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LINCOLN — A dynamic Haitian pastor who inspired the establishment of a Lincoln-based Lutheran mission 30 years ago was killed last week, apparently in a robbery.
Two Nebraska officials with the Haiti Lutheran Mission Society described the Rev. Doris Jean Louis as the first Lutheran pastor in Haiti. Louis was pastor of the First Evangelical Church of Haiti.
Dick Buethe of Lincoln, the mission's volunteer executive director, said Louis died Friday.
The Rev. Charles Reimnitz of Omaha, who helped found the society while he was pastor at Lincoln's Christ Lutheran Church, said he was told that two assailants apparently were lying in wait for Louis and his wife, Elucie, when they arrived at their home outside Port-au-Prince.
The intruders apparently shot Louis before they confronted his wife and demanded money. She was beaten during the confrontation, Reimnitz said.
The Louises survived a similar attempted robbery about eight years ago, Buethe said, when intruders slashed Louis' leg with a machete and shot his wife in the chest.
“It's just really a pretty rough place,” Buethe said. “It's been described as one of the most dangerous places in the world.”
Reimnitz said Louis was the reason the Haiti Lutheran Mission was founded in the late 1970s. A fellow pastor at Concordia Seminary in Fort Wayne, Ind., wrote to tell him of a brilliant Haitian student that Reimnitz should consider sponsoring.
“He was very, very smart,” Buethe said. “He was smarter than any other pastor I ever met. He never quit studying.”
Reimnitz added that Louis, who earned a law degree before he obtained a doctorate in theology, was very determined.
“He was a very strong-willed person, to say it very simply,” Reimnitz said.
“He knew what he wanted, when he wanted it.”
The mission today supports six churches, five schools serving about 3,000 students, two orphanages and two medical clinics in Haiti, Buethe said. Engineers have said most of the buildings fared well during the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake and its aftershocks.
A mission Web site says Louis was born in 1944. The Louises have three grown sons, two of whom are U.S. citizens.
Reimnitz said he is confident the mission will continue.
Buethe, whose last trip to Haiti ended on the day of the earthquake, said he had planned to return this weekend. Now the trip will coincide with Louis' funeral.
“We were the best of friends,” Buethe said.
Contact the writer:
402-473-9581, leslie.reed@owh.com
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