Email from Haiti Relief Team 01.20.10

Crazy day but full of blessings beginning with 6.1 Richter tremor at 6am which was a "different" but very effective alarm clock. Scott and Dimas found another hospital on this side of Haiti near where the center is. This was great but also heart wrenching. Teams from all over the world are working there in very tough conditions, Korea, Germany, USA, and others all pitching in with small supplies, very un-hospital like conditions. Post op recovery means a blanket on the dusty floor, there were many many people with amputations etc and post op infection
is a grave issue.

However with this hospital hook up we went back to the school from yesterday AM with our van and a pickup truck and collected the eleven year old girl we saw with a broken femur, two very ill elderly people and another woman The short video I sent earlier was of the truck ride to the hospital carrying these folks.

After noon we reloaded supplies and went back to Delmas, the camp where I emailed last night where the four houses collapsed. We went back for a lady named Madame Monique who had the deep infected gash in her thigh. We treated her again and convinced her to come to the hospital with us which was interesting because she lived on the wrong side of a mountain of rubble. With a very serious infected rent in her mid thigh she got up and walked with support to and over the rubble. I think when Scott told her she was too beautiful to lose her leg she got motivated. We took her and another elderly man named Monsieur Joseph who had two broken ribs and was having a hard time breathing to a field hospital run by a team from Belgium who took them in and took care of them. With his breathing issue and her infected leg, the Belgian team certainly will have saved them.

We then went to another "forgotten” camp in Delmas where we treated a bunch more folks with usual wounds, contusions and so forth. However there were some real issues including a little boy with a nasty cut across his head and eye, a woman with broken ankle and leg, and a beautiful little girl who had suffered a burn wound before the quake but the dressings hadn't been changed in three weeks. We took them plus the little one's mamas back to the Belgians who were again just amazing. They just grabbed those babies and hugged them and took them into the hospital.

Have no idea what media is saying but these people are really amazing. They have shown us so much courage, have been so grateful and open to us, even trying to be patient with my broken French. Even when we have seen tempers flare or frustration bubble up, people calm down fairly quickly. They are living in small communal kind of "family" arrangements and people seem to be sharing resources and helping each other. When we pray for them in the name of Jesus they are so
grateful and many are crying out to Jesus when we pray. We’re going to sleep now on the roof under incredible starry sky feeling so humbled by God and His mercy.