Giovanni Pierre-Louis was 11 years old, playing with a friend on a pleasant afternoon in September 2008 in Leogane, Haiti. Unbeknownst to Giovanni and the others, a deadly electrical cable lay a matter of feet to the side.
They would learn so mere moments later — and Giovanni’s life would be changed forever.
Though Giovanni is unsure — or chooses not to remember — whether his friend made contact with the cable incidentally or out of childlike curiosity, the friend did so. The cable had been made especially dangerous because it had been corroded by a recent storm. The friend was killed in seconds, and Giovanni tried to offer help. But the electrical current carried to Giovanni and was far too strong for the child.
Hours later, Giovanni woke up in a Port-au-Prince medical center, a facility that one of Giovanni’s current caretakers describes as “hardly a hospital.” He woke up with a visage that was charred and blackened, with the top of his skull blown away and his cranium exposed.
Giovanni didn’t expect to go to the places the horrific injury would send him next, which have taken him from his family for what has now amounted to years.
He's now nearly 2,500 miles away in a loving home in Boston, and Giovanni, a teacher in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and an avid soccer player, remains just as grateful as he did before he began being subjected to multiple and ongoing surgeries to grow skin over an otherwise-exposed brain.
“It’s been pretty good. I’ve met a lot of nice people and made a lot of friends, especially from church,” he said. “I’m with people I can trust. I feel calm.”
And Giovanni has many people — including those from the 2010 Haiti relief effort and LDS missionary service connections — that he can thank for such serenity.
One is Dr. Chuck Peterson, a former Mormon missionary to the island from Mesa, Ariz., who had traveled back to Haiti to help earthquake victims for more than a week before returning home.
But Peterson wasn’t done with the country that, a year after the quake, still has more than a million displaced people. He received a call from Giovanni’s father, Eyve Pierre-Louis, weeks after returning to the United States. Though the father said that he was hesitant to ask for help, he didn’t have other options because of the lack of health care that the Haitian medical centers could provide.
“I had kind of a compulsion, looking back, to that time, trying to get this boy some help,” said Peterson, who spent an estimated 20 hours per week in arranging for Giovanni to obtain the necessary medical care in the first few weeks after receiving a call from Pierre-Louis.
“I feel part of something larger, part of doing Heavenly Father’s will. I feel more like I’m swimming with a huge force behind it, like I’m riding a wave.
“I just felt absolutely inspired and the compulsion to do it,” he added. “It was almost a personal mission, a personal calling I just had to do. I just kept pushing and pushing.”
Shriner’s Hospital, an institution devoted to providing free orthopedic and burn care to children under 18, responded to Peterson’s call and Giovanni’s plight. That only left one final solution: finding Giovanni a home in Boston, the branch of Shriner’s that was scheduled to take the child.
Peterson’s mission connections took fruit when he contacted Stephanie Granger, a Boston resident. Today, Granger offers a second refuge to the full-time home offered by Holly John, who volunteered to take Giovanni from another family in her ward while she was serving as its compassionate service leader. Giovanni now attends the Belmont 2nd Ward in the Cambridge Massachusetts Stake with John.
“I didn’t expect to fall in love with him like I have,” said John, adding that she has taken the boy to Mesa to connect with Peterson’s family. “My entire family is in love with this kid.”
She added, “The Lord’s hand was definitely in my life, preparing me for this. But I fight him all the way.”
Giovanni’s family is enduring an ever-ensuing battle as well. While the boy’s mother, Laurente, has been able to make a few trips to see her son, her husband has been denied a temporary visa multiple times by the U.S. State Department.
The repeated disappointing news — which comes at a cost of $150 for each application — comes in the wake of a project in which Pierre-Louis, the bishop of the Leogane Ward in the Port-au-Prince Haiti Stake, developed an orphanage with an individual from Utah. Following the completion of the orphanage, a legal spat ensued, which Pierre-Louis won. Peterson said the indivdual retaliated by making a false claim against Pierre-Louis, blemishing his legal record and keeping him from getting a visa. Because Giovanni still needs to receive treatment at Shriner’s for at least one more year, Pierre-Louis's long-awaited day to see his son again remains on pause.
“This vendetta by someone else because he lost in court has now put others in a bureaucratic quagmire,” Peterson said.
Peterson said that he, John and others have arranged for an Area Seventy and political representatives from Arizona, Nevada and Massachusetts to send letters to the State Department petitioning for permission for Pierre-Louis to enter the country.
They’re still waiting.
“We haven’t had a John Kerry or McCain, Romney, Hillary Clinton, consider this case,” Peterson said. “No one like that has stepped up and made a power call.”
Until that day arrives, Giovanni will continue to be loved by the LDS community, his school and those whom John said feel an affinity for him.
“I miss them a lot,” Giovanni said of his family. “I know I will see them soon.”
Meanwhile, his American friends are supporting him.
“Absolutely, that’s what we are here for,” Peterson said. “I’ve felt a part of a huge unstoppable force. I’m lucky to be there and enjoy the ride.”
Twitter: wilklogan