Haiti
Sorry it has taken me so long to get this post up, but I’ve been busy since my return from Haiti. I was blessed to be asked to go with our Senior Pastor, Tim Hawks, and our Executive Pastor, Bob King, to Haiti. We left on February 9th and flew through Ft. Lauderdale. We took a charter twin engine plane from Ft. Lauderdale to Port-au-Prince on the morning of the 10th. We went directly to the Mission of Hope Haiti www.mohhaiti.org to meet the folks that we have become such close partners with in the past month. Our church has been placed in a unique position of orgainizing the medical mission trips to Haiti. We have worked closed with Texas Orthopedics, check out their blog at www.txortho.blogspot.com
This partnership has allows us to do very high level skilled surgery at the Mission of Hope in a sterile operating room that was outfitted and set up by the Texas Ortho gang. Many other medical supply and facilities donated supplies and personnel to this effort and to date almost $3,000,000 worth of equipment has been donated, not to mention the countless hours of time donated by the doctors.
I really don’t know where to begin. We spent a lot of time in Port-au-Prince and the devestation is unreal. I posted several photos above this post that should give you some idea of the devestation. However, these photos do not capture the smells and sounds. Our main focus was to develop a personal relationship with Brad Johnson, President of Mission of Hope, and to work on a long range planning strategy for our partnership with this group. We were successful on both counts and Brad actually came and spoke at Hill Country Bible Church this past week. Listen to his talk about Haiti, the history of MoHH and the future plans for this group at: http://sermons.myhcbc.com/ Click on the Mission of Hope Icon on the right side of the page.
After we met with Brad and others at the mission on Thursday, we spent Friday and Saturday going between the general hospital and the University of Miami Hospital looking for supplies and for folks that needed orthopedic help that was beyond what these two facilities were able to provide. We found both. There are so many people that are still suffering from fractures from the earthquake which was 30 days prior. Many are so terrified that they will lose a limb that they have not sought treatment and it is the very fear that kept them from getting treatment earlier that is causing them to lose limbs. The number of amputation that we saw was staggering. Many were children, the vast majority of which will die, as this culture has no way to care for those that can not contribute. It is a brutal truth about Haiti. They have a saying, lose a limb, lose a life.
The government has been neutered in this quake and only a handful remain. The president remains in power, but most if not all of the government building remain in shambles. It will be years before they can rebuild. Many talk about moving the capital, which is exactly what they need to do. It will never happen, but it would be such a good solution. They could just leave everything as is in PaP and start over. They are going to have to bulldoze 90% of the city anyway and then haul off all the debris prior to rebuilding, why not just start new somewhere else? I guess that is easy for us to say, if DC got hit like this, we’d probably want to rebuild right back in the same spot, right?
Anyway, our trip was life changing and I’d love to share more, but the kids are clawing at me and Nancy needs the computer. Hope the photos give you some idea of what it is like in Haiti. Blessings,
David
