Teachings from the Trail

Recently a small mission team from my chuch went to Haiti on a medical mission. My friend Randy sent the letter below summarizing the team’s amazing experience and God’s providence. It gives us all an inside look at life in Haiti today.

Hi Everyone,

We’re home safe, sound, and in many ways changed. After my experience in Haiti, there is no possibility that a person could go there and experience what we did and not come home changed in a dramatic way. I have had the opportunity to travel to several places in the world, but nothing prepared me for what we were to experience once we arrived. As we all know, the news media tends to embellish and sensationalize things to make the news more gripping and to fit their agenda. What I saw in Haiti was the opposite; the media had not done justice on how truly impoverished they were. For the first time, I saw worse than what had been reported. We arrived in Haiti on Friday and it wasn’t until Wednesday that I was finally able to accept what I was witnessing. Yes, it took five days for it to fully sink into my heart. It wasn’t the damages from the earth quake that was so tough to get a grip on it, but instead it was the normal, daily conditions of the Haitians. We as Americans take our lives for granted. We truly have no idea how well we have it until we step out of our comfort zone, just a short 700 miles south of Florida and there we find the worst living conditions on earth.

One story I heard that really touched my heart was this. Many people are forced to live in tent cities. These tents are even set up in the median between the streets. As we speak, it is the rainy season as it can sometimes rain all night. During these long nights, mothers must stand the entire time, holding their precious, sleeping children protecting them from the wet, muddy ground. It breaks my heart seeing people walk through debris and garbage covered streets and not think twice about it as this is their normal, daily life. On a positive side, I have never been anywhere in the world that I have felt as welcomed as I did in Haiti. It was great to be able to talk with some of the people in the tent cities and the clinic and to be able to feel a real sense of genuine love from deep inside of their being. All in all, this has to be one of the greatest trips I have been on with all that was accomplished and all that was experienced.

Many of you have already heard but for those who haven’t, our first full day in Haiti was blessed with nothing short of a miracle from God. We went to the field hospital south of Port au Prince. A baby had been brought there gravely ill with pneumonia. The Dr’s prognosis was that the baby would not survive the night. Baby Edyson’s lungs were totally filled with fluid and all the oxygen that was being pumped into him was going into his abdomen instead of his lungs. Sharon, one of our team nurses, prayed for Edyson as she listened to his chest, concerned for his life. Our team continued the rest of our activities that day and as we were leaving, the Dr again was expressing his fears for Edyson’s ability to make it through the night. We asked if we could go and pray as a team for him and so we did. As we were praying, Edyson opened his eyes big and bright and his oxygen level went to 100%. This is better than normal we found out. By the next morning, the Dr had called the people in charge at World Wide Village and wanted to let them know that our prayers for Edyson had worked and that he was breathing on his own and that it was nothing short of a miracle. How’s that for the start of a week?

Another very big highlight was when we arrived in Luly to offer a “free clinic” for the community. It was decided that the nurses, including my daughter Amy (a nursing student) would be seeing patients, diagnosing ailments, and prescribing medications….essentially they were going to be Drs. Not feeling ready for this type of responsibility, this freaked Amy out a bit (that is stating it mildly). She assumed she would be assisting the doctor taking temps and blood pressures (which ended up being Adam’s job and he too was taken out of his comfort level by being asked to do something he had never done before.) Amy’s fear needed to be put to rest, so there was some time spent in prayer and fears were calmed a bit. As the day progressed, I was able to watch her grow from fear to ability to handle the patients’ ailments and issues with complete knowledge and understanding, but was even more blessed as I watched knowledge go from her head to her heart where she was able to not only treat the ailments, but also share the love and compassion of Jesus with them. It was a moment that would be great for every father to witness in his child’s life. Talk about a proud papa! Now I have a greater understanding of how God feels about each of us as he watches us grow and develop.

Our last full day in Haiti we visited a school that was damaged during the earthquake and because of this, the kids were attending a school made of woven banana leaves for walls and tarps for the roof. It was a blessing to be here as we were able to provide the kids with free examinations, worm medications, and register them for potential sponsorships to help with the expenses for education and one meal a day. I’ve seen these programs, but to be part of one in action was quite an honor

I am sending along some pictures that show a bit of what we were up to as a team and what your prayers and support helped accomplish. Thanks to you we were able to supply the clinic in Luly with hundreds of dollars worth of medications that in the US would have cost thousands. All of us were asked to do something that pushed us a bit out of our comfort zone as we helped the people in Luly. Doug was a pharmacist, Adam was a triage nurse, Amy was a doctor, Sharon was a doctor, and Randy….Well they all just said Randy is being Randy. I think that was a good thing.

May God bless you all as richly as you helped not only bless us, but the way in which you also blessed the people of Haiti with your kindness and generosity.

Thanks again,
Randy and Amy