Mission Of Mercy
"We just want to bring a little love to victims"

by Johanna Shindler
West Bank bureau

When Anna Pinzon saw the images of devastation in Central America after Hurricane Mitch hit the region last year, she was overwhelmed.

"We have to do something," Pinzon told her friend Daisy Haskell of Terrytown.

By early January, Pinzon, Haskell and several others had launched a Louisiana chapter of Cheer Up Missions and were on their way to Honduras with medical supplies.

The small but dedicated group has made four trips to the region in the past year, delivering dozens of wheelchairs, hospital beds, medicine and good cheer.

Ask Dylcia Maier, Honduran vice consulate, about organizations that have helped her native country and cheer up Missions is the first she'll mention. "They're going there in search of places that need them," she said. "There's nothing selfish about it. They don't stop. They found places even we didn't know about."

Cheer Up missionaries made their first trip to Central America shortly after Christmas. They visited hospitals, orphanages and pediatric AIDs units, performing and delivering Christmas toys and candy donated by metro area Walgreen's and Wal-Mart stores. "The kids thought they had missed their Christmas," Landriault said. "We said, 'No, you didn't. It just came a little late.'"

"If they can only bring a smile to the kids, they will make a big difference," Maier said.

But Cheer Up Missions has brought much more. When Pinzon saw in the news that JoEllen Smith Medical Center in Algiers was closing earlier this year, she made a call and asked for the hospital beds. The high-tech bed was soon on their way to Honduras.

Medical supply companies have donated wheelchairs and monitoring equipment. Trucking, ambulance and shipping companies have helped transport the donated items. TACA airlines and hotels in Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador have provided discounts and free stays.

Cheer Up has worked with the International Hospital for Children based in Gretna and Foundacion Maria in Honduras, a nonprofit humanitarian organization founded by Honduran first lady Mary de Flores, a native of Louisiana.

"Much of the need being met by Cheer Up's effort existed long before Mitch hit the region," Landriault said. "In some ways, the storm was a blessing because it drew attention to the desperate living conditions in many areas," he said.

Before the missions brought wheelchairs to a nursing home in El Salvador, the nuns who ran the home would carry the elderly from place to place on lightweight plastic lawn chairs. "When the residents received their wheelchairs, they took the missionaries up on a suggestion, made jokingly, and began racing around the lawn," Landriault said.

When a 9-year-old boy named Sebastian who had never been able to walk received a high-tech wheelchair, he looked up at this mother and said, "Now I can go to school, Mommy."

"New Orleans has so much love," Haskell said. "We just want to bring a little love to them," she said of those they visit.

Cheer Up's next trip is tentatively scheduled for late November or early December. The volunteers hope to bring a commercial washer and dryer for a hospital staff that is now washing linens and clothes by hand. They also hope to bring nets for a fishing village in Nicaragua that lost its boats and equipment in Mitch.

"Another goal is to have 100 wheelchairs ready for delivery by Christmas," Landriault said. 'Were up to 60."

"There's so much need, so many remote areas," Haskell said. "We just have to take one step at a time to see what develops."

Members of Cheer Up Missions include: Pinzon, Landriault, Daisy and Robert Haskell and their 12-year-old daughter Ana, Janet and Michael Clark of Baton Rouge and Anna and Patrick Farrel of Baton Rouge.

Following a performance, Kenneth `Smiley' Landriault cheers up a young boy with a gift of a Bugs Bunny doll.

Anna Pinzon shares a smile and hug with a toddler in Honduras.

-From the Algiers Picayune, October 3,1999.