Bonswa…
Today Pastor Guercy, his brother Bookson, and I made it up to the Gonaives area. This area is in the Artibonite Department, which is where the cholera epidemic started last October. As I talked to Pastor Guercy about this I found that the epidemic appears to be actually worse than back in October…it is just not talked about very much. With the rainy season ramping up the cases of cholera are ramping up as well.
Our first stop was at our village in Fayeton (see below). Fayeton has an orphanage, a school, a church, a medical clinic and a larger bakery. We are rebuilding the school to replace the second floor, which was constructed poorly. The new structure will be one story and will house both primary and secondary children.
Above is the layout of our facility and below is a picture of the construction progress on the new school that will be ready for use when the school year starts back up in October.
After visiting the school and orphanage we held our meeting with the construction firm that works for the government running water lines. They will be putting a water line out to the Fayeton facility so that we have good water for the children there. The meeting was held in the way that we run our meetings here in Haiti. I briefed Pastor’s Guercy and Woodman on the issues that I needed resolved and let them go into the meeting. We have found that whenever Anglos show up the price triples. We had an estimate for the project but I found a few errors in their calculations. The construction firm will be reworking the estimate and we should be able to move forward around the beginning of next month.
From here we went to our facility in Mapou and did some measurements of a new piece of property that we recently purchased. At Mapou we have a church, an orphanage, and a school. Currently the orphanage is a wing attached to the church. Our plan is to build apartment style orphan homes on the new property so that we can move our 126 children into these homes and provide them a better environment. Now comes the challenging part of the project…raising funds to pay for the homes. Keep this in your prayers because we need to move quickly in order to meet some new laws that have been put into place here in Haiti regarding orphan care.
I have had the opportunity over the last 15 years to do short-term missions trips to Mexico (at least a dozen times), Thailand (5 times), and now Haiti. The one thing that is constant in these activities is change. Today was no different. As we were heading back to our guesthouse in Carrefour we found out that one of our children in the orphanage in Fayeton had to be admitted to the hospital and was diagnosed with an urgent need for a blood transfusion. Below is a picture of this precious little child.
Apparently he is having a problem with his liver and needed the blood and will be on some medication for a while. The nearest supply for blood is Port-au-Prince, which is probably about a 4 to 5 hour round trip. We went back to the orphanage and shared the problem and the solution with the older children (over age 16). Four of them, two of the housemothers, and Bookson came to the hospital with us to give blood for the child. The latest report is that he is doing much better and is sleeping well with medication being given by IV. Thanks to those of you that got our prayer request and were praying for him this afternoon and evening.
It is days like today that give me vivid reminders as to why I am doing this work in Haiti. It is not about the homes being built…even though this provides a family a safe place to live. It is not about the larger buildings being built…even though churches, schools, orphanages, and other buildings are needed to help the Haitians start new lives. It is about each individual, each child, each mother, each father, each widow, that we (you as well) can touch in the name of Christ as Jesus said in Matthew 25:35-36, ‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’
Thank you all for support ESMI and me personally so that I can do these things to those in need. Without you I would not have been here today.
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