LADYSMITH, Wis. — They were coming back from an orphanage in Ganthier, Haiti, when they spotted the roadblock ahead, outside the capital of Port-au-Prince.
Melodi Korver, a La Grande native, sat in a passenger van with her husband, Ryan.
It was October 2021, and for the past few months Ryan had worked as support staff for Christian Aid Ministry in Titanyen, Haiti, while Melodi took care of the couple’s home and children.
In the van were 16 Americans and one Canadian, including Melodi Korver’s children, Andre, 3, and Laura, 10 months. As they approached the roadblock, the adults in the van wondered what would happen next.
They didn’t have long to wait.
Moments later men with weapons appeared in vehicles and motioned for them to drive toward the roadblock.
The day marked the beginning of 62 days under the guard of members of one of Haiti’s most notorious gangs. More than a year later, Korver and her family look back on that day as a defining moment, the beginning of an ordeal that strengthened their faith.
“I still rather believe that they were out looking for people to kidnap and thought, ‘Oh, a passenger van, this looks like material.’ But when they realized that they actually had 17 people in there, they weren’t quite sure what to do,” said Korver, who was born in La Grande in 1993 and lived in the community until 2018.
The kidnappers belonged to the 400 Mawozo gang. They forced the van to follow them to two out-of-the-way stick, mud and concrete houses, Korver said.
“And they lined us all up along the side of one house,” she said. “Kind of preliminary searched us, took a video of us and then put us into one room at the back of the house. It was fairly small, 10 by 12 or so.”
The kidnappers brought them some food that first night and some water, but “nobody was hungry,” Korver said.
“Later they brought out an English-speaking man, and at that point he was saying, ‘I’m on your side. This is all political,’” she said. “We weren’t sure exactly how much to believe.”
That first night, the group discovered there were 11 other hostages in a room next to theirs.
“They were usually tied, hand and foot, in the room. That was how most of the other hostages were treated,” Korver said.
Wrestling with escape
Korver and her group were not tied up, and, eventually, had some access to a backyard guarded by thick undergrowth. Five of the captives had earlier reached freedom, whittling the numbers of the missionary group down to 12.
Unknown to Korver and her group, the gang was demanding $1 million ransom for each captive.
“They told us if one of you escaped, we’re gonna shoot all the rest of them. They were pretty sure we were fairly helpless, too, as far as just knowing our way around,” she said.
Korver said if they did try to escape, the group would “stick out like a sore thumb because we were white and there are not many white people in Haiti and you have miles of gang territory before you get out of it.”
The idea of an escape, though, never completely evaporated.
“For a long time we had been wrestling with that, with the idea of escape. Should we escape? Should we not?” Korver said.
In December 2021, after more than 60 days under guard, the group began to reevaluate the notion of an escape.
“Different things had happened leading up to that point. After some things we’d seen we were pretty sure these gangsters didn’t have our best interests in mind,” Korver said.
She said many members of the group were “feeling like maybe God wants us to step out and try to escape.”
Korver said others were not so sure.
“There were definitely some others who did not feel good about it yet,” she said.
Planning an escape
In December, one member of the group — a man named Wes — decided to test the level of security around the house and small yard, Korver said.
“One of the young men decided, ‘I am going to try to go into the bushes,’” she said.
A 4- to 5-foot-tall viney plant formed a fence-like hedge around most of the small yard, and an outhouse with an open back faced the bushes.
Wes pretended he needed to use the outhouse and then slipped out the back.
“The guards never noticed he was missing,” Korver said. “They weren’t keeping an eagle eye on all of us all of the time.”
The group had developed a prearranged signal to let Wes know when it was safe for him to come back into the yard.
“We could see a footpath going past on the north edge of the compound,” Korver said. “And there was a big mango tree, maybe 20 feet away. And so we knew if we could get out of the compound and out to that mango tree and that footpath, well, you’d be on the main path then at least.”
Meanwhile, Korver’s husband was praying.
“He said, ‘God, if you don’t want us to escape, send Wes out of those bushes just all discouraged about it,’” she said.
When Wes came out of the bushes at the prearranged signal “he just had this silly grin on his face,” she said. “He was like, ‘Guys, we can do this.’”
Korver said her husband felt God say, “This is what I want you to do.”
“It just felt very, very clear to him that God was saying, ‘You need to take your family and leave this place,’” she said.
The hostages had fallen into a routine over the months.
“In the morning and then at 1 p.m. and then in the evening before we went to bed, we’d gather and all sing, pray, and just have a sharing time together,” she said.
At the 1 p.m. session, Ryan Korver told the group he felt he “had clearance to go.”
One man, who had been opposed to an escape attempt, said Wes’ jaunt into the bushes showed him it was time to go.
“And just like that everyone was on board. Everyone was united,” Korver said.
Getting away
On Dec. 15, at about 3 a.m. the group made their escape bid. They walked out of the yard, down the trail and hiked more than 10 miles.
They were in jungle, it was night, and they were clearly not Haitians. So many things could have gone wrong.
As they walked, they did not encounter any other people.
“I felt so strongly that God was in this. Even the fact we had hiked pretty much 10 miles without meeting anybody,” Korver said.
They walked until they reached a main highway at about 8 a.m. Then they met a Haitian man who had a cellphone.
The group called the mission and immediately someone was on the way to pick them up. Korver said in her mind there is no doubt God intervened that night.
“It’s a miracle. If you’ve been in Haiti, it’s so full of people. And that no dog came out and barked. There were three guards sitting in the yard who were on their phones. We just prayed that God would blind their eyes and their ears,” she said.
After they were picked up and brought back to the mission, the FBI flew the group to the United States.
“The FBI had been heavily involved pretty much from day one,” Korver said, adding while they were in captivity, the group noticed from time to time a plane circled nearby throughout the day.
The FBI never confirmed the plane was searching for the hostages, but Korver said she is sure it played a role.
Korver said she felt the presence of her young children helped with the kidnappers.
“They would bring special treats for the children,” she said. “They would sometimes bring them bananas and mangos.”
Korver said the children seemed to believe they were on some “weird camping trip.”
“I do not feel like they are traumatized by the whole thing,” she said. “It’s just something that happened.”
God, she said, also played a role in protecting the group from sexual assault and other trials.
Korver said she feels that while their story is important — especially the group’s reliance on faith — many Haitians are kidnapped on a regular basis but their stories are never heard.
“Because we were Americans, it was all over the news,” she said. “There’s probably several hundred Haitians kidnapped right now and they never make the news.”
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