Author: Elliott Tenpenny

Board Member

Fond Doux Community Building

Our long time friend and member of the AFH Board in Haiti, Pastor Bruce’ s work in Fon Doux. Please remember him in prayer as his village will soon be hit with the hurricane.

A vision for the future: Haitian community offers an example
FOND DOUX, Haiti – What a difference a suitcase full of seeds can make.
It was just after Hurricane Gustave ravaged Haiti in August 2008 that Clayton resident Helen Little – who has been doing humanitarian work in the impoverished Caribbean nation since the mid-1980s – sent the suitcase to Brucely Delma, a pastor she had come to know in the community of Fond Doux, just outside Petit Goave about 25 miles west of the capital of Port-au-Prince.
The fecund luggage contained some seeds that would be familiar to anyone raised on a farm in Johnston County – as Little was. There were pumpkin, carrot, eggplant, collard, butter bean and bell pepper seeds. But there were also seeds for exotic flora such as papaya trees.
“We used every last one,” Delma said.
Two years later, the agriculture project Delma has overseen in Fond Doux is thriving, with dozens of men from the community working the land and their families reaping the rewards of their labor.
Those who cultivate the hilly but fertile land get some rice and beans up front, Delma said. Then they receive some money once the produce is harvested and sold at market.
“They make all this money – and they see it,” the pastor said.
There’s also a community well in Fond Doux, and residents have started a tilapia pond, too.
“We dug this till we found water,” said Delma, overlooking the green pool. “I got some men, and we dug for four months.”
Delma, 52, had returned to Haiti in 1995 after living in the United States for two decades. He had been in Fond Doux, where he had purchased some land and started a community school and church, for about three years when Gustave struck and destroyed an estimated 70 percent of Haiti’s agricultural sector.
“I’d been coming back [to Haiti] and seeing how the people were living,” Delma recalled. “It was in my heart to come back to my home and see what I would be able to work out.”
Today, he has over 400 people in his church congregation and a 10-room school that has 500 students who attend in two shifts Monday through Friday during the school year.
He has started teaching basic English to pupils ages 5-11 and plans to start a Saturday Bible study class for the community.
Delma’s ministry – the school, the church and the agriculture/aquaculture project – receives help not just from Little and the congregation at Clayton’s Horne Memorial United Methodist Church but from others including benefactors in Greenville and Cary.
“To me, this is the hope of Haiti – people with a vision doing things,” said Little, who is currently accepting donated old treadle (foot-powered) sewing machines so she can help launch a project that will employ women in Fond Doux.
As Little and others consider the next phases of development for the Ryan Epps Home for Children in Michaud, a northeastern suburb of Port-au-Prince, they are looking at Delma’s success in Fond Doux as a model.
Horne started the orphanage in January 2007. All but one of the 10 children currently in the home was in it before the Jan. 12 earthquake.
The children, ages 5 to 9, have been living in their new location – which has a prefabricated structure with electricity thanks to donated generators, indoor plumbing and running water from a well made possible by nearly $6,000 in donations from Horne – for just over two weeks. Before that, they had been living in donated camping tents in nearby Cazeau since the quake.
The first building at the Ryan Epps Home’s new location will eventually house a six-classroom school and church/community center that are intended to serve not only the children who reside in the home but the orphanage’s neighbors in the Michaud community.
A second building that will be a permanent home for the children, the orphanage’s director, his family and two caretakers will be erected by a United Methodist Volunteers in Mission group will in mid-November.
Clayton resident and Horne member Patrick Tormey toured some of Michaud with Ryan Epps Home Director Yvon Pierre during a recent mission trip.
He met Thermilus Jeanlis, 29, who lives in a small cinder-block and concrete house with two other adults and four small children, including two of his own.
Jeanlis, like others in the community, has free access to the well at the Ryan Epps Home. Before the well was available to local residents, they had to walk about 20 minutes to get water – and they had to pay for it.
Tormey also spoke with Angela St. Louis, a 43-year-old woman who lives in a corrugated metal shack on a dirt lot with six children, her husband and mother. After the earthquake, a few of her friends also moved onto the property and are living in a camping tent.
None of St. Louis’ children, who range in age from 8 to 19, is attending school. That’s not unusual in a country where half of the children – including half a million youth ages 6 to 12 – did not attend school before the quake, according to the United Nations.
Tormey asked St. Louis whether she would consider growing some food for the orphanage in exchange for schooling for her children. She seemed receptive to the idea but noted that she did not own the land where she had her garden.
After the tour of the community, Tormey said he hoped Michaud could eventually be like Fond Doux.
“I don’t get that sense that everybody is working that way in Michaud right now; there’s still a little bit of a handout mentality as opposed to a cooperation mentality,” he said.
But, sounding an optimistic note, he said he was confident that the Ryan Epps Home could forge a strong relationship with the surrounding community.
“Once that’s fully completed, then I think a lot of things happen on a self-sustaining basis,” he said.

Cholera Spread in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE – Days after an outbreak of cholera began in Haiti’s rural Artibonite region, killing at least 200 people, there are now five confirmed cases of cholera in the busy capital city.

The cases “do not represent spread of the epidemic” because they originated in central Haiti, according to a bulletin circulated by Haiti’s UN peacekeeping mission with the heading “Key Messaging,” obtained by IPS.

“The fact that these cases were picked up and responded to so fast demonstrates that the reporting systems for epidemic management we have put in place are functioning,” it concludes.

Residents of the capital city are not so confident. “It’s killing people – of course, I’m scared. We’re in the mouth of death,” 25-year-old Boudou Lunis, one of 1.3 million made homeless by the quake living in temporary settlements, told the Miami Herald.

Radio Boukman lies at the heart of Cite Soleil, an impoverished slum crisscrossed by foul trash-filled canals where cholera could be devastating. The station has received no public health messages for broadcast from authorities, producer Edwine Adrien told IPS on Saturday, four days after reports of cholera-related deaths first emerged.

At a small, desolate camp of torn tents nearby, a gleaming water tank is propped up on bricks. Camp-dwellers said it was installed by the International Organization for Migration last week, more than nine months after the January earthquake damaged their homes.

But it’s empty because no organization has filled it with water. “We need treated water to drink,” a young man named Charlot told IPS matter-of-factly.

Cholera, transmissible by contaminated water and food, could be reaching far beyond the capital city. There are suspected cases of the disease in Haiti’s North and South departments, according to the Pan-American Health Organization, as well as confirmed cases in Gonaives, the country’s third largest city.

In Lafiteau, a thirty-minute drive from Port-au-Prince, Dr. Pierre Duval said he had stabilized two cholera-infected men in the town’s single hospital, but could not handle more than six more patients. One died Friday. All of them came from St. Marc, near the epicenter of the epidemic.

The main hospital in St. Marc is crowded with the infected. Supplies of oral rehydration salts were spotty when he arrived Friday after rushing from Port-au-Prince, American medic Riaan Roberts told IPS.

“We first talked to some lady from the UN who told us, ‘Oh I have to go to a meeting, I’ll mention your names, but just come back tomorrow,’” he said. “These microcosms of operational logistics are just beyond them.”

Roberts said a Doctors Without Borders team quickly put his skills to use, adding, “[The UN] is so top-heavy with bureaucracy that they can’t effectively react to these small outbreaks which quickly snowball and spread across an area.”

Buses and tap-taps filled with people speed in both directions on the dusty highway connecting the Haiti’s stricken central region to Port-au-Prince. There are no signs of travel restrictions or checkpoints near the city.

At a Friday meeting convened by the Haitian government’s Ministry of Water and Sanitation, “there were conversations around shutting down schools and transportation routes,” said Nick Preneta, Deputy Director of SOIL, a group that installs composting toilets in displacement camps.

“But if that’s the conversation now, however many hours after the first confirmed case, it’s already too late,” he continued. “One of the recommendations was to concentrate public health education at traffic centers. . .there were a lot of no-brainers at the meeting.”

Cholera bacteria can cause fatal diarrhea and vomiting after incubating for up to five days, allowing people who appear healthy to travel and infect others. The medical organization Partners In Health calls it “a disease of poverty” caused by lack of access to clean water.

The Artibonite river, running through an area of central Haiti known as “the breadbasket” for its rice farmers, is considered the likely source of the epidemic after recent heavy rains and flooding. Analysts say the regional agrarian economy has been devastated by years of cheap American imports of rice to Haiti.

http://www.mediahacker.org/

Haiti at risk of hurricane

Tomas, temporarily weaker, still poses major threat for Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE —    A day after President René Préval traveled by
helicopter and road to the southern and western coasts to assess hurricane
preparations, Haiti stepped up evacuation plans for Tropical Storm Tomas.

The system, though slightly weaker on Tuesday, was expected to return to
hurricane strength over the next few days as it turns north toward Jamaica
and Haiti.

“Since 2004, we have been getting hit by hurricanes,” Préval told The
Miami Herald by phone Monday as he left the southwestern city of Les Cayes
and headed to Jeremie on Haiti’s western tip.

“This is why we started early, to make sure there are no deaths. We are
doing everything we can to make sure there are none.”

At 5 p.m. Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center said Tomas had weakened
during the day, its sustained winds dropping to 40 mph, but it remained on a
track that could sweep uncomfortably close to Jamaica on Thursday and strike
the southwestern tip of Haiti the next day. The Jamaican government issued a
hurricane watch.

John Cangialosi, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center
in West Miami-Dade, said the powerful center of the storm could shift
significantly to the east toward Jamaica or west toward the Dominican
Republic before it makes landfall.

Despite the weakening on Tuesday, forecasters still expected the storm to
regain hurricane strength and, at the very least, dump a lot of rain on an
island with denuded hillsides prone to dangerous, sometimes deadly flooding
and mud slides.

FLOODING FEAR

In Haiti, however, wind speeds won’t be as critical as rainfall totals. The
center warned of a “significant threat of heavy rainfall.”

Flooding from Hurricanes Hanna and Ike in 2008 killed more than 800 people
and the four hurricanes that hit Haiti that year left $1 billion in damage.
A tropical deluge also could overwhelm efforts to contain an outbreak of
cholera, caused by drinking contaminated water, that already has killed more
than 300 people.

Meeting with authorities from the surrounding vulnerable regions around
Les Cayes in southwestern Haiti, Préval asked for an inventory of needs,
announced that a fleet of government vehicles including evacuation buses and
heavy earth-moving equipment were already on site and that shelters had been
identified. The health ministry was evaluating the possibility of evacuating
patients at the government-run hospital, which is prone to flooding.

“We are trying to get everyone to work together,” Préval said. “We began
with the South, but we are not certain that is where it will do the most
damage.”

Still, the southern coast’s largest city — and Haiti’s fourth largest,
Les Cayes — is vulnerable to floods even with normal rainfall.

“Once a hurricane hits us, we are in a mess,” said Pierre Leger, a Les
Cayes businessman, recalling how twice in two years mud burried the city of
Gonaives after hurricanes.

“We have two canals — one on the left, one on the right. They are
blocked with trash, there are houses built on them. What happened to
Gonaives could happen to us.”

On Monday, U.S. officials announced that the USS Iwo Jima was on its way
to Haiti. The ship, which can support helicopters, is scheduled to arrive
later this week.

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said the government was calling on people
in the South to evacuate if the storm poses a dangerous threat. But even as
officials planned for potential disaster, concerns remained.

A recent survey of hundreds of tent cities in Port-au-Prince revealed that
only 30 percent of the displaced had a place to move into, and officials
were still trying to identify potential buildings that can shelter people.

“We are making buses available to evacuate people in the camps, like
children. But when we say evacuate, the question is where do we take them,”
Bellerive told The Miami Herald.

As officials plan for the storm, they continue to deal with the cholera
epidemic. On Monday, a government official confirmed a U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention report that the cholera strain found in Haiti
matched strains commonly seen in South Asia. The U.N. has denied that
Nepalese soldiers at a base in the city of Mirebalais, in Central Haiti, are
responsible for the outbreak.

Since the epidemic began in Haiti’s lower Artibonite Valley two weeks
ago, Haitian officials have been fighting to keep it from spreading.
Humanitarian aid officials say rain and floods make for a “toxic
combination” for the spread of the waterborne infection.

“This storm could not have come at a more difficult time,” Humanitarian
Coordinator Nigel Fisher said. “Although we have made extensive
preparations and prepositioned stocks across the country, some crucial
supplies have been badly depleted by ongoing needs, particularly the
response to the ongoing cholera epidemic.”

The U.N. has appealed to donors seeking emergency shelter, including
tarps, water, sanitation supplies and oral rehydration salts for cholera
treatment.

Meanwhile, Haiti’s neighbors were also preparing for Tomas. The Dominican
Republic closed beaches along its southern and eastern coasts as the
Emergency Operation Center warned residents to brace for 9- to 12-foot waves
within the next 24-72 hours. The country’s Ministry of Health also issued an
infectious disease warning, saying that swollen rivers and lakes could lead
to a rise in illnesses.

IN JAMAICA

Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding held an emergency meeting with
his cabinet Monday and was expected to address the nation later Monday. The
Meteorological Service said the country could feel the outer bands of the
storm on Thursday or Friday, with periods of heavy rain and strong winds as
it passes east of the island.

The government also advised fishing fleets to return to the mainland.

The storm has already been blamed for anywhere from three to 12 deaths in
the eastern Caribbean, where Tomas raked across Barbados before gaining
strength to hit St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines as a Category 1
hurricane.

The Caribbean Disaster Management Agency said the storm killed at least
three people in St. Lucia, injured two in St. Vincent and the Grenadines,
and damaged hundreds of homes and dozens of government buildings throughout
the region.

St. Lucia Tourism Minister Allan Chastanet, however, said there were at
least 12 confirmed dead, the Caribbean Media Corporation reported.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/02/v-fullstory/1903580/in-cross-hairs-of-
a-storm-haiti.html

Haiti could suffer another earthquake, scientists warn

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/31/haiti-earthquake-warning

Haiti could suffer another earthquake, scientists warn
The Guardian, Robin McKie   Sunday 31 October 2010

Haiti is at serious risk of further devastation from earthquakes in the near
future, geologists have warned. Their research, to be published in next
month’s issue of Nature Geoscience, indicates that not all the geological
strain that triggered the original quake in January has been released as had
been thought.

More than 230,000 people died in the magnitude 7.0 quake on 12 January and
more than one million were left homeless. Now geologists are warning that
Haiti faces the prospect of further devastation.

“The January earthquake only unloaded a fraction of the seismic energy that
has built up over time in Haiti,” Eric Calais, a geologist at Purdue
University, Indiana, who is also a science adviser for the UN development
programme in Haiti, told Nature. “Other earthquakes are therefore
inevitable.”

The Haiti quake  which struck at 4.53pm local time and lasted 30 seconds
occurred at the interface of the Caribbean and North American tectonic
plates, which are slowly sliding past each other. Seismic strain builds up
at certain points where the plates touch and this is abruptly released when
they jump position. Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, has twice been
destroyed, in 1751 and 1770.

For the past 10 months, geologists have been investigating a geological
fault system on the boundary of the two plates known as the
Enriquillo-Plantain Garden. This was thought to be the centre of the quake.
However, to their surprise no evidence to support this assumption has been
found.

“This is pretty bizarre,” said Roger Bilham, a geologist at the University
of Colorado. One explanation, he suggests, is that the surface part of the
fault was clamped shut by a complex series of ground slips. “If so, another
strong quake could happen any time, right about the January epicentre.”

The Haiti earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince. Buildings destroyed or badly
damaged included the presidential palace, the National Assembly building,
the cathedral and the main prison, while the list of those killed included
the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Joseph Serge Miot, the opposition leader,
Micha Gaillard, and Hédi Annabi, chief of the United Nations stabilisation
mission in Haiti.

Since then, a major operation to rebuild the city with international help
has been launched, as doctors warn that there is a growing risk of a cholera
outbreak in refugee camps.

“What we know hasn’t brought us any closer to understanding Haiti’s seismic
future,” Bilham said. “We can only recommend rebuilding Port-au-Prince as
safely as money allows.”

Clean Water in Haiti

Since becoming a part of the community in Lacule, in southern Haiti, we noticed a great need. Outside the clinic gates runs a simple drainage ditch. Far away from a river, water running through this ditch serves as the communal bath, clothes and dish washing area but also a latrine and garbage dump for the community. Seeking to give back to the community, AFH partnered with Arch Nova, a German NGO, and Water Missions International to help construct, administer and treat a new source of clean water. Now serving the entire community of Lacule for the first time, stands a well, 10,000 gallon clean water tower and treatment system. With Haiti’s past history of water born diseases, now including cholera, this clean water system is designed to provide this community with clean drinking water for years to come. Thanks to everyone that helped make this possible!


Experience with Haiti

Here are some more pictures from our trip to Haiti. The first couple days we packed medications and medical supplies (we had to bring everything with us as there was no clinic where we were going) and then packed the truck for the big trip. We traveled from sun-up to sun-down, spending hours in the truck driving as far as we could, then hiking the last three hours by foot as the sun began to set. I much preferred the hiking to bouncing around in the back of the truck! There were three people in the cab and 5-7 in the back, with all the gear.

The girls… me, Sarah, and Virginia. 

 

Here we are with the other truck (with the 3 translators and the pastor, who added to our team of eight) that was broken down in the riverbed as we were heading up into the mountains. The terrain was so rough I’m surprised the whole truck didn’t fly apart! (Grace!) Below are the beautiful mountains we hiked through to get to the final destination, a mountain village 6 hours from the nearest city. The Haitians were very hospitable and offered us this display of food after our long journey. The bowl contains a goat head- a special delicacy! Our accomodations involved a small shack nestled in the hillside, with a separate outhouse. There was no running water, electricity or refridgeration system. We filtered our own water that was carried up from the river in the valley below us. Caleb and I shared a narrow cot in a small room with three other people. Although we were a bit uncomfortable, I knew these people were giving us the best that they had! div>

As soon as the roosters started crowing at 4:30 in the morning on the first clinic day, I began to wake up. We got up shortly after 5:30 or 6:00am and I walked outside our shack, expecting to have a few moments to myself before starting the day. To my surprise, I was greeted by Haitians lined up ready to be seen by the American doctors! They had traveled early and waited patiently, some for hours, as we registered them and treated them as fast as we were able. We held clinic for 3 days in a row and saw 450 patients. We treated countless women and children for iodine insufficiency and handed out vitamins to everyone. Caleb and Elliott could do some minor surgical procedures and I dispensed medications for blood pressure, acid reflux, infections (bacterial, fungal and worm), skin problems and eye infirmities to name a few. My pharmacy!This view is looking back toward the mountians we hiked through to get to this village. 

 

How these mountain people wash dishes… 

 

and cook food. 

 

This is a woman (below) who had a goiter from iodine insufficiency. Since our last visit to Haiti, this team had successfully treated her iodine levels and significantly reduced the size of her goiter, to the point where it is nearly gone altogether! The people are so grateful for this treatment and some even walked 12 hours to get the medication. Before we came, they had no hope of treatment. It was an amazing privilege to be able to contribute to this project and help these desperate people. I enjoyed working alongside my husband and am so glad we got to experience this together! 

 

– Anna

 

 

The Heart of AFH

Many times we can feel overwhelmed with all the needs we see around us in the world.  We look down at our meager resources and feel like such an inadequate gesture could not be of any significant value.  There is too much to do, too much ignorance, too much poverty, too much suffering.  However, the truth is that our efforts, no matter how seemingly small, do make a difference.

In the slums and streets of Haiti, thousands of homeless children make up a labor force of orphans referred to by the rest of the community as “enfants sans revs”.  In Creole, this means literally “children without dreams” and these truly are children without dreams and without a future.  The reasons why these children have found themselves in this situation are endless, but they all share a common destiny, hopelessness.  Many work as child slaves to pay for the one meal a day that will keep them alive and face innumerable perils and hardships. Very few are able to attend school and many die alone after months of near starvation and unattended illness.  There is now an estimated 300,000 of these children living in Haiti today, and three fourths of this number are believed to be girls.  These children are living proof that slavery is not just a thing of the past, but is instead the stark, nightmarish reality of their everyday lives.

Meet Shadrack.  Shadrack is a boy of about thirteen years old, even though his exact age cannot be determined.  A few years ago, his parents, which were storekeepers in Haiti’s capital city of Port-au-Prince, were killed in a botched robbery.  Young Shadrack was turned out onto the street by the landlord of his parent’s house, and thus his struggle for survival began.  He managed for a time in the huge crime-ridden metropolis until he met a young man from a rural village, looking to find someone to help on his parents farm while he traveled to the Dominican Republic.  Shadrack agreed to come and work.  For the next two years, Shadrack worked hard and received little in return besides a place to sleep, scanty meals, and regular tongue lashings.

Shadrack was living in this rural area of Patmos when our AFH team met him.  He cheerfully hiked along beside the team as they brought out supplies for the clinic they were planning to have there.  Those on the team were struck by his shockingly thin frame and a face that bore the absence of childhood, a face that seemed to have lived far beyond his years.  After he shared his story, some of the team members began to discuss among themselves the possibility of bringing Shadrack back to Port-au-Prince.  Guyteau, a young Haitian man acting as a translator, shared how he once had been a boy on the streets of Port, but had been rescued and given a second chance at life thanks to a missionary and his family who took a dedicated interest in his life.  He now has a good job, plans to marry soon, and has a bright future.  Shadrack’s plight touched his heart because it was one that he could relate to so well.  If possible, he wanted to give Shadrack the same opportunities that he had been given.

After discussing it among themselves, the team made arrangements with the older couple that he worked for to release him.  After only a few days with a group of people that showed him genuine love and concern, the transformation was amazing.  Virginia Rudolph recalls that “The little guy was dumbstruck at the change of circumstances… and it was so neat to see him open up after being so shy and reserved”.   Shadrack is now living with a team member in Port-Au-Prince and plans to attend school.

Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 24 that if you show mercy to any child, you have showed it to Him.  While the task of bringing hope to the millions of children like Shadrack seems daunting, we cannot cease to make the changes that we can just because finishing the task seems impossible.  We will never finish if we do not start.  The vision of AFH is to touch lives like Shadrack’s with medical care and also with the gospel.  Shadrack is just one life touched, and it’s true that there are uncountable others to reach, but these kind of differences are the kind that are made bit by bit, and child by child.  Just as in the story of the loaves and fishes, gifts offered with a sincere heart can be multiplied beyond our wildest dreams if we place them in the supernatural hands of the Savior.

Earthquake Medical Relief

DSCN0538Having been to Haiti previously I was not quite sure what to expect post- earthquake. The first change I noticed was when I arrived in the Nashville, International Airport. There was an aid group checking in that had a “mountain” of totes that were on their way to Port-Au-Prince. The entire trip down I met people along the way that were bound for Haiti. It was encouraging to see other NGOs putting so much into the relief efforts. Once I arrived, it was interesting to see who was really getting the work done. Not to fault the efforts of large organizations, but many of them seem to have gotten hung up in “red tape”, and many of them were stuck in the immediate area around the capitol. Upon arriving at the PAP airport we were shuttled from the plane to a large new warehouse structure where we picked up our baggage and worked our way through customs.  Outside we found the driver that was to take us to Petit Goave, where we would be working on the Wesleyan Compound at our clinic. After fighting the traffic and the heat in Port-Au-Prince we spent the next several hours driving through the countryside. Along the way we saw evidence of the devastation. At one place there were the ruins of a four story building, now flattened like a stack of pancakes to a height of less than six feet. All along the way, the road was unexpectedly broken by cracks and fissures. The area of Petit Goave where our clinic was set up is nearby the ocean.

DSCN0521That whole section of the town had shifted in the quake and dropped several feet. Every street going into the area had several places where they had to dump dirt to form a ramp to smooth out the drop off. The Wesleyan Compound was beautiful with its location by the ocean facilitating a cool breeze off the water. The building that we were using for our clinic was mainly being used for a pharmacy, with one end set up for OB and neonatal care. Surrounding the clinic building was an assortment of canopies, tarps and benches where we treated patients. We also had one wooden outbuilding that The U.S. Marines built us, which we were using as an ICU for patients that needed more than walk-in and walk-out care. After we dropped our luggage in the various tents where we were to sleep, we quickly got started helping with the patient load. The first several days passed with a flurry of activity. Emergencies and mothers coming in to deliver their babies continued 24 hours a day.


The first evening there we devised a plan of primary and secondary OB and trauma teams to manage through the nights that would allow for those who were already there to get some much needed rest. Being an EMT-IV, I was assigned to Trauma team 1. The first night we spent most of the night taking care of various injuries that came in. Over the next several nights we had motor vehicle accident injuries, a gunshot wound (the result of a “cited” intervention by the police in a robbery???), a security guard who was assaulted with a machete, and various other trauma cases. Following the earthquake our clinic was providing the only medical care to the area. The Notre Dame hospital in Petit Goave had stopped operations for a number of weeks due to staffing problems and other issues. One of the goals for our time there was to gradually shift the medical care back over to the hospital without overwhelming them with a sudden transfer of all fields of patient care. One area of care that we were providing was OB and delivery. Several nights we had 2 or 3 mothers walking the compound between contractions, waiting for imminent delivery. There were so many deliveries that everyone got to assist in as many as they cared to and there were still plenty more to deliver. We had many patients for whom we provided the best care we had available and prayed for them, trusting the healing power of God. There were several cases in which it was very obvious that it was the healing hand of God that made them well. One of those cases was a young girl that presented with cerebral malaria. She came in already in the coma stage of the disease. At this point it is very critical to get IV treatment started immediately. We were able to get an IV started and started the medication. The problem was that we were not sure if she had been brought to us soon enough for the treatment to take effect before it was too late. We spent hours praying over her and finally she became responsive and definitely took a turn for the better. We cared for her through the night and the next morning she was well enough to go home. Even though we spent many nights with very little sleep, God gave us the strength to continue in our efforts and we were able to help many people. By the end of our time there we had accomplished a complete shift of all aspects of the local medical care except OB and some of the nighttime emergencies. These were to continue to be phased out over the next several weeks until the hospital was able to handle everything. We were blessed by many volunteers that worked alongside us in our efforts, and also with monetary support that was and still is a vital need to our continued ministry. Also as we were shifting the care back to the local hospital, we were preparing to move to a new location several kilometers away in the small town of La’Cule. We spent hours sorting through our supplies, packing them in boxes, and trucking them to the new location.

Our work continues there as we provide medical care to that location and also use it as a base for our mobile clinic. We continue to make trips into the mountains, taking along our buckets filled with meds and hiking, sometimes several hours, to reach the remote villages. We treasure each of your prayers and other support in any way God lays it on your heart to help. We recognize that even our best efforts without the blessing of God and the support of His people would amount to very little. Please continue to pray for the work in Haiti, that God would continue to give us guidance in directing us to the areas where we are most needed. Also that God would continue to work in the hearts of the people as we share the good news of the Gospel, that souls would be saved and that the power of Satan would be vanquished across the country of Haiti.

-Timothy

Pastor Training News

Recently we were able to travel into a far different ministry field then we are accustomed. Until now all of our work has been focused in the far southeast of Haiti. Branching out has always been a goal and when we were given the opportunity to do so this past month we jumped at the chance.

“They are as hungry for training as anywhere I’ve seen”. Teaching in the far north of Haiti, Pastor Philip and Dessaines described a meeting of pastors. “Over 200 pastors showed up asking for and applauding at the mention of a possibility of pastor training in the area” said Pastor Dessalines. Also, “This area receive little to no ministry from missionaries, because it so far from any airport, I have been praying to bring training to the pastors of this area for many years.” While in the area a introduction to the idea of rural pastor training was made to the enthusiastic audience. Here, as in many other areas of Haiti, pastors are lucky to own their own bible while most have never had the opportunity to be taught spiritual truth. Here in this small village over 200 pastors traveled many miles, waiting for many hours on the off hand rumor that training was available.

“They are signing up already.” Unknown to the pastors who were presenting to the audience of listeners a yellow notepad was going around the audience before a formal invitation was given. When Pastor Philip was finished speaking and asking if the pastors wanted more training in the area, he was handed a yellow notepad with over 200 names of pastors all over the area who had already committed to a week of intensive training. “They all signed up before we even asked for them to sign up” said Pastor Dessalines about the enthusiastic crowd.

Click here to see a video of the presentation in the area. The opportunities in this area for medical and spiritual outreach are enormous. We look forward to the doors that God opens in this unreached area of Haiti. Please pray with us for encouragement and the support needed to continue ministry in this area. Thank you for your interest in this work.