Strange but true?

Is the devil real? Ignorance is in the eyes of the beholder. Right Pat?