It was a couple of weeks after the earthquake when word began to spread in a small, poor village here.
American missionaries, a local emissary told the people, were offering to take children to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic and give them an education and a better life.
After the earthquake, which destroyed so many schools, the prospect of an escape for even a few of their children seemed like a blessing.
"We were looking to God for something better for our kids," explained Frisner Valmont, 34, a father of three girls.
The fliers that the missionaries from New Life Children's Refuge brought to the village of Calebasse promised a beautiful place for the children to live, with a soccer field, a swimming pool and a short walk to the ocean.
In a place where jobs are few and food is scarce, the hardest part for many families was choosing which of their children to send on the bus that had brought the missionaries to the impoverished precincts of Fermathe, in the mountains south of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
So went some 20 children from Calebasse, driven by their families' desperation, on a bus ride that would be the beginning of a bizarre journey that has landed the 10 missionaries in Haitian jails and has left the children in the stricken country their families wanted them to escape.
Arrested as they tried to leave Haiti with a total of 33 children, the 10 Baptist missionaries from Idaho and elsewhere were charged last week with child kidnapping and child smuggling. They are due back in court this week.
Investigators have said that the group did not have the proper documents to take the children out of Haiti, and the case has heightened concerns over the trafficking of Haitian children.
Though the authorities have not accused the missionaries of transporting the children for work or sex, the case is full of unanswered questions about the group's plans.
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