"This has been the hardest day of my life. I don't know how I've made it. God is gracious and faithful and gave me the strength I needed to get through it. I've been at the clinic for 13 hours today and just left. God gave me the strength I need to make it through, but as soon as I left I started crying and I am still weeping as I write."

So began Noelle Gonzalez's e-mail to her parents, Gary and Marie Gonzalez of Magnolia, less than 24 hours after the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated much of Haiti and so far has left more than 200,000 dead.

Gonzalez was in Haiti serving as a volunteer for the Jacob's Well Youth Camp, a branch of Frontier Youth Camp out of Crockett, Texas. It was the third time she had visited Haiti, working in a medical clinic in Titayen Town, about 15 miles northwest of Port Au Prince. She arrived in Haiti on Dec. 28, on winter break from Texas A&M University, and was scheduled to return to the U.S. on Jan. 8.

But Gonzalez was offered an opportunity to stay a few extra days, an opportunity she gratefully accepted. That decision would change her life forever. She made contact with a nurse with the Global Outreach clinic, where Gonzalez would be staying and doing her mission work.

On her second day of working with Global Outreach, much of the day's work had been done and Gonzalez found herself exhausted. She returned to her room to get a nap and prayed for God to show her a reason for her being there and how to help.

"I woke up to everything shaking," she said. "I was not expecting that's how God would answer my prayer."

The 7.1-magnitude earthquake shook the country and killed hundreds of thousands around her, but Gonzalez was unaware of the sheer affect the disaster had caused. Within just 10 minutes of the earthquake, dozens of people began to seek help at Gonzalez's clinic.

"They knew there was an established clinic there, but we usually only treated things like burns," she said. "We ended up doing everything."

Incredibly, none of the 125 at the Global Outreach clinic were injured, even though the clinic across the street, Gonzalez said, was completely destroyed.

As soon as the injured and dying filled the halls of Gonzalez's clinic, she began hearing news of the complete devastation.

"We probably had up to between 50 at one point," she said. "When people finally did start coming from Port Au Prince, they were telling about all of the hospitals down."

"My biggest job was to help clean their burns," she said. "Everyone was covered in cement ash. I would help clean them, calm them down."

Gonzalez's parents were able to contact the Global Outreach's headquarters in Mississippi, who notified them that their daughter was okay. Three hours after the earthquake struck, Gonzalez was able to call them through a working satellite phone. The following day she was able to send them an e-mail.

"Whenever I'm not in the clinic or working on something, I am scared and emotional," she wrote. "I know that all of us here on the compound are suffering to some extent from post traumatic stress. We were flooded with patients yesterday as soon as the shaking stopped. I have never seen such pain and suffering. I pray that I will never have to see that much trauma ever again."

Earlier in her mission trip, Gonzalez worked in the neonatal section of a Haitian hospital helping give care to newborn babies. Shortly after the earthquake, she got word that hospital had been destroyed as well. Not long after the earthquake, a flour plant near Titayen Town exploded, sending even more Haitians to her clinic.

"I know that at least one man that we treated yesterday died in the night and a lady we have been caring for since 11 a.m. this morning died about 2 hours ago," Gonzalez wrote to her parents. "We all gathered around and prayed over her and her boyfriend as she died, and I can't even begin to express the pain felt in that room."

"Everyone was very scared," Gonzalez would later tell the Tribune. "It was a very scary thing. I was scared too. We were all traumatized. When a child was hurt, the parents would just be in hysteria. There was a lot of panic."

Global Outreach's supplies were limited, Gonzalez said, and diminished quickly. Many of the patients were forced to undergo surgical procedures without anesthesia. Gonzalez attributes her ability to make it through the ordeal to her strong beliefs.

"The only thing that gives me strength and hope is that I know where my strength and hope lies," she wrote to her parents.

In the hours after the earthquake hit, panic returned over and over as tremors would shake the region.

"It's easy to think that the worst is over, but there is so much need and devastation that I don't know how we could ever begin to help them all," Gonzalez wrote. "All of them need hospitals, but the few hospitals that survived the quake are overrun by people. On top of that, those that could get to a hospital don't have money to pay for care. We don't know what to do with the woman that died in the clinic tonight because her boyfriend doesn't have the money to pay to have her moved or buried."

After three days of seeing pain, suffering and death all around her, Gonzalez was told suddenly on Jan. 15 to pack her bags, that a plane was returning to the U.S. Out of all that she witnessed and experienced, Gonzalez says that the hardest part of it all was leaving Haiti.

"I said 'Do I have to go? Can't I just stay here?" Gonzalez said. But she knew with growing civil unrest that it was best for her to return home. Since her return, Gonzalez has been sharing her story with the Tomball and Magnolia communities. Members of the community have established the Noelle Gonzalez Disaster Fund, through Biblical Perspectives, Inc., to which the Tomball Rotary Club donated $1,000 last week. Those who are interested and able can make checks payable to Biblical Perspectives, Inc., P.O. Box 860, Tomball, TX 77377.

Since her ordeal, Gonzalez has returned to Texas A&M, where she is majoring in allied health. She plans to return to Haiti this summer to continue to help. She says her life's goal is to work as a missionary in third world countries. After her incredible experiences in Haiti, she is eager to return and help spread her unwavering faith.

"This has been a horrific 30 hours," Gonzalez concluded in her e-mail, "but I know that the Lord is my rock and my redeemer. He is my strength and my shield, and he is my strong tower that no earthquake can shake."

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