The African Methodist Episcopal Church was already on the ground helping victims of Haiti’s devastating earthquake before the ground stopped shaking.

The AME Church, noted for its global pervasive presence among Black people wherever they are, didn’t miss a ministerial beat when the magnitude 7.0 quake struck Haiti Tuesday, literally destroying the country and killing a projected 500,000 people — Black people. Haiti, a Black-filled Creole and French-speaking nation that occupies about a third of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere and has always been ground zero for the AME Church’s ministry, development and relief efforts.

“If there is a place on Earth that could have done without an earthquake right now, it’s Haiti,” George F. Flowers, executive director of the AMEC’s Global Witness and Ministry program, said from his Charleston, S.C. office Wednesday morning. With 8 out of every 10 Haitians living in extreme poverty, Flowers said, “it’s a place where many in the world have turned their backs. But not African Methodism or the interfaith Church World Service, which have a long-established presence in Haiti.”

Flowers said a preliminary report indicates an AME-supported school and clinic in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince had been damaged by the quake, but that the staffs are still trying to determine the well-being of their colleagues, children and patients. Flowers added that making that determination is difficult because the destruction of the country’s already weak infrastructure hinders communication between AME-sponsored facilities throughout Haiti.

At the time of the earthquake, all the AME bishops were attending a retreat in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina and among them was Bishop Sarah Davis, the presiding prelate of Haiti. Davis left the retreat immediately upon learning of the quake and when last seen in the U.S., she was desperately trying to get back to her homeland. By Wednesday afternoon, no one knew if she had, but it was about that time when word was confirmed that the Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince had been killed by the quake and that the head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission was missing.

Before Tuesday’s monstrous quake, the AME Church was already dealing with the effects of three earthquakes that struck the African nation of Malawi last month. It claimed the lives of nine people, injured nearly 6,000 people and left 270,000 people homeless.

Malawi, a southeastern African country, is in the 20th Episcopal District of the AME Church. The city of Karonga, with a population of 13 million, was rocked by a 5.4 earthquake on Dec. 6, a 5.8 tremor on Dec. 8 and a third of magnitude 6.2 on Dec. 12.

In addition to ministering to the health and welfare needs of the stricken population, Malawi’s presiding prelate, Bishop Julius H. McAllister Sr., said seven of his churches had collapsed in Karonga and most of those still standing were riddled with dangerous cracks. He said five of the clergy houses in which AME ministers live had collapsed, and that one of his pastors and his wife were hospitalized from injuries sustained when their clergy house fell on them.

McAllister beseeched his AME brethren around the world for prayers and humanitarian assistance for the people of Karonga, Malawi, which he was getting — until Tuesday.

Flowers has urged the AME Church not to amass material collections of foodstuffs, goods, supplies or other commodities for distribution to Haitian earthquake victims at this time because they have no way of distributing such international responses to the tragedy. Instead, the AME churches will be collecting money for the Haitians in all its services Sunday.

Flowers said an initial appeal amount is $200,000 to help in the provision of immediate relief assistance that may include material resources, temporary shelter and food and health services. He said contributions can be made through the AME Church or checks can be sent to the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund — AME Church, Charleston Executive Park, 1587 Savannah Highway, Suite A, Charleston, S.C. 29407-7820.

In the meantime, entertainer Wyclef Jean, one of Haiti’s most famous sons, returned to Haiti Wednesday and turned his Yele charity Web site into a mechanism whereby anyone who texted that site could make a $5 donation toward Haitian earthquake relief. By midday Wednesday our time, the Web site was inundated with so many donations it had crashed.

Closer to home, Earl Ofari Hutchison, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, held a news conference Wednesday and announced that his organization will implement activities to connect Haitian-Americans with their family and loved ones who are missing and unaccounted for in the Haitian rubble. This is a role Hutchinson’s group took during the Katrina disaster in 2005. He also suggested that donations be made to an Emergency Haitian Relief Fund set up by the New York-based Institute for the Black World.

Jackie DuPont Walker, social action director of the AME Church international, said her church, the local Ward AME, had just made the decision to pick Haiti as that church’s mission site this year. “We were meeting about it last [Tuesday] night,” Walker said, in awe of the coincidence. “Now we really have our work cut out for us.”

This earthquake — the largest in the Caribbean in more than 200 years — has left us stunned by riveting images of Black dead bodies lying in Haitian streets, bodies of tiny Black children being cradled by traumatized parents with focusing eyes, bodies of Black women drawing flies while their husbands sit in earthquake rubble and rock rhythmically back and forth, old shell-shocked Black men carrying around the shards of a useless pot and muttering in French. Regardless of what the U.N., the U.S. or any other country does about this unimaginable tragedy, we have to take this personally.