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The Rev. Matthew Heyd, director of faith in action programming at Trinity Wall Street, provided this report on a recent parish trip to Haiti.

Last week, Dr. Beverly Ffolkes-Bryant, Sister Promise Atelon, Trinity Grants Program program associate Sarah Grapentine, and I traveled to Haiti to visit with our partners and to see the schools destroyed by the January 12 earthquake. The Very Reverend Ogé Beavoir, dean of the Episcopal Seminary in Port-au-Prince and former Trinity Grants Program staff member, hosted us.

Our group represented the presence and prayers of everyone at Trinity and served as a promise to continue our relationships.

Watching students in neat uniforms walking to school is my strongest memory from our visit -- and the clearest evidence that Haiti is rebuilding. Over two days we visited five school sites serving more than 1,000 students. These schools met in temporary shelters or in large tents, sometimes on top of the remains of the buildings they replaced. But inside these structures were desks in straight rows, children with (tattered) books, and teachers preparing them for August examinations. Many students emerge in the early morning from tent cities that have replaced permanent housing. Schools offer a semblance of normalcy.

Every school we saw had re-opened since the Rector's trip during Easter Week in April.

Makeshift as they are, these schools are visible signs of miraculous progress. The resilience of people we met -- most of whom had lost everything, including friends and family -- is a deeply moving testament of faith. Unimaginable suffering makes the presence of hope that much more meaningful.

So much remains broken. We spent time with the Sisters of St. Margaret, who lost their convent, and with seminarians who have spent time in field placement parishes because the seminary building is currently uninhabitable. Two seminarians will be ordained priest in the ruins of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity later this month. The numbers of dead have not been completely totaled and the cost of re-building has not been calculated. The Diocese of Haiti has not yet set priorities for its ministries.

We met with the Bishop of Haiti, Jean Zaché Duracin. He described Jesus' feeding of the Five Thousand in the Gospel of Luke. All were fed, but Jesus instructed the disciples to divide the crowd into groups of fifty so that the enormous task could become manageable. The Bishop described their task in much the same way. It will move slowly.

The Rector has said that our commitment will be to support the schools and to help the Episcopal Church rebuild. We will continue on two tracks:

-- Provide scholarships for children returning to school. In Haiti as in New York City, New Orleans, Panama, and Tanzania, we are committed to "raising up a generation of leaders." The schools have no income and many cannot pay their teachers. We saw the difference that Trinity congregation and staff contributions have already made in helping re-open schools in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere. Continued contributions to schools will be critical to keep them open.

-- Support the Church in Rebuilding. All over the world, Trinity is committed to "mutual partnership" that reflects our commitment to seek and serve Christ in all persons. In Haiti, this means encouraging the Diocese of Haiti to set its own priorities for rebuilding. We might have ideas about who should be in the "first group of fifty," but the decisions have to come from Haiti and not from us. At the Bishop's invitation, we are working on inviting other American parishes to help with clergy stipends. Many clergy have not been paid since January.

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