'On a Tuesday in January of 2010, for no clear reason, my mother came to my school in Haiti to pick me up early. In Haiti, you don't usually leave school until your homework is done. The fact that my mother came and picked me up that particular day is a testimony for me that God loves every one of us and watches out for us. That day was when we had the big earthquake. I was sixteen and she brought me to one of the orphanages that my father ran. I went in and was sitting and talking with the little children when suddenly, the building started shaking and it collapsed on top of us. It was a three story building full of little children and I was on the bottom floor.
I didn't know what had happened...and at that time, I didn't know much about God even though we were Catholic. While I was in that collapsed building, I remember hearing people screaming and I spoke to God. I told Him, 'if You save me, I will serve You.' I was crying and screaming to get out. A voice came to me telling me to stop screaming because I would use up all my energy screaming and that I would die if I didn't stop. I actually heard that voice telling me to be calm. Over the next twenty-nine hours, one by one, all the little children in that collapsed building stopped crying and screaming. One by one, I could almost hear them passing away. My arm was broken and blood was all over my face. I could hear people digging and praying and looking for survivors. There were no tractors or tools to get people out. They used picks and knives and machetes to dig me out.
All the time I was buried alive, there was someone there with me, keeping me calm. I was close to dying...I was so tired and hungry for 28 hours UNDER THAT BUILDING. I kept hearing that voice that gave me hope. They found fifteen bodies before they got to me. They dropped a rope down a hole and a man came down to get me and he got stuck. They had to pull him out before they could get to me. The moment they got me was when I was sure I was going to die. It was the last possible moment.
Haiti was devastated by the earthquake. The saddest part of my story is that all my classmates that stayed in school to do their homework, like we always did, were all dead. If my mother hadn't come to get me from school like she did, I would have been killed that day. Even then, we still thought life was over. There was no water, no food, no work...but there was still hope. That was the beginning of a new chapter in my life. I reached out to God to know why He saved my life. Three months later, I met a man who taught me about Jesus Christ. He invited me to church and introduced me to two missionaries and I was baptized in July, on my birthday...six months after the earthquake. I ended up serving a mission in Haiti and I worked hard to serve God.
I then came to Utah to study at Brigham Young University. I stayed with a friend at first and then lived with my bishop and his family for a little while. I'm working hard to get where I want to go. I have my wife, my baby, and my own house. Now, I have something to give back to Haiti. I started a project called ARISE: Project for Humanity. I want to empower new generations, especially in Haiti, to believe that, in spite of hard times, there is always hope and that we can create what we need to be successful. My dream is to see Haiti become an example of
standing on
its own and to prove that we can all
make a difference.
We all have something to do, something to give, and something to create.'
Willianson Sintyl
ARISE Project for Humanity
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