Thank God that we are in Haiti. It is so incredibly wonderful to be back here. As we were landing, Randy and Chris were amazed and excited; Bruce and I felt like we were coming home. We are in Port au Prince staying with Catholic Relief Services. Chris has explained most of our activities in his post. We did have a great tour of town, but it is very discouraging to hear and see that nothing much has changed since we were here in March. Thousands of people still living in tents, but the tents are now tattered and worn. Its rainy season here so now the "tent people” are sleeping in mud and God only knows how the families living in tents made of sheets are doing. The food distribution has ceased and there are a lot of hungry, starving people and children. All of the buildings that fell or were damaged from the earthquake have not been touched. That means that there are still tens of thousands of dead bodies inside of them. Haiti is in dire need of every type of aid available; food, clean water, medicine, sanitation and the rebuilding of homes just to mention a few. But the most amazing aspect of Haiti is that the people continue to endure and they do this with smiles on their faces and faith in their hearts. The children who are living with their families happily come out with huge smiles on their faces just wanting us to play with them. They don’t complain that they are hungry or thirsty. They don’t mention that they have no toys or that their clothes are worn and torn, they just smile and are happy to have company. A perfect example was this evening when we were spending time with two 15 year old girls that have befriended us, Zanzie and LeKenna. After enjoying their conversations and they were getting ready to go to bed, they gave each one of us a kiss on the cheek and a hug and said “God bless you.” These beautiful young ladies living in extreme poverty with no change in sight are blessing us. They didn’t ask us for anything, didn’t complain that they were hungry or that one of them felt poorly because she has Malaria. Instead, they wanted to spend time with us and kissed us goodnight and wished US God’s blessing!!!! As they left, I couldn’t help but cry. There are no words that can explain what I felt, just the feeling of warm tears rolling down my face. It is my wish that God does truly bless them and their families.
I had the opportunity to speak to a Haitian doctor during dinner yesterday about the health care in Haiti. Of course he stated that the people don’t have insurance, so most care provided is free of charge. I explained that Bruce and I were interested in opening a woman’s and babies clinic in an attempt to cut down the infant mortality rate as so many children and babies die needlessly due to the lack of medical care. He agreed with the concept, but reminded me that they are not able to pay. I reassured him that we would never turn away any patient for any reason; we just wanted to assist in keeping more mothers and babies alive. We also talked about the village that we wanted to start where the 20-30 families living there could be self-sufficient from growing their own food to having a solar operated water purifier to building safe homes. The doctor was very interested and stated that he wanted to come out to Petit Goave as he believes that he be able to find us the land that we would need to start this. Even better, it would be donated to us!!!!! Life is good and God is great! We ended the conversation with him making plans to come and take us around Petit Goave and find land that would be suitable for what we would like to do.
We will be heading to Petit Goave tomorrow and so look forward to seeing all of the children that stole our hearts in March. Until then, please keep our team and the people of Haiti in your prayers. Au Revoir.
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