The wife of the senior pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hackettstown said Thursday evening that the group was due back early Friday morning on a flight to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.
"This is a happy ending," said Karen Fowler, wife of the Rev. Frank Fowler who was heading the group. "With the news we've been seeing from down there, we really need that."
But a New Jersey college student was still unaccounted for in Haiti on Thursday, two days after the earthquake ravaged the island nation.
A spokeswoman at Lynn University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said that all but one of its 12 students who were there when the earthquake hit have been accounted for. The missing student is Christine Gianacaci of Hopewell. Two faculty members also had not been located.
"We're anxiously awaiting word here," said James Hall of Hopewell, who is Gianacaci's grandfather. "That's the hardest part of this - the waiting."
Hall said Gianacaci's parents have traveled to Florida and that he hears from them often, but he didn't know much about the trip his granddaughter was on.
Another New Jersey native on the trip, 19-year-old Lindsay Doran of Rumson, was with a group of eight students who arrived safely in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on Thursday, the university said.
Members of another church mission from New Jersey also were safe. A group from three Mercer County congregations was at the U.S. Embassy in Port au Prince on Thursday awaiting evacuation to the Dominican Republic.
Also on Thursday, Cooper University Hospital in Camden and Hackensack University Medical Center announced they were organizing medical missions to Haiti.
The Record of Bergen County reported that four New Jersey men who were in Haiti on a humanitarian mission to build housing for orphans remain stranded in Les Cayes, which is about 85 miles southwest of Port-Au-Prince.
Speaking Thursday with family members through an online video chat, the group said they plan to do what they can to help those affected by the earthquake.
"We have the skill set, we have the time, and we have ability to help these people," Jeff Wells, an architect, said from a mission home and hotel in Les Cayes. "We're here, so we'll see if we can help. We have enough water and food for now."
---- Associated Press contributed to this article.
