Haiti Update #5

Greetings from Haiti,

Another day is finished here in Haiti and I can’t believe how fast it has gone by. I guess time fly’s when you are as busy as we are here.

This morning we headed out to the church compound to start another day of medical relief. Once we got the team set up there Pastor Brent from Promise Child, Joe Pedregrass from Tru Hope, and I headed over to Port-au-Prince to attend an NGO meeting on the UN headquarters base. It is amazing to see how God is with us on this trip. We parked right outside of the massive UN base and walked up to the check-in window and waited in line for a few minutes. As we were standing there a Haitian security guard who oversaw the entrance gate walked up to us and asked us if we were Americans (in perfect English). He told us that he lived in Miami for 14 years and loved America. He asked us where we parked and we told him just down the street… he told us to go get the car and he would let us into the compound. We sent Joe to go tell the guys to drive in and they flagged us right through security. Once in we found help to lead us through the maze of tents to the NGO registration tent.

As we walked around we saw that most of the large organizations including UNICEF, WFP, and World Vision have tents stationed in a specific location within the compound.

Once we registered the next step was to contact a “cluster leader.”  Each type of relief (food, water, health, education, etc) is divided into its own section or a cluster, with the leader supervising the operation. There are many meetings that take place on a daily basis for the various relief clusters.

We attended some meetings and talked to a LOT of people and found out a lot of information about various organizations that can help us out with medications and food.

We also connected with a lady who is with an NGO assigned to the Croix Des Bouquet (pronounced “Quada Bouquet” where we are located) region.  She is an Israeli and was here with an Israeli relief organization.  Much of their funding is coming from a larger organization called Operation Blessing.  At Crois Des Bouquet, their NGO set up a small clinic which they ran at the same time as us here in Crois Des Bouquet.  They have completed their time in the area and are leaving Haiti.  However, she felt that we should link up with Operation Blessing who were impressed with the needs of the local community in regards to their water needs and have a vision to bring water purification systems to every home in the area. Isn’t that amazing! Let me paint the picture for you. There is no clean water in this area except bottled water… which is too expensive for the common person to afford on a daily bases. There are about five working wells in the town of about 500,000 and due to the earthquake the well water has been contaminated and needs treatment for it to be safe to drink. Many of the people don’t have any treatment options and are forced to drink this water and are getting sick. So the fact that they have a heart to bring water purifying systems in this area is an amazing thing. We are in the process of connecting with Operation Blessing to figure out how we can work together in this effort.

We were not able to attend the food cluster meeting today but received all the contact information we need to network with the various food distribution centers in hopes of receiving food to be able to distribute to the people within Pastor Marcel’s church and community.

On a different note (but still in the context of food) we were able to purchase 10,000 pounds of rice for Pastor Marcel to distribute to his congregation. We crunched the numbers today and figured out some basic statistics… To feed a family (average size in Haiti is 5+) for two weeks (50 lbs bag of rice) costs $30 that works out to be about $2.14 per-day.

Well, that was my day today. I know it doesn’t sound to exciting on the “missions” front. But this was probably one of the greatest days we have had here in Haiti. The contacts that we made are amazing and have the potential to help us massively by providing us with much needed supplies.

The rest of the team had another great day serving in the clinic we have set up and saw probably about 70-80 patients today. We had some interesting procedures today with patching up sliced open fingers, draining a cyst on a ladies face, and prescribing much needed antibiotics and medicine for the people.

Tonight after dinner we were able to interview Pastor Marcel’s kids that he has adopted for Promise Child profile cards. Pastor Marcel has 15 kids that he has brought into his house and adopted (along with his 6 daughters… yep that’s 21 kids!). It was a fun time hanging out and talking with all of them.

Well, I think that is about it for today. Please keep us in your prayer as we finish up our last day of ministry tomorrow. We are all feeling tired as we have been running hard sense we left the States. The team is doing great and spirits are high as we are all excited and amazed at all the things that God has done.

I want to thank you for your prayers and your support.

God Bless,
Mike

Director
Saving Grace World Missions

For more information please visit:
http://www.sgwm.com
http://twitter.com/sgwmissions

“Reaching the Nations… One Soul at a Time.”