Students attend class in the school that Jim Speicher's ministry helped build in Jacmal, Haiti.
Dunedin, Florida - "It's the train you hear coming down the railroad track that has no tracks."
It's the sound 84-year-old preacher Jim Speicher first remembers of the earthquake that struck Haiti two years ago. He was sitting at the computer on the third floor of the school he helped build in southern Haiti.
"There was some panic, some people screaming. Some families were hurt and there was some personal damage throughout the community," says Speicher.
The earthquake left its mark, destroying homes nearby.
"The Lord preserved the school, he preserved the church and preserved the hospital that is part of our ministry," says Speicher, who founded the missionary group called Haiti Gospel Ministries built. "Haitian people are resilient. They know suffering moreso than anyone else in the world. They bounce back."
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In the last two years, the earthquake and its aftermath helped shine a spotlight on Speicher's work in Jacmal, a city 25 miles south of Port au Prince.
"I believe the earthquake has drawn us together," says Speicher.
Donations came in from around the country, he recalls. Two donors -- one from San Antonio, Texas and another from Orlando -- donated $300,000. It's enough to help complete Speicher's dream and expand the school through the 12th grade and beyond.
In 2012-2013, the school will graduate its first kindergarten class. For the school that first opened in 2000, Speicher says, "It can only be called a miracle."
Construction is underway on a new two story, four classroom building, a computer room, a new kitchen to feed its 400 students, new bathrooms, and a play court and in a year they will add a vocational program.
"We are better now with the school. The population is better, the business community of Jacmal is better now than before the earthquake ever hit," says Speicher. He adds, "Overall in God's plan, things are better now before the earthquake."
Speicher hopes to open a university in the future. Ministry officials say 100 percent of the donations go to the students.
The cost to feed a child is 30 cents a day. For more information on the ministry go to www.haitigospelministeries.org.
Two years after a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti, 500,000 are still living in tents. The quake led to more than 220,000 deaths and thousands more died from a cholera outbreak. The quake left 1.5 million homeless.
Isabel Mascarenas