Scripture used by Haitian pastor in Port-au-Prince Church on Sunday February 7, 2010
Week 1: PORT-AU-PRINCE JAN 19, 2010
I leave for Haiti on a small jet with a team from Medical Teams International. We are given only a few short minutes to land and de-board. Each ‘slot’ on the tarmac is timed and accounted for. Air-craft quickly land and take off making room for the next arrival.
King’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince has about 25 beds…and new cracks in the walls that are being checked frequently by engineers. The building is yet unfinished. It wasn’t scheduled to open quite yet, but the earthquake changed that plan. Patients with broken bones, burns and unseen emotional trauma arrive in a constant stream. Many post-ops have their ‘bed’ outdoors in the dirt under the trees. Because of fear, many others would prefer to be outdoors. When the aftershocks come, they find their way outside… quickly. A young man in his 20’s is admitted, screaming in anguish and pain over his crushed great toe. The wound is infected. He will have to have an amputation. As I care for him, he breaks out in a familiar song, “This is the day. This is the day that the Lord has made, that the Lord has made. I will rejoice. I will rejoice and be glad in it”…He moans intermittently through the verses. This is the strength only God can give. I am amazed!
Week 2-BALOOSE, SUBURB OF PORT-AU-PRINCE
Dr. Steve, Carol, RN, and I are assigned to Baloose. It is estimated that anywhere from 2,500-4000 people are camping on the grass here at night. We have come to provide medical care. It is just one of literally thousands of IDP (Internally Displaced People) camps in and outside of the city. The night I arrive, I hear singing outside my window; I decide to go see where this ‘choir’ is practicing. As I walk down the hill, hundreds of people crowd the grounds. Standing and singings praises, their hands are lifted high in the warm night air. I will never forget the feeling of this night’s experience. It is a taste of heaven in the midst of a hellish nightmare. Only the touch of God can bring such a sweet melody to a thousand broken hearts.
Patients sit in chairs waiting all day to be seen by our little team. This is when I am reminded of the prayers being said on my behalf. I listen to countless heartbreaking stories. Jean, 25y, tells me how he crushed his finger while digging through the rubble of his home. I can smell alcohol on his breath and sense a profound despondency in his demeanor. As I suture his finger, I share the hope of Christ with him. He returns for wound care several days later with a huge smile on his face sharing that he surrendered his life to Christ. Tears of joy flow from my eyes.
Weeks 3 & 4-LAOGANE AND OUTLYING MOBILE CLINICS
I guess Laogane is pretty close to the epicenter. Getting there is a sport: trying to get through mobs of people, traffic and cracks in the pavement. In the midst of disaster relief, I find myself extracting teeth, with my audience of wishful patients growing each day. I am reminded that these people, in the midst of all their other suffering, are victims of chronic abscesses and tooth pain. Few of them have had any dental care at all before the earthquake.
We go even deeper into the rural areas to hold several mobile clinics. On 2 occasions, we actually hold clinic at the sight of voodoo temples. While we are treating the witchdoctor as a patient, our souls are being bathed with the sounds of worship from the tiny Christian church on the other side of the hedge. It is such an obvious example of the light dispelling the darkness.
Commercial flights to Haiti are supposed to begin again on the 19th of February…just in time to take me back. It was just too perfect a ‘fit’. As I return to the devastated nation I left behind, I am reminded of a Scripture: “BY MY GOD, I CAN LEAP OVER A WALL.” PSALMS 18:29
It seems so a propos in the lives of those Haitians in whom I saw such tremendous inner strength, strength that came from their unwavering faith in a God that has helped them “leap over a wall”…the wall that came crashing down upon them.
