Haitians in US pray for loved ones in quake zone

  
The pews of the Catholic church in Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood were filled with parishioners crying and praying that relatives and friends somehow have survived yesterday's devastating 7.0 quake.
  
"I just hope my mom is safe," said one young woman, Roudeline Jason.
  
"She is in the worst zone of this disaster, in Carrefour," she said, speaking of the section of downtown Port-au-Prince, where she said, "everything is destroyed."
  
The Little Haiti community is the heart of the Haitian diaspora in the United States.
  
Miami and south Florida is home to 300,000 people of Haitian descent, although the number is difficult to pin down because of the large number of undocumented immigrants.
  
People in the tight-knit Haitian community gathered around radios and computers eager to hear the latest about the plight of their loved ones, after telephone lines to the impoverished Caribbean nation went dead.
  
With phone service down in Haiti, it was impossible to get direct word of who had survived. Still, Jason said she was preparing herself for the worst.
  
"I don't have anybody in United States apart of my husband and two kids. We came two years ago to Miami and left everybody behind," she said.
  
Her friend Nathalie Dorzelma, who had learned that her own mother and siblings had survived the disaster, urged her to keep the faith, reminding her that although the quake leveled her relatives' home, everyone survived.
  
"My parents' house is down," Dorzelma said.
  
"Everything is destroyed, but at least they are okay. They are all inside a church waiting for help," she told AFP.
  
Parishioners at the church exchanged the little information they were able to glean from news reports, as they tried to encourage each other.
  
Meanwhile, the priest at Notre Dame, Father Jean Marie Reginald, said he tries to provide spiritual support.
  
"People know this is a catastrophe," he told AFP.
  
"Everybody is crying. I asked them to keep their faith and pray for their families," Reginald said.