THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 16, 1994 TAG: 9409160507
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FRANKLIN LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
Pastor Joel Trimble was close to being a dead man in 1991, stopped by a Haitian soldier with an empty stomach and an M-16.
The soldier ordered Trimble to drive up a secluded mountainside. But halfway up, after a brief conversation, the soldier looked askance at his intended victim.
``Your voice,'' he said, ``reminds me of a certain Pastor Joel I listen to on the radio.''
``That's because,'' Trimble responded, ``I am that certain Pastor Joel.''
The soldier immediately ordered Trimble to pull over. Instead of gunshots, Trimble heard an apology and a request to pray for the soldier's ill mother.
``I think God listens to you when you pray,'' the soldier said, quietly closing the door and walking down the mountain.
Now, after 19 years in his adopted home of Haiti, Trimble and his family are stranded in Branchville, just outside Franklin, victims in a sense of the U.S. embargo of Haiti and closure of Haiti's national airport.
The family came here in June to raise money for their church. They were to have returned last month.
As they wait for word on a possible invasion, they are living out of boxes in Branchville, where Joel is serving as a substitute pastor at Branchville Baptist Church. They are part of the Haiti for Christ Ministry, which has its base at the Rock Church of Franklin.
Trimble has a hard time expressing his frustration over the plight of himself and his family.
``I feel locked out of my own country,'' he said during an interview Tuesday. ``I feel blocked. And it hurts.''
Trimble, 38, is founder of the Center of Faith, Hope and Love - an independent Pentecostal ministry once located in the heart of the capital, Port-au-Prince. He is also the voice of Pastor Joel on WMBC - a radio station that once reached about 2 million people in and around Port-au-Prince.
He has broadcast his message across the small island nation, once going so far as to pay for air time on a voodoo station. He sat on a drum during the broadcast.
But for the past several years, ministering in Haiti has become as hard as living there. The broadcasts have ceased for the last 1 1/2 years because of a lack of electricity. And his church, which he said once numbered 3,000 parishioners, has drastically diminished after the mayor of Port-au-Prince took over the church property when thugs knocked down the walls surrounding Trimble's outdoor tent.
Grenades have been lobbed at the Trimbles' doorstep. And in 1986, a corpse was dumped in their neighborhood once a week for a month.
``This,'' he said, ``has become the norm.''
Despite the hardships, despite the suffering, Trimble and his family want to return.
``Haiti,'' said Yvonne Trimble, 40, ``is our home.''
Trimble's life in Haiti began in Ohio in 1972, when he found God in the back seat of a Volkswagen bug.
With hair down to his shoulders, he ran away from his home in Canandaigua, N.Y., and was selling drugs when he was offered a ride by ``Jesus freaks,'' he said. They changed his life.
He returned to his hometown, surrendered to police on a prior breaking-and-entering charge and served a year in juvenile detention.
Upon his release in 1974, Trimble attended a missionary-training school in Florida. With his skills as a motorcycle mechanic, he was sent to Haiti in September 1975 - a foray that was supposed to last two weeks.
He lived in a mud hut in the countryside, paying $2.80 per month in rent. He got typhoid and hepatitis at the same time. And along with learning to speak Creole, Trimble fell in love with the people and their needs.
After meeting Yvonne during a visit home, he returned to Haiti with her.
They have lived there since, raising four children, preaching their truths and dodging a bureaucracy gone awry.
But ask either of them their thoughts on a possible U.S.-led invasion of Haiti, and you'll hear the same answer.
``It's the only answer at this point,'' Yvonne said.
For now, as U.S. forces prepare for an invasion even as private polls say the public opposes an invasion, Joel, Yvonne and their children must wait.
``I'm part of these people, and I know the military,'' Joel said. For the Haitian people, ``There's nothing patriotic to fight for. There isn't going to be a fight. If President Clinton does anything right while he is in office, he'll do this.'' ILLUSTRATION: MICHAEL KESTNER/Staff
Pastor Joel Trimble, 38, and his wife, Yvonne, 40, came to the
United States in June to raise money for their church in Haiti. They
were to have returned last month.
by CNB