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.

Email from Haiti Relief Team 01.19.10

The first camp we served this morning had about 500 people staying there, good walls, gate and people who worked there when it was a school serve to man the gate and keep security. Served probably 20 people there with wound care and pain relief. This was a controlled camp so we brought a large cargo duffel of water and food which the committee running the place will dole out as needed. Beautiful little girl with clearly fractured leg we will pick up tomorrow and take to clinic. With every person we treat we pray for them and share the gospel. After reprovisioning we went back out and asked our interpreter and driver to take us to a camp of more "forgotten" people where they don't have as good an organization as the first camp. There are many, many of these camps where no one has been in at all and the people are trying to make do sleeping in parks and so on. They brought us to a neighborhood in Port au Prince called Delmas which was just crazy, people everywhere on the street, little markets set up to try and offer food etc. We went to side street called Delmas 34 where 4-5 houses collapsed together and treated maybe a dozen people with cuts and lacerations. Scott also treated a woman with a deep gash in her leg. We are hoping to go collect her tomorrow to take her to a clinic. Last camp we went to was Delmas 32 which is basically a new street market which was hard to drive through. Then we turned into an alley also crammed. When we got to back of alley there was a square filled with maybe 125 people who had received no aid yet at all. This was an intense stop. We spent about two hours there treated wounded. It was stressful at first because the people really pressed in on us, basically just because we were the first ones to them. However the people were so thankful we asked four or five times and people backed up. We treated somewhere between 40 and 50 people with minor cuts and scrapes up to severe cuts of deep lacerations. Scott treated a man named Louis Charles who had an open skull fracture, basically a five inch long gash in his head. We basically have triage and med supplies so Scott did an amazing job cleaning him up, effectively put his head back together and then bandaged him. However our interpreter told the man he must find a hospital or else the infection would kill him. God provided as He has at every step. We were starting to run out of gloves and gauze to the point we were going to have to say no more people. But just as gloves ran out we finished the last person! We left feeling drained, hot and dirty but also so blessed. We drove about a km when God provided again when we passed a Red Cross triage station. Scott leapt at the notion of getting Louis Charles there. We inquired and a team of Red Cross from Colombia said we could bring him. We prayed on way back to Delmas that we could find him. We did, and brought him to the field hospital where a team of doctors from Spain took him in. Before we left the doctor told us he didn't need neurosurgery so they would thoroughly clean his skull fracture, suture him and give him antibiotics. We were just overwhelmed by how God moved us around the city, brought us to Louis Charles, brought us and then him to a field center where volunteers from around the world could treat him and almost certainly save his life. We each, I think, view him as the picture of the One Life, we all came hoping to watch God save. There are so many more. We are hoping tomorrow to pick up some of the people we saw with fractures and take them to the Red Cross field hospital who said they would look at anyone we can get there to them. All in all people have been fairly calm. They have been very receptive to us so far and have been very appreciative. My somewhat remembered French has actually served me really well conversing with people about their wounds and praising God. It's astounding how quickly after this terrible disaster the Haitian people are rallying themselves to deal with basic needs of surviving. We are halfway through the med supplies but are praying for some mercy from doctors, hospitals and such back in the US to provide more for shipping down here when the next team comes down. We also need donations to cover costs for air and other provisioning for the next teams. God has also provided us with contacts as interpreters and drivers which is critical. We basically figured out the logistics pipe to work supplies in through Santo Domingo.