BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- Two Bakersfield men returned home from Haiti on Saturday. Olive Knolls Church in Northwest Bakersfield started The Haiti Project last year making two trips to the Caribbean nation.

But they saw a completely different country after spending the last nine days there following the quake disaster.

The poverty they thought they saw before, pales in comparison to the devastation left by the earthquake.

"Things were completely destroyed," said Jason Evoy, a Youth Pastor with Olive Knolls. "Where it used to be a nice plaza with statues of their freedom fighting people and all that kind of stuff was now just tens of thousands of people in tents right in front of the palace with nothing."

During their trip they visited over 48 churches to access the damage, help with medical aid and pass out food and water.

"People were climbing on the truck as we drove through, you know, people were following it as we were going to the church," Evoy said. "Just hundreds and hundreds of people climbing up around the truck to deliver what little food we had actually received."

Olive Knolls Church also got a block machine to the Nazarene Seminary Campus in Port-au-Prince so they can start rebuilding, starting with the walls. And those walls mean a secure place to store aid.

"As those walls go up and get built, the UN, World Vision, other groups can began to move their aid to that campus," Evoy said.

But it's not just about rebuilding structures but the spirit of the haitian people.

"A lot of hurt, hardships in people's lives," Olive Knolls Church member Robert Savage said. "Every single person knows someone who died in the earthquake, in the entire country, and that's heavy."

And while both men say bodies have been cleared from the streets, rubble is slowly starting to be removed and aid is beginning to move more quickly, they say the Haitian people still need a lot of help as they began to take the first steps in recovering from this earthquake.

For more information visit: thehaitiproject.com