Looking Over The Devastation – Making Preparations – Praising The Lord
Last night (Saturday) some of the team members brought in money to be used for the disaster victims. I have also received e-mails stating that people were sending in donations. The amount of money collected so far is a little over $3000.00. Praise the Lord! Some people said that there would be more money after Sunday. I won’t know how much until Tuesday when George and I go back to port to see if we can obtain the paperwork for the truck. While there, we also plan to buy some more food with the funds we receive. We are having trouble finding beans right now so we are buying spaghetti and macaroni. We also hope to be able to buy some vegetables. We will know more of the needs after we have spent some more time in the area and let God tell us what He wants us to do.
As a side note, to give you some idea about the cost of food here, a 100 lb. bag of rice runs about $37.00, a 100 lb. sack of beans is about $65.00 and a box (6 one gallon jugs) of cooking oil is about $37.00. You can see that $100.00 buys only a sack of beans and rice!
The team got up Saturday about 6 a.m., had a great breakfast at the CSI mission house in Port de Prince, loaded up the truck and were on our way to Z’Orangé by about 7:30 a.m. On the way we stopped and picked up our interpreters (Simon, Jimmy and Pastor Wisney) and our cook (Ginette), who I am blessed to have work with us. They are wonderful people and I consider them my Christian brothers and sister. We arrived at Z’Orangé around 11:00 a.m., unloaded the truck, set up our cots, and unpacked the trunks. Ginette fixed lunch (Turkey sandwiches, chips and a cold coke) for us. I spoil the mission teams with cold cokes (or am I just spoiling myself). After lunch, Pastor Dorleon took us to a place about 20 minutes away where a creek flooded and destroyed about 6 houses in this one area. He told us of one lady who was in Port-au-Prince now receiving mental help because she lost her husband and her house. Another man and wife lost two houses and all their papers of ownership of their land. It will be very, very difficult to reclaim this property without proof of ownership. All they have now are the clothes on their backs. Their son, who was asleep when their house literally fell apart (houses or huts here are made of stone mostly held together with limestone), was swept away but was able to climb a tree to save his life.
On our way back to Z’Orangé we were talking about how hard it is for us to understand how it must be feel to lose everything even though we had seen it with our own eye. Sometimes we think we have so many problems but we don’t realize that most of the time we don’t have any real problems in comparison to something like this.
After we got back a few of the men started working on the truck fixing some minor problems while the rest of the team started putting together packages of medicines to be used by the medical team tomorrow.
We had dinner about 5 p.m., and church was supposed to start at 5:30 but the rain came. Since it is difficult for people to come when it has been raining, because of the mud, we delayed church until 6:30. People will walk from as far as an hour away or more just to come to church. There was a small group at church, I would say a little over 50 people, but the Haitian people love to sing and praise the Lord. After a time of worship, Will Tiller preached a powerful message of the love of our Savoir.
After church there was a time of testimonies. Betty Summer (Will’s mom) started out and then Andrew Wheatley shared. We also had two of our interpreters (Pastor Wisney and Simon) tell us a little of their walk with the Lord. I love this time because I feel it is when we really get to know each other. George Truelove closed us in prayer.
Tomorrow will be the beginning of the medical clinic, VBS and the hut-to-hut. It is going to be a great day in our Lord!
Once again, thank you for your prayers.
PS – We were stopped by the police today at a roadblock and they allowed us to go through with a smile, without even looking at our papers.
