Unforgettable People - Angela Lizotte and Lowell & Sally Senitz

Angela Lizotte
Angela, 30, a single mother of two, who with several of her close friends formed a foundation to serve the people of Haiti; they raise funds on their Facebook pages.

Angela is beautiful; a high school dropout who went to Europe to model, she reminds one of Angelina Jolie. I have never witnessed anyone charm, bluster, confuse and wear down people to get “things” that they have and that “her” people need. She is relentless. Angela got food, toys, tarps, and tents…containers full of stuff… Lysol, medical supplies. One day we crashed the UN complex, she using some U of M badge telling the guard at the door that I was Dr. Barnard and was with her. Once inside she used a name of someone she had met several days earlier to call someone at IOM (International Organization of Migration) who was handling tent distribution. We went to their compound and after several hours in their office, filled out the paper work at their desk-her “people” needed tents now, not next week. They’re not used to working this way; we received verbal approval for 250 tents before we left. (Several days later she returned to back check, found they had lost the original application and was told we could only get 125, but she reapplied using Manhattan, NY as a site plan that she found lying around, and received the tents three days later.

Five days after our trip to the UN Angela somehow talked the military out of 26 undesignated containers they had been storing at the port. We organized the groups we had been working with and spent a free-for-all day with organizations battling one another for precious items for the people they represent, trying to maintain order to the mayhem. It was seven hours in the very hot sun and in even hotter containers, ankle deep dust sent flying through the air by the oversized vehicle used to move the containers, not to mention the large box trucks rented by the organizations at $250/day to get these supplies for their people.

I got the sense that heretofore, Angela was kind of a wild child. She made the comment to me that not only was she not a Christian (I say she’s an agnostic beginning to explore with more seriousness her growing spirituality), she said that four months ago she would not have even considered working with a Christian organization. She now observes Christian missionaries in Haiti are the ones she seeks to assist because they are the ones who really care, really touch and really try to make a difference with those who are most in need.

Angela extended her first stay by almost a week and was back on the ground in Haiti 10 days later working her magic.

Observation-In my first 18 days in Haiti I saw one Red Cross Truck. They may be doing things … and we all know they sure raised enough money to do things … but so far they sure have had a low profile.

Lowell & Sally Senitz
We met Lowell and Sally Senitz on our third evening at NLCH. They had come to PAP on behalf of their organization Wings of Shelter Int’l, Inc. (www.wingsofshelterintl.org) to implore the UN to pressure Haiti to support the international agreement on slave trafficking. Haiti is currently a non-signer, a tier three classification, which makes dealing with the US on many issues very problematic.

Like us, the Senitzs’ are in their mid 60’s and live in FL; unlike us, they have been actively involved in the mission field for years, spending considerable time in Kenya and Uganda, dangerous hotspots in the fight against international slave trafficking. They are also involved at home in FL, establishing a safe home in Lee County and petitioning local and state authorities to the silent but virtually unknown problem here at home (an estimated 360,000 slaves are counted in the US – many drug related; alarmingly, FL ranks as the 2nd worst state in the country). We hope to have them visit local law enforcement and local high school and college administrators in Indian River County as soon as we can arrange it. Further discussion of slave trafficking will be given prominent future commentary, especially as it relates to Haiti, as we have since met several others, engaged in the fight, notably Dean Ouilette, Carmen Vaught, and Michael Brewer, a truly remarkable man, who has been on the ground working with Haitian street kids for over a decade. A tragic story!

Back to Lowell and Sally; harkening back to a connection they had with their previous church in California, Dr. Rik and I joined them on a visit to Mission of Hope in Titanyen where we met with Brad Johnson, President. Because of some timely publicity shortly after the earthquake, an NBC camera crew visited Mission of Hope and aired footage on the Nightly News which resulted in significant quantities of food and medical supplies pouring in. Our meeting and tour established a valuable contact, as we have been able to assist both Bishop Chervil and NLCH obtain needed medical supplies.

While waiting to meet with Brad Johnson on that first trip, I was introduced to Bill Neusch from Burnet, TX. who is volunteering there. Bill is affiliated with Sparrows Home (www.sparrowshome.org), and is president of Gibraltar US (www.gibraltarus.com), the largest fabricator of fence panels for the border crossing between the US and Mexico. More pertinent to his current ministry in Haiti, Bill’s organization has initiated a program to allow the adoption of special needs Haitian children directly into the US. Medical visas are already in place and several churches have enrolled: each church agreeing to help five parishioner families maintain a home and social support system for both the family and the child. Families have already undergone FBI background checks and counseling on what to expect. Bill has since visited NLCH and met with Miriam and Dr. Schroering, and there is interest in the two amputee orphans we have; however, at this point our other special needs kids fall into a different category. We will continue to pray for their future adoption also.