Jose was one of the Haitian patients CURE treated in Haiti.

At first, I didn’t take much notice when I saw the TV reports.

Breaking news.  Earthquake strikes Haiti.  Massive damage.

But then it hit me like a load of bricks. This was bad.  Really bad.  Historically bad. More than 200,000 people would eventually die from the earthquake that leveled the capital city of Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010.

And within 24 hours, this earthquake became more than just a byline from some foreign country to me.  It became something much more to all of us at CURE.

The day after the earthquake, the staff at CURE’s hospital in the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s island neighbor, made a historic decision. They had to help ­− right away.  So, a hastily assembled team of five people carrying the barest of supplies chartered a plane and flew into Port-au-Prince.  They were among the first medical professionals on the ground.

This began the story of CURE’s involvement in one of the worst natural disasters of the modern age – and one of the greatest relief responses in human history.

We chronicled that story on the blog.  If you would like to revisit it, click on the Haiti tab at right.  You can also watch the short film here.

Now, here we are a year later. For most of us, it’s a distant memory, albeit a memorable distant memory.

For me, it’s still not so distant, maybe because I was affected by the earthquake so personally.  I knew people who went into the country and heard their stories.  I met Haitians when I was in the Dominican Republic a week or so after the quake.  It wasn’t some distant event.  It was real.

In some ways, it was comparable to the time I went to Mississippi a couple of weeks after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  You see the damage and devastation up close.  And you realize, you can never really be prepared for that.

The same was true for those who went into Haiti.  They arrived anxious to help, but were shocked and overwhelmed by what they saw.  My own colleague, Bryce Alan Flurie, a guy who has shot photography in places like Palestine, Bosnia, Ethiopia and Honduras, said nothing could have prepared him for what he saw (and smelled) when he visited Haiti just a week after the earthquake.

But these people also experienced something else.  They were touched by the citizens of Haiti, their resilience, their determination, their absolute will to survive.   They were changed forever.

I still think about the people I met, especially today, on this one-year anniversary of the disaster in Haiti.

The patients at the D.R. hospital.  The volunteers.  The CURE docs, nurses and support staff.  They remind me of how in the midst of disaster that there is always the power of the human spirit, bound by the desire to bring God’s love to the suffering.

Haiti’s problems are far from solved.  It will probably take many years, even decades, for the country to work out its challenges.  But, if the earthquake response proved anything, it’s that when people come together, great things can happen.

The CURE response was just one small example of this.  Our support teams were comprised of people from all over the world, who labored in cramped operating rooms, often communicating with hand signals when language barriers got in the way.  But they provided live-saving medical and spiritual care to thousands of Haitians.

Today, I remember Haiti.  I remember her people.  I remember our volunteers. And I say a prayer of thanks to God for allowing me to be a tiny, microscopic part of this historic relief effort.

Haiti, remembered…May we never forget.