Our family has been planning on turning the day to day administration of the clinic over to another couple named Matt and Sheri Giesbrecht from Belico California. They arrived in June and have been studying creole and learning the ropes here. We feel so blessed and it seems they are a great fit. Matt is an RN, and their talents and experience are perfect for the position and I feel the transition is going well. We have been working on some paperwork to become Haitian citizens, and even though it is not completed, we now plan to go back to Ontario on Dec 13 to spend more time there. We foresee that we will continue to be involved here, though. Our family is trickling back to Ontario already. Trev and Mirlene left a year ago, and Zack, who is 21, went back in June of this year to start his apprenticeship in welding, machining, and metalwork. Cam, 17, just left here a few weeks ago to work for his uncle Anthony in harvest time. So now with our two nurses who live with us, our family dinner table is down to 7 place settings. We love life here and will miss the clinic, these dear people, and this land.
The clinic here was blessed by having a Radiologist (Shelly Cederberg from Michigan) come and spend a few days with us, training to do sonograms. Our machine functioned well and it was amazing to see what all can be discovered by ultrasound. Shelly says she saw things here in Haiti that she has never seen in America! Like worms in stomachs, football size cysts, late stage cancer, etc. Matt, nurse Kay Wedel, and our Haitian nurse Chrystelle did well and learned a lot. They are doing sonograms on their own now and examining the unborn babies, diagnosing kidney stones, ovarian cysts, liver inflammation, and just a host of things. It is also very useful for guiding long needles to do aspirations (draining up to a gallon of fluid from abdomens) etc. It is a very useful tool.
A while ago we had a triple blessing at the clinic. one evening a lady WALKED to our house from 30 minutes away and told us she had just delivered a child at her house but hadn’t delivered the placenta yet and so she wanted our help. Ok, let’s go to the clinic! So when we get there, we detect another child about to be born! Great! We have twins! So after breaking her water again, a man-child was born. I went to the office to prepare something and soon Chrystelle comes running in and says “a foot is now sticking out!” And Chrystelle has this wide eyed excited look and huge grin (that you’d have to know her to understand), and so we had to break the water yet again and a girl is born. Triplets! The family said they were going to name them Mary, Martha, and Lazarus! It was awesome and the mom was so strong and has cared for these kids very remarkably well. We gave them some milk formula when things started getting tough to keep up, but they are all doing great. Candace went and visited the home one time and found the three clean and well-clothed bundles lying in a row on the bed and mom reading her Bible.
We have had some very frustrating and disappointing situations too. One of our neighborhood ladies has a fist-sized ball hanging off the side of her abdomen. very infected and painful. We Ultrasound it and could not determine what it was that is getting infected and felt she really quickly needed to get an operation. Then we cannot find anyplace that will do it for her. Everywhere we took her they just give her a runaround and keep referring her on to other doctors who sell her a bunch of meds and tell her to go to the next. Finally a couple months later we connected with some visiting American surgeons who came to another hospital and they did it. Found out it was a large fatty growth of unknown origin. It’s just so frustrating trying to get quick help for poor people.
There is so much more we could write about but you have a little picture again. We still see just under 2000 patients a month, and last month we delivered 15 healthy babies.
On Sunday morning as I was walking to church, I was meeting people coming and going to churches all over the place, some to the Catholic, some to the Baptist, some to a prophet for profit, and some to a local preacher who is known to stand at the church door with a stick and spank his latecomers. So many different views of who God is and how to serve Him. It made me sad that the Devil has had such success at dividing people into different deceptive paths. (The Devil doesn’t do addition or multiplication but is very good at division.) Many people hardly know who or what they serve, or what that means to love God with our whole heart, mind, and soul, and love our neighbor as ourselves. Everyone here recognizes Gods existence, but it seems so few really know Him or the tranquility that Jesus gives us. Pray that the Gospel light will shine clearly in the midst of darkness and lots of gray. The clinic example of an anesthetic injection often comes to mind. The devil is trying to numb us all so that he can do his work. He wants to give us his injection and then he can work at destroying us without us hardly knowing what’s happening. Sometimes he gives us a local anesthetic and ultimately wants to put us to sleep completely so that he can operate and remove our conscience, heart, and soul without us even feeling it. Let’s not let him get close enough to give us those injections!
I don’t want to paint a negative picture of Haitians and their unity and faith… because I am often impressed favorably with them too. I see LOVE when they sit so close they overlap onto each other even though there is plenty of empty space on the bench. I see CARE for each other when I see a sister reach up and tidy up the hair, patting it in place, even changing a clip, or adjusting the collar of the sister sitting in from of her in church. I see UNITY of brotherhood when as soon as church is done they all enthusiastically shake hands saying “my brother” “my brother” as they go from one to the other. I see FAITH and TRUST when they resign themselves to the hand of God when they feel they cannot do anything more to improve their lives or their children’s lives, and as hurricanes come and wreck all they have worked for and they have no insurance to fall back on. I appreciate how a small thing like a chicken walking around on the rostrum and pooping on the floor and then walking out, didn’t even distract them from listening to the preaching of the Word of God. I think only we whites even took note of it! Deacon Todd and Donna Schmidt are still here as church missionaries. We are so glad they came back here for another term!
Ok, my next email in a couple days will talk about the Hurricane Matthew that tore a strip through Haiti. We went to the disaster area and ran a mobile clinic in Abricot by one of our churches.
We thank all of you donors for standing with us and making this medical help to Haitians possible. It’s your work in that sense and we feel humbled to be a part of what God is doing.
We implore your prayers…
- For wisdom in how to best help people in extreme poverty
- For protection
- For our paperwork to advance quickly
- For the clinic funding to continue
May God Bless Haiti and… actually… the whole wide world!