The experience, vision, and fortitude to make changes.

By Bronislaus B. Kush and Brian Lee TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
bkush@telegram.com

A missionary complex and an orphanage, each with ties to Central Massachusetts, were damaged or destroyed by Tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti.

It is believed that Central Massachusetts residents working or volunteering at the New Missions facility in the Leogane Plain region of Haiti escaped serious injury, though other people were killed. The complex close to the capital was founded in the early 1980s by a former Worcester pastor.

The earthquake also caused an orphanage in Grand-Goâve to collapse. The children were removed from the Mission of Hope orphanage before it collapsed, according to the Gardner doctor and his wife who founded Forward in Health, which runs the orphanage.

The 7.0-magnitude quake destroyed at least 22 buildings and killed at least a dozen at the New Missions complex, located about 10 miles from the capital city of Port-au-Prince. New Missions was founded by the Rev. George J. DeTellis, who served as pastor of the former Calvary Center on Belmont Street in Worcester before beginning his ministry in Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 1983.

Rev. DeTellis died in 2008 after a nine-year battle with prostate cancer, and his wife, Jeanne, continues to run the organization in Haiti, along with her sons, George Jr. and Timothy.

Mrs. DeTellis and Timothy DeTellis were in Haiti when the quake struck, while George DeTellis Jr. was in Orlando, Fla., where the nonprofit organization is headquartered.

Frank Beshai, who has helped raise money for New Missions and knows the DeTellises, said no Worcester-area residents working at the complex were killed. Mr. Beshai, an independent management consultant, has been in telephone and e-mail contact with George DeTellis Jr.

Dave Nowak, a spokesman for the ministry, said that all “mission team members” from the United States are safe at the mission compound. Those individuals had arrived in Haiti last Saturday to distribute shoes collected over the Christmas holiday.

New Missions operates 21 churches, a medical clinic, 21 preschools, 21 elementary schools, a high school, a business school, a Bible college and a mission training center in Haiti.

Mr. Beshai said about 10,000 children are enrolled in New Missions programs and they receive schooling, medical care, food, clothing and other assistance from the organization.

He said organization officials were distributing wheat and black beans to Haitians in the plain area who lost their homes.

“The word we’re receiving is that as many as 500,000 people could be dead,” said Mr. Beshai, a member of the Liberty Assembly of God Church.

He said the 22 buildings damaged will have to be torn down and replaced.

Gardner resident Dr. John F. Mulqueen and his wife, Paula, who formed the nonprofit Forward in Health with an eye toward building a clinic in the area of Les Cayes, Haiti, said yesterday that the Mission of Hope orphanage the program runs in Grand-Goâve collapsed overnight.

They had the children out of the orphanage because they were worried about it, Dr. Mulqueen said.

After it collapsed he wasn’t able to communicate with program directors because cell phone towers were out, he said.

The Mulqueens, when they get information, have been blogging on their Web site, Forwardinhealth.org.

Forward in Health’s 28-passenger bus at the orphanage has been used for refuge. A group of travelers from Sturbridge ended up spending the night with Haitians on the bus because buildings are unsafe, Mrs. Mulqueen said.

Meanwhile, the foundation has been constructed for the clinic the organization is building outside Les Cayes, about 100 miles from Port-au-Prince.

“We were scheduled to put the actual walls to the clinic up Monday,” she said. “That is now off because we can’t get supplies there. Everything comes from Port-au-Prince.

“What they desperately need is medical facilities,” she said. “So we’re in that Catch-22 again … We have no idea whether our security wall, which goes around the 3-1/2 acres of land, is even standing anymore.”

Plans for a dozen students from St. John’s High School in Shrewsbury to join the program in Haiti on Feb. 12, and another trip for Gardner students, are on hold, Dr. Mulqueen said.