Day Two Complete

Good Evening! This is Kal H, Jon W, and Peter B (Rich B's Brother). We visited Arniquet and Port-Salut Orphanages today.


We had our busiest day yet seeing around 220 kids plus some adults providing continued nutritional support and antibiotics. Liz, Marianna, Nichole P, Nicole S and Mariam provided teeth cleaning for over 100 kids. Mike, Britney and Chase extracted over 30 molars as well. A very productive day! We worked for about 7 hours. We were incredibly blessed with a great lunch (at 3pm... Haitian Time) of fish, lobster, rice and black beans. God blessed us tremendously with a breeze and clouds this afternoon which was very restoring.


What we are finding is that there are very different needs at each orphanage. Some lack water while others lack food. The orphans visited this morning had severe malnutrition, were underweight, and a few had hair that had changed color to light orange because of severe dehydration. There were also several upper respiratory track infections.

The primary issue at the second orphanage was severe scabies with secondary infections. Beth, Erin, Ronnie and Matt had the pleasure of disinfecting their wounds and bandaging the worst ones. Doctor Gil actually had to lance a large abscess on upper arm of a 10 year old. Plenty of antibiotics were provided. Rich and Megan did yet another great job in the pharmacy.

Jon had a totally different experience from the rest of us as he suffered from a certain 'Haitian Sensation' which kept him at the mission house today. After feeling better, Jon walked around the village, discovering the incredible resourcefulness of the Haitians, from cleaning laundry to making food to constructing shelter. Americans generally live indoors, walled-in and isolated; Haitians live outdoors in relational community with family and friends.

What a great privilege it is to allow God to work through us to renew and restore this part of God's creation in doing our best to fix what is broken. These children are precious and the issues they suffer from are simple to address with consistent help from all of us who have more than plenty. Water, food, basic first aid and antibiotics would totally change their life. They are simply dehydrated and malnourished; we complain about what we have to eat and throw food in the garbage every night after dinner.

A tremendous task, but we have no choice but to act as Christians in renewing and restoring what God has made. God is on the move in Haiti and we pray God will be on the move at our home churches as well. Sacrifice over safety and security!

Tomorrow: Casa Major: 240 orphans to serve!