DOUGLASVILLE — “When I got the call, it felt like someone took a knife and cut me in the intestines.”

That moment is time stamped on Pastor Guito Pierre. On Jan. 13 at 6:30 p.m. a cousin in Boston called asking if Pierre had heard from his brother, Wilner. Concern had been mounting due to the previous day’s earthquake in their home country of Haiti.

“I said ‘no’ and he replied ‘he is not okay,’” remembers Pierre. “I asked what happened to him and he said [Wilner] had lost all his children, and I said ‘what?’

“He then said, ‘Couzin, you have to stay strong, there is more coming.’”

The day before, just around dinnertime, the 7.0 earthquake near Port-au-Prince took Wilner’s 14-year-old son, Macove, and 12-year-old daughter, Shainna. The house they were in with their family collapsed.

They joined the growing number of dead – projected to be at least 200,000 – in Haiti’s capital city.

There are 15 Haitian churches with more than 1,000 members in the Georgia Baptist Convention, scattered mostly around Metro Atlanta. In the second week in January they became one large support group, only capable of personally identifying with each other’s loss even as surrounding GBC churches rallied behind them.

Standing before some 200 attendees packed into Arbor Heights Baptist Church, Pierre addressed the crowd not just as a shepherd, but one suffering alongside his flock.

“When I heard I began to cry on the phone,” Pierre said of the news. In a later conversation with his brother, who operates – alongside their father – a Christian center founded by Guito outside Port-au-Prince, the man who had just lost both of his children became the counselor.

“Wilner said, ‘Don’t cry, pastor, because God knows why it happened to us. My son and daughter are dead, but they are not lost.’”

Sympathy and grief reverberated worldwide as photos and stories from the destruction began to leak out. In an instant Haitians lost their papas, mamas, uncs, tants, and couzins. Wilner – Pierre’s fre – and two other brothers in Haiti survived while another was safely in Canada.

During the service at Arbor Heights 38-year-old James Bertrand sat in the back corner. A bespectacled father of two, Bertrand lost practically his entire family. The only ones left are his father and two sisters who were in America.

Despite the distance, he had remained close to these in Haiti.

“We’d call there every week,” said Bertrand. “Every other day or so. Now they’re gone.”

Working toward a degree in electronics and laid off nine months ago from Circuit City, Bertrand’s role as a father and husband has taken on an even more critical scope in leading his family.

“Right now the only thing I can do is pray. I can’t cry anymore,” he said. “My wife couldn’t be here tonight, she’s so devastated.”

Jacques Estimphile, pastor of Grace Mission in Decatur, admits he’s also trying to wrap his head around the tragedy after finding out more than 60 family members are now dead. His brother, a minister in Tampa, Fla., has secured a small plane that could take off in Miami and carry funds, but the logjam at Port-au-Prince’s airport prevents them from doing so. Even if the plane could go, he says there’s nothing to buy.

“Basically we just stay here and do nothing but pray. There’s no traveling to Haiti.”

That one-way street of news brews frustration. Communications from Port-au-Prince have improved with daily updates to Haitians stateside, but those updates typically bring news of needs. Needs that can’t be met as soon as hoped for because the infrastructure of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country wasn’t great to begin with. Still, each day brings hope.

“We’re collecting donations now,” said Estimphile. “We spoke to the Red Cross and UPS this morning (Jan. 18) on getting a shipment there.”

Pastor Jean Cassamajor of Bethesda First Haitian Mission in Smyrna – the largest Haitian congregation in the GBC – received a call from his brother in Florida Jan. 14 that their father was okay and sisters injured, but alive. There were several relatives, though, they hadn’t heard from yet. A church of nearly 200 members, there are many in his congregation who have lost family or haven’t received confirmation they survived.

“Right now we’re just praying and hoping to get some good news,” he said. “If we don’t receive a call from a family member we’re thinking they’re dead.”

With tragic stories piling up, anything resembling good news is welcome. Tider Exume’s cousin and his cousin’s family, who live in Canada but were visiting relatives in Haiti, sat in a plane on the runway at Port-au-Prince’s airport when the earthquake hit. Had a technician not decided to do an additional check underneath the plane, it would have been taxiing instead and most certainly crashed, said Exume, pastor of Haitian Baptist Church of the Redeemer in Lawrenceville.

After the tremors subsided the plane took off successfully. It was the last one allowed to do so that day.

The roles of pastor, theologian, and counselor intertwine tightly during times like these. Exume notes the day-to-day mental and emotional toll crisis such as the Haiti earthquake bring to church leaders and members.

“As a pastor, you talk to them, encourage them, let them know something good is going to come out of this. We do our best, because we’re in the same boat in this tragedy.

“Nobody expects something like this to happen. I grew up in Haiti and experienced little earthquakes, but nothing of this magnitude.”

At Grace Mission the following Sunday, words couldn’t carry the weight. Members began to share of those dead or not found. Emotions built. Tears flowed. Finally, Estimphile called for “a time of silence before the Lord.”

For an hour that’s what happened. People cried. People prayed. No words.

“This is a situation where you can’t say anything,” added Estimphile.

“We prayed ‘God, if this is your will, then your will be done.’”