Stranded Middle Tennessee Mission Team Returns From Haiti

MT. JULIET, TN -- The 17 members of a Mt. Juliet church group stranded in Haiti amidst the Caribbean nation's civil unrest are back home in Wilson County four days after their intended arrival.

When protests broke out in the Haitian capital city of Port-Au-Prince following a fuel price increase, the U.S. Embassy urged Americans in the country to shelter in place. Among the Americans was a group from Mt. Juliet's Providence United Methodist Church, who were 40 miles north of the capital where they had been building a school.

Originally, the group was supposed to come back to Middle Tennessee Sunday, but the embassy's advisory coupled with the difficulty of traveling in the country during the riots extended the trip into Wednesday.

"Everybody had confidence we would get out the whole time but we didn't know how," PUMC Pastor Mark Youngman told WKRN. "Not knowing what to do is something that creates extra tension."

Staff at the church, working with the embassy and the non-profit that sponsored the mission trip, worked to figure out a way to get the group back. It took five helicopter trips from the hotel to the airport and a charter flight from Haiti into the neighboring Dominican Republic to get a flight back stateside, but the group landed in Nashville around 9 p.m. Wednesday.

"I'm gonna go home and take a hot shower, and then I'm going to eat like there's no tomorrow. And I'm not going to eat rice and beans," group member Jay Simmons told NewsChannel 5.

Subscribe to Nashville Patch for more local news and real-time alerts