The church's husband-and-wife ministers, Lidovick and Ermilia Pierre, have suffered along with everyone else. Lidovik lost a cousin in the quake; Ermilia lost a cousin, his wife and their kids in the collapse of an apartment building. "The whole family is gone," she said. "They haven't found the bodies yet. They're still buried. Another cousin lost his wife."

Now more than ever, they are determined to show how they keep the faith. "We are not going to let what happened discourage us in serving the Lord," Lidovick Pierre said. "We are taking our strength from the people in Haiti. If they can worship God in the middle of what they're going through, then we certainly can."

The church of about 40 members rents space for 7 p.m. Friday prayer services and 5 p.m. Sunday worship services in the basement of First Covenant Church of St. Paul. It's a modest space with posters for the Sunday school classes taped to the wall.

The Pierres arrive early to set up a half-dozen rows of folding chairs. There's a raised stage in the front of the room, but they don't use it, preferring to stand just in front of the first row of chairs.

Lidovick, 46, and Ermilia, 42, arrived in the United States in 1994. Haiti had been rocked by violent political unrest since 1988, including a series of military coups that led to the repression of most freedoms.

Shortly after the Haitian government banned the U.N. human rights monitoring missions, the Pierres, who ran a church, were granted admission to the United States as political refugees.

He's a bank loan officer who recently was laid off from Wells Fargo, and she's a supervisor at a McDonald's.

They didn't intend to begin a church here. That changed in February 1995.

"A Haitian pastor who spoke no English was visiting and asked if there was a Haitian congregation in town," Lidovick Pierre said. "We said, 'Maybe that is why God sent us here.' Starting the church was not our idea; it was God's idea."

They don't draw any salary from the church, which still has several of its founding members who fled Haiti under similar refugee status.

Church as family

The Haitian Christian Fellowship had been operating under the radar of the general public until the earthquake.

"That first Friday after the earthquake, the entire basement was full," Lidovick Pierre said. "Our American friends came to pray with us. Members of this church came. People who were offering to help [with relief efforts] came. Many of them have come back since, and we are always glad to see them."

The services are held in a mix of Creole and French, Haiti's two official languages. Lidovick preaches, Ermilia leads the singing, all done a cappella, much of it carrying a repetitive, chant-like quality.

Members of the congregation step forward to read from the Bible and offer prayers and personal testaments. The two-hour service ends with a sermon by Lidovick Pierre, delivered energetically as he strides back and forth. A visitor coming to his church in Haiti would have seen almost exactly the same service, he said.

"It's a joy to come here and hear the word [of God] in our own language," said Geraldine Regis of St. Paul, whose family lives in rural Haiti and came through the quake unscathed. Most Sundays, she also attends "an American church" but wouldn't think of missing a Sunday evening service. "Because we're all Haitians here," she said, "that's why we keep coming."

That sense of community, which was important before the quake, has been invaluable since, said Yollaine Mulatre of Woodbury, who lost a cousin.

"It's good to have a place where we can come to cry together when we need to and laugh together when we need to," she said.

In his sermon (which Mulatre volunteered to translate for a reporter), Lidovick Pierre talked about how the people who were killed in the quake "weren't doing anything wrong. They were at school. They were at work. They were in their homes."

"There are some situations that we cannot understand," he said. "We have to trust that God knows what He is doing ... You can cry, but don't lose hope."

Jeff Strickler • 612-673-7392