Archive for the Missions
Friday, March 5th, 2010
Sewing for Haiti
Many of us find our hearts drawn toward the struggles for life in Haiti. But for various reasons, it hasn’t been the time for us to go.
I became acquainted with Real Hope for Haiti Rescue Center in the days soon after the earthquake. They have been working in Haiti since 1999, so they were already in place to provide relief after the quake.
Their ongoing work is primarily residential care and treatment of children with severe malnutrition, although if you page back in their blog to the days just after the earthquake, you read about doing what needs to be done for many people in physical crisis.
And there are even more children needing care now. How do they clothe dozens of kids and keep 50-60 young ones in diapers?
That’s the mission we can help fulfill from our homes–dresses made from pillowcases, diapers, and aprons from pillowcases for the nannies. At this post from their blog, there is a description of the need and links to patterns for the projects.
There’s also the mailing address in Minneapolis where supplies are being collected to fill a container. The deadline is soon–end of March.
So Talitha and I went thrift shopping today and came home with a dozen sturdy, colorful, clean pillowcases. She’s excited about the project, and I’m happy for her to have some practice time on the sewing machine.
For the name of Jesus among the children of Haiti!
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Update on Haiti
“We have two choices–to die fast or to die slow.”
Please take the time to watch this TV program. It’s a haunting, heart-wrenching look at the past 6 weeks, with difficult questions about how the future can be different than the past for Haiti.
Friday, February 12th, 2010
A hero in Haiti
Thinking about Haiti over the last weeks, I’ve gotten used to 2 words together –orphan and crisis.
Obviously, there are more words that crisis could be attached to. Here’s a biggie. Tuberculosis. Like the orphan situation, this was an epidemic even before the earthquake. TB is the second killer of Haitians, just behind AIDS.
In one TB hospital, Pierre-Louis Monfort was one of 50 staff nurses before the earthquake. Now he is the only person caring for all the patients who are left:
He scavenges the rubble daily for medicines and needles. He sterilizes needles using bleach and then reuses the bleach to clean the floors.
In his cramped clinic, eight of the sickest and most contagious patients lay on brown- and red-stained beds. He said he had lost count of how many more were sleeping in other pockets alongside the hospital. (read it all)
Here is one hero in the midst of calamity. “These people here are dying, but they keep me alive,” he said. “I know they are hurting more than me and not complaining.
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
Give us this day our daily bread
When I hear the words “food distribution” in a Haiti news report, my mind flashes to news photos of mobs of desperate people crushing each other to reach the limited amount of food.
What a contrast in this report from Callebasse, Haiti!
Look at the pictures. People desperately hungry, but waiting patiently. A list of the most needy, so they can receive food first. Then food left over. Church members will be hungry again soon. Shall the church save it against that day?
No. Their neighbors are hungry too. So the extra food is entrusted to church members so they can fan out into the community with daily bread in the name of the Bread of Life.
Will it make a difference in this community that the life-sustaining gift was received via the hands of the church? Lord, make your name sweet in Callebasse.
Monday, February 8th, 2010
Does the Gospel change a life?
Perfect love casts out fear. And that changes every practical daily activity.
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
I want to adopt. What next?
One of you commented about orphans in Haiti: “I just want to take at least one of those babies in my arms and into my house until order is restored, or even for the rest of their life.”
I can tell that many of you resonate with that desire to help, to be involved. You’ve written things like:
These kids have been through so much. I really hope red tape doesn’t get in the way of them starting over in new families quickly!
If there is ANYTHING we can do… We would love to share our family with these kids!I would love to try to adopt one of these orphans. I am just not sure how complicated the process is.
We have been planning on adopting in a couple years, but would love to accelerate that process if we can help care for these kids, but where do we start?
My wife and I have been seriously considering adoption for some time, but we don’t really even know where to begin.
If you come across any information regarding the adoption of these children, I would be very grateful to be informed.
Here’s the best information I’ve found. Please follow all the links to get the full picture.
This comes via the Christian Alliance for Orphans. I recommend that you bookmark their site and subscribe to their blog to stay abreast of the news about orphans. They’re one of my main sources for this kind of information.
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Some will see him soon, face to face
Dr. Steve Nelson is back home in Quito now. He wrote this email as he was leaving Haiti after 10 days at the Baptist Haiti Mission Hospital in Fermathe, near Port au Prince.
Day 11, Jan 25, 2010
We have been listening to generators for the whole time we have been in Haiti … at least during the hours that we were working. I don’t know when the lights will get turned on in Haiti again, but they aren’t yet. The Haiti International airport is no exception. We are in the airport … full of generators … waiting for the flight back to Florida [and then to Quito].
We are going to miss our Haitian friends … both the patients in the hospital and the ones who worked alongside us the whole 10 days. With many of these fellow workers we didn’t even manage to exchange much in the way of words … just gestures and smiles.
You were praying for a new way to get patients up to the hospital last time and while we were hoping for something slightly more comfortable than a truck, it was indeed a truck we settled for. They came four at a time – closed femur fractures most of them – receiving 11 new patients for surgery that next day. Five came the following day as we finished up some of the cases that had been here since the beginning but that we had put on hold until we had the hardware to do things right.
We did rounds this morning and then headed off down here to the airport. Word was four more closed femurs were on their way to the hospital. This pace could go on for weeks as hospitals unload those cases they can’t handle in-house. Samaritan’s Purse is committed to the long haul here and four more new medical people are on their way in to arrive this afternoon. They will replace our orthopedic surgeon and anesthesiologist that are moving out with us. Pray for more Family Practice docs and nurses.
I went through the wards and said goodbye to my patients last night. Brave little kids with amputations and fractured limbs and pelvis … the most hurting ones squeezed out a smile anyway, while the ones that were feeling better had a glowing one fixed on their beautiful faces already.
We didn’t get the stories of these folks … except here and there … there just wasn’t time (nor translators). Still, stories we read later will fit correctly/sadly with the faces and folks we remember. One amazing thing about being here is we haven’t seen the news about what is going on here … the big picture that is. “The forest for the trees” I guess.
The Billy Graham people told us this morning that amidst all this pain and chaos, amidst all this suffering and loss, about 70 people got a good look at the loving, compelling face and person of Jesus and decided to follow him. Some of those 70 might get to see Him face to face in heaven soon. There are lots of complications to come. We lost two young men this week to pulmonary emboli after successfully treating their injuries. More will follow, so it’s a joy to add these 70 to the equation regarding why this is sooo “worth it”.
We are now in an airplane headed to Ft. Lauderdale. People will be talking basketball and super-bowl … or is that over already? My oh my what a change this will be.
Thank you for praying.
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
On-the-spot report from Haiti
Email from Dr. Steve Nelson, part of the medical team from Quito, working at the Baptist Haiti Mission Hospital:
I’m listening to beautiful Haitian music roll up from the hills below us. Amazing … the people in Indonesia were singing the night after the earthquake too. It both soothes and brings tears through the day in the hospital too as we move from ward to ward. Seems everybody in Haiti knows how to sing.
A certain semblance of order has begun to show itself at the Haiti Mission Hospital … long days, welcome reinforcements and a increasingly steady supply of materials have allowed us to get through nearly 100 surgery cases and most of the patients that crowded the floors and hallways of the hospital when we arrived. The last surgery for today will probably be done by 8PM … a welcome change from the midnight schedules we kept the first few days … especially for our anesthesiologists who are obligatorily invited to ALL surgeries.
Still … it’s an eerie and surreal sort of calm because we know the town that borders the bay of Port au Prince that we can see from our compound still teems with untreated and in some cases unfound victims of this incredible tragedy. We are trying to open lines of transport from those areas of the city and from those hospitals where their surgeries have been limited to amputations .. limited by the sheer numbers of patients … limited by no electricity, no equipment, no sterilization. Meanwhile those that need surgical interventions other than amputations lay outside unattended, many dying of infections before they are ever seen.
Samaritan’s Purse will try to continue to equip and man this hospital and figure out ways to get patients here. In some ways … and of course relatively speaking … it is paradise here … cool in the evenings, high enough to be above the malaria zone, and safe from the increasing unrest in the center. We could proabably handle 20 or more new cases a day figuring that 90% of them would have to go to surgery. We just need to figure out how to get them here. Ten trucks over a road that rocks and rolls for an hour an a half when things are open … six if not. Or … two helicopters and ten minutes. Come on military!! Many of those patients after surgery and a few days of observation could go home and come back later for follow up procedures which would open beds (or floors) for more transfers. This pattern could go on for a long time … it appears Samaritan’s Purse is comitted for the long haul.
Pray we make the right decisions for the most people. Pray for the Billy Graham Evangelism team that is here trying to make sure each person has a chance to hear eternal life-providing Good News before and during our attempts to restore life and health in this realm. We are averaging about one death a day (two today) so there is lots of sorrow and tears to deal with too.
Thanks for holding us all up so strong and tender with your prayers.
Steve
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
Walking and riding through Port au Prince
CNN has posted some amazing panoramic videos of Port au Prince. Use your cursor to turn left or right to see the damage along the way.
Walking through a market and tent village
Riding in the neighborhood of the presidential palace
Riding through a mixed business/residential neighborhood
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Report from hospital in Haiti
Dr. Stephen Nelson from Bethlehem Baptist usually lives and works in Ecuador. Right now he is part of a team working at the Baptist Haiti Mission Hospital in Fermathe, about 20 miles outside Port au Prince.
One of his coworkers, Martin Harrison, posted this report of conditions there:
It’s a 100-bed hospital and we have at least 300 people here. When we got here there was only one doctor, he was almost falling asleep on his feet from exhaustion and was absolutely delighted to see us.
Injured people are lining the corridors of the hospital and about 50 are outside the gate waiting. We have some security to try and control things and if somebody comes in who is close to death we’ll take them in and treat them, otherwise, we’ve worked out a system where we treat priority cases first.
We’re getting a lot of people coming here because they’ve heard that this hospital is still standing. There are people coming down from the villages. We’ve heard of three villages that were completely flattened not far from here. One of these was a community of 2,000 people and every single house was destroyed. And people are coming up the mountain from the city too. Yesterday a truck full of injured people arrived.
The problem is that we’re beginning to run out of materials to treat broken bones, which is the most common injury we’re seeing. We’re trying to ask some of the organisations at the airfield for help with supplies. There’s no electricity either – we’re using a generator that works on diesel but this will last two days only. In terms of injuries, we’re seeing lots of people with gangrene too – it’s not a pretty sight.
It’s the dry season now and there’s no supply of drinking water. I’m a water engineer and I’m meant to be setting up a filtering system today to create a more secure water supply. Our water will be for the hospital initially, and if we have more, we’ll hopefully be able to release some to the community.
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Kodiak flying to Haiti
As I mentioned earlier, my nephew has been part of the design team for the Kodiak 100, a new sort of missionary airplane. He and my niece have been living in Sandpoint, Idaho, called there by God for this work.
Missionary Aviation Fellowship was one of the first organizations to take possession of a Kodiak. That was in mid-December.
Now, a month later, MAF’s expertise and long-term experience in Haiti is bringing efficiency to the logistics of the relief effort. In addition MAF has sent down two planes to shuttle supplies.
This week another plane will be sent. If you watch this video carefully, you’ll see that it’s a Kodiak.
So, Brenton and Sunny, here’s one more example of your work in Idaho reaching to the peoples of the world for the saving of lives now and eternally.
Saturday, January 16th, 2010
What is his story? update
I didn’t know the story of the boy in the picture. Today I know just a little more. But even he doesn’t remember his name.
