{"id":833,"date":"2010-04-26T22:47:36","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T03:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/?p=833"},"modified":"2012-06-23T23:06:13","modified_gmt":"2012-06-24T04:06:13","slug":"first-medical-mission-to-the-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/?p=833","title":{"rendered":"First Medical Mission to the Mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"

2nd Haiti Trip – Vol. IV<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before I start this week\u2019s update I would like to make a correction on last week\u2019s update.\u00a0 I write these from Bill\u2019s verbal reports and Jesse\u2019s written ones and I don\u2019t always get the story straight.\u00a0 When they took the tents to Port au Prince, Dottie only received about a dozen and the rest were given to family members of friends from Fonds-Parisien.\u00a0 Not a terribly important distinction but I hope to give the correct idea of what we are doing.<\/p>\n

On Monday the 19th\u00a0Bill and Jesse headed into the mountains at 5 am along with several of \u201cthe girls\u201d, Jolius (pronounced Joo-lee-us), a medical student from the mountain village they were going to, and \u201cDr.\u201d Elisabeth, a medical student who was the only one of her class who survived the earth quake at her school in Port au Prince because she had left class to go to another room and was able to jump out a window. \u00a0\u00a0A piece of concrete hit her face and she has scarring but she survived.<\/p>\n

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“Dr.” Elisabeth<\/p><\/div>\n

They drove as far as they could and left the truck at someone\u2019s house.\u00a0 There were supposed to be some mules to help take up their gear and supplies but they weren\u2019t there at the time so they headed up the mountain with Jesse and another young man carrying extra things being the \u201cgoats\u201d as Jesse called it.\u00a0 Eventually, some of the rest of the party came with the mules that finally were brought to help.\u00a0 It was a fairly grueling climb.\u00a0 The \u201cgirls\u2019 were mostly wearing flip flops which are difficult to walk in over such terrain.\u00a0 It cooled off nicely which was a blessing.\u00a0 Jesse said they saw women carrying 45-50 lb. sacks of concrete on their heads.\u00a0 They\u2019ll carry them 5-6 hours to their villages in the mountains to build something!<\/p>\n

They finally reached Jolius\u2019 village of Pays-Pourri about 11am.\u00a0 They met his family, had a meal, and went to the school to set up a clinic.\u00a0 Jolius had called ahead so people from the village were waiting.\u00a0 They had been handed numbers to try to create some order but when the team got there, it was the usual mayhem, pushing, and shoving to get into the room for treatment.\u00a0 They finally came to understand that most of the people didn\u2019t know their numbers and so had no idea what they meant.\u00a0 Jesse\u2019s \u201cpeople\u201d talents were put to good use as he talked, cajoled, poked, and prodded to get them into line.\u00a0 He can usually win them over so they don\u2019t get too upset.<\/p>\n

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Jesse doing crowd control at the clinic<\/p><\/div>\n

The team saw over 90 people the first day.\u00a0 Jesse\u2019s observation was that if Haitians were educated about hygiene and had a good diet, it would solve 90 percent of their ailments!\u00a0 A quote from Jesse:\u201cThe spirit and countenance of the mountain people was much more positive and the fact that\u00a0they work harder than I thought was humanly possible to survive instead\u00a0of begging for handouts was very refreshing. With good hand tools the\u00a0people there would be capable of gardening an incredible amount of\u00a0land working it by hand!\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That evening, Bill and Jesse went back to the school to have an \u201cFFH\u201d meeting (Future Farmers of Haiti).\u00a0 They tried to find out what the needs of the people were.\u00a0 It was difficult as the translator they had was not very fluent in English.\u00a0 They were trying to arrange a system where we could provide the seed as some of them don\u2019t have the money for the seed and they would sell us some of their produce.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know exactly how it will all work, but we feel it is really important to work on this as these people will work to help themselves!\u00a0 They hope to go back up soon with a good translator to be able to communicate better.<\/p>\n

The school in the village was started by a couple of people from Canada and the US.\u00a0 From what we were able to understand, they try to pay some Haitian teachers who can read and write to teach the children.\u00a0 They ask that the children pay $5\/year to help with supplies but even as cheap as that is, there are children that cannot pay and therefore don\u2019t get to go!\u00a0 Just like in the chaos of the line, there are so many things a person can\u2019t do if they don\u2019t even know their numbers!\u00a0 Bill wants me to contact the folks that started it and see what we can do to help as so many people want to learn but have no way to do so.<\/p>\n

After treating more people the next day, it was time to head back down the mountain.\u00a0 The Haitians insisted that they find a horse or mule to carry their gear back down.\u00a0 There is always a lot of discussion and arguing.\u00a0 Finally, Bill quit talking, put his pack on, and headed down the mountain.\u00a0 Jesse headed out also, though on a different path to get back to the truck.\u00a0 It was quite the journey he made with\u00a0\u201cthe fun\u00a0of traversing some pretty great boulders, sliding down some sweet, water\u00a0formed slides, and in one spot grabbing a cactus as a handhold on my\u00a0way down the hardest drop off. Not the brightest!\u201d\u00a0Jesse made it in two hours.\u00a0 Everyone else took three.<\/p>\n

At the house this week the ditches for the water lines from the Mennonite hospital have been dug and the pipes put in.\u00a0 The gates for the compound have been installed making the house much more secure.\u00a0 The electrical transformer is in so hopefully the loop to the house won\u2019t be long in coming though the electricity supply is spotty.<\/p>\n

Bill called me one morning just to tell me to look up a song on the internet by Josh Groban, You Raise Me Up.\u00a0 I did so and it is beautiful!\u00a0 He also asked me to find the scripture about \u201cHe who does not work does not eat.\u201d\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t remember which book of the Bible it was in.\u00a0 He said it is really amazing how people will sit around all day doing nothing but will sing hymns all evening!\u00a0 Bill is trying to teach the Haitian friends he has made.\u00a0 They are very religious but\u00a0 don\u2019t seem to have many basic concepts that are vital to living together and being the church.<\/p>\n

Please keep us in your prayers as we seek specific direction for helping the farmers and children of the mountains and for how to go about teaching people down below about living their lives for God and each other.\u00a0 Everyday brings new challenges.\u00a0 We are just willing hearts seeking to serve.\u00a0 Thank you for praying for us and for your support.\u00a0 God bless you all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2nd Haiti Trip – Vol. IV Before I start this week\u2019s update I would like to make a correction on last week\u2019s update.\u00a0 I write these from Bill\u2019s verbal reports and Jesse\u2019s written ones and I don\u2019t always get the story straight.\u00a0 When they took the tents to Port au …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=833"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":842,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions\/842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmercy.org\/WordPress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}