From the day of the quake one month and a day ago, our lives continue to change. We have made upteen trips to Port au Prince, for one reason or the other. Every trip reminds us of the horrible thing that happened here, but people are beginning to come to grips with it, and lives are returning to normal, even in the tent cities.
We were contacted by a group out of St Louis, Service International and we've been networking with them to get a foothold here. Their mission is to go into crisis countries, states, and help rebuild. Service International will be here for the long haul, they are still in the planning stage as to how they will work in Haiti. We have given them our three acres of property to use for the duration. It is my guess they will make it a refugee camp. In the meantime, they are bringing in three highly skilled doctors and four nurses, all of whom will stay at our place and work at St Nicholaus Hospital. Service International have also acquired housing right behind us, and will use it for teams coming and going in the near future. The vehicle that Family Harvest church bought for our ministry will be used by Service International to get around in. They have purchased the needed tires and battery for us. We will help them get all the employees they will need for their ongoing work. They will do construction work on our building to make it better.
An engineer by the name of Jeff Samida is with us for a few more days to show Haitians how to rebuild earthquake safe. They are listening and your dollars are going toward the purchase of the right materials for them to build. There is another construction man coming in a couple of weeks who has sent us a welding maching and generator that Gary is picking up today and a Methodist group has sent in tents so we can help a few get into temporary housing.
Many of our Haitian staff has family from Port au Prince living with them, we are albe to help give them extra food. For instance, Hormise, a teacher we hired in September who had been deported from the US because she didn't have the correct papers (discovered when her mother applied for a SS number for her) is now housing 20 people!! She barely makes enough money to feed she and her daughter. Feeding 20 is a big responsibility compared to feeding two. In Haiti, no one says NO. If family is in trouble and needs help, the answer is always yes. Pierre has three family members living with him in his two room house, wife and two children. He came yesterday with another family of three that came to him. He said, "I have no place to put them." We will help them find a place.
Our school wall is being torn down before it falls. It was bad but the earthquake made it worse so we will rebuild, making it quite safe.
The church we are rebuilding in Port au Prince, is going to be so much better than what they had. Pastor Gary believes it will cost 10,000 USD plus some before it's finished, but if another quake hits, this building will not kill anyone. Pastor Cesar has twenty people without homes, we will help rebuild.
In the meantime, Junior, age 11 is with us. He's going to school at El Shaddai and learning English (slowly but surely). It's fun having a youngster around amidst all these Americans coming and going. We pick up Diana and Brian Moreno tomorrow at the Dominican border, nurses who will work at the hospital. Then Wednesday, 19 people coming from Service International. It's going to be interesting to say the least.
The Tshirt campaign continues under the direction of Anthony Thompson, if you've not gotten your Tshirt yet, log on to Gesu Christo. com and purchase one. 100 percent of profit goes to this ministry.
Thanks to everyone who is praying and who has given. We could not maintain if people were not praying. I read a FB post from someone at Family Harvest saying a little boy prayed they'd find the people in the rubble. The teacher thought, how can that be, it's too late. The next day, one month from the quake, they found a man in the rubble alive, stating that a man in white gave him water. Could it have been the little boys' prayer in Tinley Park, IL? Our God hears and answers prayer and how fitting that is because yesterday Haiti prayed as a nation, and today they are there again, all over town, at the park, people are praying. God is working in Haiti.
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