The Rev. H. Daehler Hayes, minister emeritus, and the Rev. Joy Utter, pastor of Seekonk Congregational Church, have a bond with Haiti.

The Providence Journal / Glenn Osmundson

SEEKONK — Standing before a crucifix, chalice and other religious objects hand-carved in Haiti, one parishioner after another at the Seekonk Congregational Church on Sunday spoke of loved ones lost or missing in the disastrous Haitian earthquake.

The church donated an accordion to one young man. He fell to his death in the earthquake. Another young man named Fred was like a son to Linda Sable. But since the earthquake, she hasn’t been able to reach him.

“I don’t know if Fred is alive,” she said sadly, as she lit a candle.

The disaster has taken on a special meaning to parishioners in about a dozen of the Congregational churches in the Rhode Island conference, which includes this church in Seekonk, because for 20 years they have donated money, food and themselves to the people of Haiti.

The middle-class, more liberal Congregational church members were invited to Haiti by the leader of a conservative Baptist church whose members are very poor. The congregations are different races. But judging from the stories told here Sunday, they formed an unbreakable bond.

During the last two decades, about 300 people from the Rhode Island churches traveled to Haiti, according to the Rev. H. Daehler Hayes, conference minister emeritus. The parishioners donated about $750,000 to projects in Haiti, he said. And they built or repaired churches, schools and clinics across the country, including one on a hillside overlooking Port-au-Prince.

The good news, Mr. Hayes said at the service Sunday, is that the three-story church-clinic-school they built still stands. A builder in the group made sure it was erected on massive pilings and used steel-column cages to support the upper floors.

Mr. Hayes, who has visited Haiti 30 times, has tickets to go back a week from Thursday. He’s still considering whether it will be logistically a good idea.

Before the earthquake, the Seekonk church’s pastor, the Rev. Joy C. Utter, planned to focus celebrating Martin Luther King on Sunday. She provided readings of some of his ideas and his calls for hope. But the disaster forced her to change the rest of the service.

She recalled her first trip to Haiti 20 years ago with Mr. Hayes, her husband. She said she found Haitians, despite their poverty, to be the most hopeful, resilient and hard-working people she has ever met.

“Just helping in one of the orphanages for a few hours was humbling and life changing … and yes, it took courage to clean up little children lying in their own waste on plastic mattresses with no sheets, and realize they had no arms to hold them, and feed them, and comfort their tears.”

Now, she said, news reports say there are thousands more orphans.

“It takes courage to even contemplate that statistic,” said Ms. Utter. “And yet we will. Why? Because we are a faith community rooted and grounded in Christ’s love … and because we have been holding Haitian partners in prayer every week for two decades.”

Ms. Utter reminded the parishioners that they have backed up their prayers by giving money, repairing churches and schools, and donating computers, eyeglasses, radios, toiletries, food, vitamins, clothes and musical instruments.

Others spoke of their visits.

“Everything in Haiti is broken,” said Carl Provost, “except for the spirit of the people.”

Dr. Marina Rodriguez said she was born in Cuba, so she’s seen poverty. But on the first of her two visits to Haiti, she said, she cried a lot as she saw people living on dirt floors with no water or electricity.

On Sundays, though, she said, Haitians show up for church in good clothes, and the services go on for hours.

“Let’s try not to forget them,” she said.

The choir sang, “We Shall Overcome.”

And when the two church collection plates were brought forward, they overflowed with white envelopes marked “Haitian Relief.”

plord@projo.com