The Needs of Haiti – JUST MERCY

2nd Haiti Trip – Vol. II

Bill and Jesse have now been back in Haiti for two weeks. Bill says that to get anything done there is like trying to trudge through deep mud!

Mission House

We spent part of last week trying to make the decision about renting the house in order to have a base of operations. After prayer and discussion, deciding what we personally were able to do financially, and seeking counsel from a friend with years of experience in missions, we decided to do so. We wrote up a lease agreement stating the owner’s obligations and ours and signed it the same day the tents and all the equipment we had shipped to Haiti were finally released from customs! God’s timing is always best. We now have a place to store them as we disperse them in an orderly manner.

We are waiting on the owner to get the electricity (two poles away) to the house. He is also supposed to have the water well drilled and the pump installed. We hope that we can find the folks that do that tomorrow and arrange for them to get started as it will be hard to do what we need to do without water in the house. The house is already completely tiled. There are bathtubs already installed. So once we have water and electricity, we hope to be able to get things arranged fairly quickly.

Bill and Jesse have been staying with a family in Fonds-Parisien who have been sharing their overcrowded house with them. Bill had been sleeping on a cot on the front porch but now that we have the house, he and Jesse moved out today making more room for the family as they had graciously been using one locked room to store our things while family member slept on the roof! They have been so kind even as their numbers went from 7 to nearly 20 after the earthquake when relatives came from PAP.

When Bill and Jesse returned to Haiti, the truck we, nurse Terry Gribble, and another friend had gone together to buy during the first trip was not working properly. While Bill was in the states, it had been used and the axle had been broken. The driver had it fixed but the mechanics had not done it right and the 4 wheel drive, so vital for those trips up to the mountain villages, was not working.

Bill finally got it to some mechanics in Port au Prince last Friday. After spending all day there driving all over in taxis to find parts and watching several mechanics work on it, the 4WD was repaired after discovering that during the first fix, the mechanics then had actually left parts OUT when they reassembled it. It cost $1600 to fix! Prices in Haiti are out of sight. Gas is $7/gallon.

Jesse is picking up some Creole, fairly quickly. While Bill was at the mechanics, he walked around Port au Prince, talking to people and learning their stories. I’m hoping to get some of those to tell you before too long.

Mobile medical team

Tuesday, some of the doctors from the mission were going on a mobile mission trip to a tent city not far from Fonds-Parisien. Bill asked if they could go along in hopes that the girls could begin to observe and learn how to treat some of the simple things like scabies and lice that are so prevalent everywhere. So they used our truck for the “pharmacy” and set out. The picture to the left is of one of the first clnics that went to the mountains in Feb. and one below of a child with the problems we are hoping to teach the girls to treat. (Look closely at his head with scabies. Very common!)

Child waiting to see the doctor

As usual, doctors and medical teams are swamped. Things were so confusing as the people pushed and shoved, trying to get to the front of the line. Bill went to the front of part of the crowd and started singing, hoping to calm things down. Though he could not be heard very far, the few people who did hear seemed to calm down and some children started smiling. When he can get a smile out of malnourished sick child, it always blesses his heart.

Bill has been talking with a young Haitian man who had been a student in PAP until the earthquake. He has some specific ideas about how to go about organizing help for the mountain villages they have visited. We are hoping to go back and take a survey that the young man has written out for each family to find out their needs and then return to help meet those needs. We have to try to organize the thing in someway as just showing up with no plan for distribution tends to result in chaos and the stronger pushing the weaker out to get supplies.

All our lives we have prayed for strength for each day and have acknowledged that we can do nothing without the Lord in our lives. But as I am here in the states and Bill in Haiti, I am realizing the TRUTH of that more than ever. Bill and I are in a rather unique position as very few people have the time or ability to go to Haiti and stay for a period of time. We are willing.

We know that the only way anything will come of our efforts is if the Lord leads the way and helps it to grow. We are not “professional missionaries” but believe we can share the love of God with the Haitian people. We cannot comprehend helping 7 million people or 7 thousand people. But we can think about helping 7 to 70 people and having the blessings spread from there.

We are looking for a charitable organization that we can work under so that any contributions would be tax deductible. We are talking with one that is considering our situation and hope that that will work out. In the meantime, we ask that God will show us the way he would have us go. If any of you would like to help support our efforts, we would be very blessed. We thank those of you who already have.

I am making tentative plans to go to Haiti around the 1st of May for a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I am needed here as I take care of communications and things that need done. We would appreciate your prayers and we thank all of you who do keep us in your prayers. Unless the Lord builds the house, our labor will be in vain so we pray that His hand will be on us and that we would see clearly what we need to do. May God bless you all.