This trip was a real blessing to me.
It had been almost a year since I was there, and I was so happy to be back. I was on a team of nine Americans and six or more Haitians, and we held clinics in three places. In Fond Doux, we participated in evening evangelistic services. Once again it was a joy to work along side of others, providing medical care
and sharing the love of Christ. Since it was my fourth trip, I was a lot more comfortable with knowing what needed to be done and how to do it. My job is the pharmacy, and this was the best supply of medicine we’ve ever had. Also, our method of transporting the supplies has changed from cardboard boxes that squash and tear and disintegrate in the rain, to round and square plastic buckets. They are wonderful! Everything stays dry, clean, and where it belongs. They also make carrying thing over the mountains much easier.
In two of the facilities, we had ample room to spread out, and that made my job much easier. I’ll give you an idea of what I do. First, I have to unpack and arrange the supplies (with help of course).
When the patients come from the doctor or nurse, I take their chart and gather up all the medicine the doctor ordered. I explain to the translator how the patient is to take the medicine and when, then the translator tells them in Kreyol. The patient is then free to go, and I move on to the next person. Thankfully, I had an awesome person to work with in the pharmacy, Jess Lear. She was such a great help and without her I never would have kept up. We got behind sometimes as it was, so my dad would come and help us out. Since I’m kept pretty busy, I don’t get to spend much time with any one person. It is a blessing though to look a tired old lady in the eyes and say
“God bless you” or “Have a good day” and see a big smile in return. Or to have a small child with big dark eyes break into a grin when I talk to her. It’s the little things that make it worthwhile; it’s the love of Christ that makes it of eternal value. Sometimes, all the medicine in the world is useless, but we
can always share the love of Christ. On the second day of clinic, a little girl was brought in, very badly burned. Her clothes had caught fire that morning, and her parents brought her to see if we could help them. We did what we could, but her lungs were damaged and within a few hours, she died. We could not save her life, but hopefully we eased her pain. It was so sad to see the mother try to wake her up, and then hold her baby close while she wept. I only hope the parents saw the compassion of Christ through us.
Why would you spend your life on something that may be ok, when you can spend that same time sharing the love and gospel of Christ with a people who are physically and spiritually destitute?
I can truly say it is a privilege to be able to hike into the mountains and hold a clinic. We have been received with warm hospitality and a generosity that is a lesson to me. They have so little and give us so much; it is definitely a pride deflator. I know that through these trips, I have grown spiritually. If nothing else, going to Haiti will increase your faith as things rarely go as planned. When we got down there this time, we found out we could not go to the village of Patmos where we are treating the people with goiters. A person in the church was causing problems and it was impossible to go where we’d planned. We decided we would still go to that area and hold a clinic somewhere. We have to hike the last part of the way into the mountains, and when we parked the truck at the end of the road, we still didn’t know where we were going. The people who met us to carry in the supplies, discussed for two hours where we would go.
By then it was dark. For all I knew, we still had two to three hours of hiking ahead of us! They finally decided we would go to a school/chapel about thirty minutes away. It was close enough to Patmos that people with goiters could come anyway. So that worked out, but the problems weren’t over yet. As we were packing up after the last day of clinic, it started to rain. When it rains, the trails get slick and the river rises, and we have to drive out through the river. We weren’t planning to leave till morning, so we went to bed praying for the rain to stop. It didn’t.
The rain came down all night long, and towards morning, it started pouring and getting windy! It was like a mini hurricane! All morning long it rained and rained and rained. A couple Haitians went out to buy some rice because we were out of food. What do you do in a situation like that? We waited and prayed. Finally, around noon, the rain slowed to a drizzle and some of the Haitian men started carrying the buckets out to the truck. They would not let us help, so we sat there and waited some more. In about an hour, the rain stopped and we set off, praying the river wouldn’t be too high. An hour or two later we were ready to leave. When we got to the river bed, three of our guys joined hands and walked in front of the truck through each river crossing, rolling hidden rocks out of
the way and pointing out boulders and deep places. God brought us safely through the river, and we reached our next destination without any other delays. The next two days we drove to the top of a mountain and held clinic in a little bamboo and palm leaf school. If it had rained, we would have gotten very wet! Thankfully it didn’t rain.
God is good, and has blessed us abundantly each time we have gone. Through Him we have had the strength to work through every trial and difficulty that has come our way.
In closing, I pray that God will give me many more opportunities to serve in Haiti, and that through me, His name will be glorified.
