NEW IPSWICH — A 40-foot shipping container that has been gracing the lawn of Community Christian Church for the past week will soon set sail for Port-au-Prince, Haiti, complete with a 4,000-pound, 75,000-watt, diesel generator that is being donated to a hospital.

“That’s the weight of the generator without fuel,” said Pastor Mike Martel of Community Christian Church. Once the diesel is added, Martel expects the weight of the generator to be about 7,000 pounds. “The tank holds 300 gallons of diesel,” he said.

Martel said the diesel generator, which was donated by Dean Card of Rindge, is specifically being given to the Notre Dame hospital in Port-au-Prince. “They don’t estimate the power grid in Port-au-Prince will be up and running for the next year-and-a-half,” said Martel. “This will power the hospital.”

Four 5,000-watt generators will also be shipped to Haiti, said Martel, including two that were donated yesterday morning. “Somebody just called and donated two more,” said Martel, during a telephone interview on Wednesday morning. “The other four generators will go to orphanages,” said Martel.

While generators are a popular item among thieves in Haiti, Martel said he’s not the least bit worried that someone will steal the giant generator once it is fully fueled. “You’ve got to chain them to the trees down there,” he said. “This big one, they won’t be running away with that. It will take a lot of Haitians to move it. It’s over two tons,” he said.

According to Martel, the cost for shipping the container to Haiti is expensive, but thanks to the consolidated efforts of his church and other local churches, including Hope Fellowship and Lutheran Apostolic Fellowship in New Ipswich, as well as Christian Outreach in Rindge, the shipping cost will be covered. “It costs $7,000 to $9,000 to get it there,” said Martel. “We’re almost there.”

Martel said the youth group at his church raised $1,650 toward the shipping cost during Super Bowl Sunday. “They made 60 pizzas and delivered them to people’s homes,” said Martel, of the entrepreneurial teens.

In addition to the generators, Martel said, the shipping container will hold 3,000 pounds of rice and 7,000 pounds of clothing that have all been vacuum packed. “A commercial packing plant from Kansas City shipped us the bags and a $16,000 vacuum-pack machine that is brand spanking new,” said Martel. “That way the clothes stay clean and dry.”

Martel said he plans to be in Haiti when the shipping container arrives, but that’s still a couple of weeks away, even though it is set to leave New Ipswich today.

“The shipping container will be trucked to New Jersey,” said Martel, where it will be loaded onto a ship to Santa Domingo, then onto another truck to Port-au-Prince. “It’ll take 10 days on the water, then another five or six days to process it at Port-au-Prince,” said Martel. “I don’t anticipate leaving [here] until the 10th of March.