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www.gregmonforton.com Volume 1, Issue 18
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A new look at life for 5-year-old Jordan Compassion and persistence pays off
Friday
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Wednesday, June 2, 2010
By Sheila McBrayne Five-year-old Jordan Laguerre is seeing life for the first time and as you can tell from his smile, he likes what he sees. It was August of 2008 when local Pastor Larry Forsyth saw Jordan on a mountaintop plateau village in Haiti. Forsyth and others were on a mission through Sokavim. In 2008, MGS Horticulture and the First Baptist Church (Leamington) connected with a non-profit group founded and run by Haitians, Sokavim – translation “We Stand for a Better Life”. The group was looking for an area which would be ideal for agriculture. Forsyth credits Great Lakes Greenhouse and MGS Horticulture for their financial and professional support of the project. “The whole village came out to greet us, it seemed. Except for this one little boy who caught my eye… At the time I thought he was having a seizure… I picked him up and I was told he was blind. He was only three years old. My heart was really touched by this – I have grandchildren that age,” said Pastor Forsyth. Representatives from MGS Horticulture had come to set up a drip irrigation system so that the locals could grow their own food. “ You know the saying about, ‘give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to fish and they’ll eat for life’, that’s what we were doing with agriculture… instead of sending food, we sent people who could help them farm,” said Forsyth. The group, along with Forsyth, returned in January 2009 with Dr. Julie Ricci, who held an eye clinic at the village. She had brought many donated glasses with her and fit many at the clinic. When she looked at Jordan’s eyes, she soon realized that he had not been born blind, but rather, was born with cataracts. The group returned home with the idea of bringing young Jordan back to Canada to perform a basic cataract surgery. Dr. Ricci even found a London surgeon to perform the surgery free of charge, but the group still needed $10,000 to rent the surgical room at a London hospital. “Raising the $10,000 was a lot of work, but that ended up being the easiest part of our journey to bring Jordan here for the surgery,” said Pastor Forsyth. When Forsyth and other volunteers returned to Haiti earlier this year, they began a long process of paperwork to secure a birth certificate in order to get a passport and then use the passport to secure a travel visa. Jordaan was denied a visa at first. Pastor Forsyth credits Chatham-Kent Essex MP Dave Van Kesteren and his staff for helping with the paperwork and giving them a direct line to an immigration officer to help with their case. While in Haiti, the group was just about ready to leave when the 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti. The earthquake had partially shut down the embassy and when they went to pick up Jordan and his mother’s visas, they were told they had no record of it. “We were very persistent… We weren’t going to leave without him [Jordan],” said Forsyth. Two years after he had found Jordan in the mountain village, he landed in Canada for his surgery in March. Each eye was done in separate surgeries and after several weeks, Jordan can see for the first time. “After the first surgery he could see colours and after the second surgery he could see characters. It’ll take him time to get used to his newfound gift of sight. “When he returns to Haiti, he’ll be able to attend school and learn like the other children. He’s have much more independence,” said Forsyth. He currently has
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Pastor Larry Forsyth with Jordan and his mother Fenda.
about 70 percent vision. Jordan and his mother have been staying with a local Haitian family living just outside of Kingsville. The group planned to travel to Niagara Falls and then to Montreal where the Haitian Church there had planned a celebration for Sunday, May 30. Jordan and his mother are scheduled to return to Haiti on Tuesday, June 1. “We never thought of this as a news story while it was unfolding, but I guess everyone likes a story with a happy ending,” said Forsyth. Forsyth and other volunteers plan to return to follow up on the agriculture project in Jordan’s village. The locals have successfully harvested a crop of vegetables with enough to feed the village and sell the excess at market. In fact, the Leamington Rotary Club, who funded one water well there, has offered to drill five to 10 more wells to feed the irrigation drips set up on the two-acre vegetable plot. “It’s like we were called to a people and not just a place,” said Pastor Forsyth.