A Day In Haiti Is Never Boring
I awoke to Pastor Chuck knocking at my door asking me if I had ever had kidney stones. He wasn’t looking too good. Unfortunately I have had them about five times. With the pain he had, it seemed as though he had a kidney stone. At first I was going to take him into Port, but I knew that all they would do was put him on pain relief medication and fluids. We had two doctors with us and they agreed so they gave him some medication. Shortly after that a group of us laid hands on Pastor Chuck and George said a prayer of healing for him. Within minutes Pastor Chuck had a smile on his face and looked perfectly fine. Betty, a nurse practitioner, told him that there was no way the medication had time to take affect. Hallelujah to our King! Pastor Chuck felt fine for the rest of the day. Our Lord is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He is still in the miracle business.
George, Joe and I got up early and went into Port to cash a check to buy some food, send information to update the web site, and to give Edner some money needed for the truck paperwork. Because several churches and individuals responded after hearing about the effect of Hurricane Noel, we were able to cash a check for $5,000! I believe there will be more in the office in Fort Walton Beach when I return. I can send this to Pastor Dorleon through Edner. God is so, so good! Everything was going well until Edner told us that the paperwork would not be ready until 12 or 1 o’clock. We needed to be in a village called Tetayan before 3 p.m. because it is market day there and they would be closing by then. I thought for about a second and told George and Joe that we weren’t going to wait for the paperwork because I knew that in Haiti that if they tell you it will be 12 or 1 o’clock they really mean “tomorrow”. So we left.
We got to the market about 1 p.m. and started buying beans, rice, flour, sugar and corn. It is such a pleasant experience buying things at the market with about 50 people yelling at you to buy stuff from them . . . NOT! It is total confusion. Some of you may remember what it was like on market day “back in the day”. There are hundreds of people from all over the area there. After about two hours we were ready to leave. The only problem was that about half of the market wanted a ride up the mountain. Finally, after spending about 20 minutes getting people off the truck, we were on our way.
When we got back to Z’OrangĂ© there was some confusion with the clinic. People were trying to push their way through the doorway and others were handing babies through the windows to be seen. I explained to Pastor Dorleon that this kind of behavior was unacceptable and that we would stop the clinic unless he explained to the people that they had to be orderly. Things quieted down and the medical team finished out the day.
Rick, Andrew, Kenny and JJ went out hut-to-hut with Jimmy, the interpreter, and again had several people accept Christ. Everyday people have come to the Lord. It is really awesome to watch the Lord work. In the afternoon, Kenny, JJ, Keenan, Kevin and Pat went out. They saw another Voodoo priest and spent some time with him. This area has several Voodoo priests and most of them are under Daniel.
Pastor Chuck preached that night and delivered a great message, and afterward, in our living area, we had a time for team members to share their testimony. Every night I look forward to this time because we really get to know each other and see the similarities of our lives. The main similarity is that Christ delivered us from the darkness.