Some Cell Phones Working!

We got news this morning that the Voila cell phone system is working. However, there was only one Voila phone card available in the community! So, since, thankfully, Voila can be topped up on line, we are topping up a few phones on line and making them available at the front gate for people to try to call folks to see how they are. But we are having trouble connecting with the website. Probably a busy issue. Pray that we can get through.

Colin and Carla also have a chalkboard at the front gate where they are posting the names of those who have been confirmed alive and well.

Finally, there has been news on the radio that people with trucks are supposed to converge on Port-au-Prince to bring people back to their home areas since people are hungry and thirsty and there is nothing with which to feed them or give them drink. I foresee a huge traffic jam leading into Port from all directions, unless someone is directing this. Please pray for us as we consider if we should send a vehicle. We only have one reliable vehicle here (Since Greg and Barb have the other one in Port already) that is large enough to do any good. And this area needs to brace for the refugees. Please keep all these things in prayer.

Thank you so so much to everyone who is writing in with encouragement and prayers and offers of help. Gabi and I are trying to get to the emails as fast as we can, but they are coming in faster than we can answer them! Thanks for your love and prayers and encouragement. We will get an answer to you all just as quickly as we can. Keep checking here.

News from Greg and Barb

We heard from Barb and Greg via email from Port-au-Prince. They are fine and staying with an MAF pilot. They are fairly certain that Fabnot, Jocelyn and Romon are dead, but, after spending all day trying to find them, they have still not found the bodies. Please pray they do and pray for their families.

They also found a girl from our area in the same collapsed house who died as she was receiving first aid from Barb and others. Thankfully too, they found many of our folks from our area who are alive and well. They still have not heard from Wood-Ky and Edwine, but are pretty sure they are fine. Please pray for Barb and Greg as they have had no sleep and have had a horrible experience.

Zach has landed in the Dominican and will be making his way to the border tomorrow with a friend and some journalists from Fort Myers, FL. Barb will meet them on the Haitian side. The border is currently closed, please pray they get across.

Please pray for Gabi and me as we are exhausted – Gabi had 15 minutes sleep last night and a 2 hour nap today. I had 1 hour and 15 minutes last night and no nap today. We have been fielding emails and skype calls and posting to the blog all through the night and all day. Colin and Carla have cared for the staff and community people and coordinated information being distributed to the community. We had a precious time of worship and prayer with 16 Haitian staff this afternoon at 1. Please keep us all in prayer. Good night.

News bites

I am just going to put down some random things we are hearing. I am getting a bit tired and I probably need to eat supper. But here is what we are hearing. I do not vouch for the accuracy of any of this.

• A lab tech who works at the Clinic in LaJeune said that he heard that the town of Jacmel south of Port-au-Prince has major damage and that people are being buried in a mass grave. Pray for Haitian friends of mine in the US who have family in Jacmel.
• Cap Haitien is not having trouble with earthquake damage, but with flooding -- too much rain was already a problem when I flew in there last Thursday and they have had more rain since.
• I was premature in saying that our former student Louine was home or coming home. We don't know that. He might be or he might be with his mother and siblings in Port. We just know that he got out of the school ok.

People are asking how they can help. The HAFF board of directors are working on our response now. In the mean time, I will personally recommend that the following organizations would use any donated funds wisely:

• World Vision. The Haiti Director Frank Williams was a HAFF staff member when I came to Haiti 24 years ago. We went through a lot then and I know his integrity and honor and wisdom.
• Missionary Flights International www.missionaryflights.com is the airline that brings us, our cargo and mail to Haiti. They are already making flights of relief supplies.

I have heard, but don't know for sure, that these organizations are also on the ground in Haiti working:

• Samaritans Purse
• Doctors without Borders

Lastly, we have not heard from Barb and Greg yet. But we did not expect to yet. There is still no cell phone service. We understood that they planned to look for and help as many people as they could find during the day today. We hope to hear something from them this evening if they can find a place to base where they have access to the internet. They took a generator and some fuel, so that should help.

Please pray for our mourning community. And keep checking this blog as I will update it as often as I can and as often as I have anything to report.

News

We have some news. Fabnot Jean, Jocelyn Bercon and Romon Victor are all dead in the house that collapsed. People who were in the area brought the news. I taught all those boys and Fabnot was Zach's best friend and like a son to Barb and Greg and a brother to Gabi. Thankfully they all knew the Lord. But there is wailing in the street and tears in our eyes and our hearts. Please keep the Fabius, Telius and Orina families in your prayers. And us as we deal with our own grief and try to help the community.

We got some good news of Louine, a former student and nephew of Jean Jean and Kristie who was trapped in his school all night and was able to get out. He is either home now or on his way. We are still waiting to hear news of others -- Edwine, Marie Noel, Wood-Ky, our headmaster Phanes' family and our teacher Gabriel's family among so many others. Please keep praying. Thanks.

Pray for Earthquake Victims

Just a quick post to let everyone know that we here at HAFF are all well and safe after this evening's strong earthquake in Haiti. There was no damage here. But we are all concerned and grieving as we are unable to contact loved ones in Port-au-Prince since the phone system is down.

We were able to get news in a round-about way that Fabnot Jean, a former student at University in Port and Zach Van Schoyck's best friend, is trapped in a collapsed building and feared dead. Friends are trying to dig him out. Another former student, Marie Noel Accilien who has a HAFF scholarship for University in Port lives in an area where a big supermarket collapsed. And another HAFF university scholarship student Wood-Ky Cadet went to Port Sunday to visit his mother and we have no news of him. Please please please pray for these and the families of our employees and neighbors who are dealing with continuing aftershocks.

Barb and Greg are preparing to leave about 4 am to go to Port and Zach is flying in from the States to the Dominican and then making his way to Haiti somehow. They hope to meet and find a way to help our loved ones. Please keep them in prayer as they travel and seek to help. Thanks.

The Dominican Republic for my 50th

Some of my friends have gone to Hawaii or the South Pacific for a landmark birthday. Some have gone to the Holy Land. My big landmark birthday will be Monday. While it is a school holiday here (the Day of the Dead!), I have no big plans to commemorate the day, just plans to teach our Godly Woman coordinator to use an electric sewing machine and to meet with the management team to plan strategies to deal with the recent major increase in the Haitian minimum wage. HAFF staff members enjoy observing each others' birthdays with a little evening party, so, I presume that will happen. My exotic birthday trip was last weekend, a little closer to home.

It has been a busy 8 weeks since Greg and Barb and Heidi and Jeff and I arrived in Haiti. School is well under way as are the Godly Woman and Young Leader's for God classes. Jeff and Heidi are settled into their routines and Greg and Barb and I have settled back into our normal busyness of meetings and teaching and maintaining the property and taking people to the hospital and fitting people for glasses and working in the office and all the other many things we do at HAFF each day and each week.

Two weeks ago Dr Jerry returned and he now has his dental clinic up and running. Yesterday a new family, Jonathan and Kathy arrived with their baby, Jackson. They will be staying at HAFF for 6 weeks to help out and investigate future possibilities. And today, Carla and Colin and Becky and Rachel return to Haiti. We are also hoping that Barb and Greg's daughter Gabi will be able to join us in a few weeks time.

It will be a busy 7 weeks until I go back to the US for Christmas. In this time we will be continuing our normal activities as well as orienting and helping Jonathan and Kathy, we will be preparing and submitting the major financial report for the Haitian Ministry of Finance and we will be hosting some groups of visitors.

In between these two blocks of busyness, Greg and Barb and Heidi and Jeff and I decided that it was the perfect time to take a break. So, last weekend, October 23 - 25, we went to the beach in the Dominican Republic. We all agree, if we go back, we want to go for longer. We were able to drive HAFF's Land Cruiser all the way to Cabarete, a major destination for Kite Surfing on the north coast.


Kite Surfing at the beach at Cabarete, Dominican Republic





Thankfully, the road conditions on the Haitian side have improved, so the trip only took about 7 ½ hours of driving time. At one point, that would have been the time needed just to get to the Haitian-Dominican border!

Our 2 nights and one full day at the Hotel Kaoba in central Cabarete, just minutes walk from the beach, was very pleasant. We didn't do much. We had several nice meals together,



Barb, Jeff, Heidi, Connie and Greg at breakfast Saturday in Cabarete.




we sat, walked, swam, flew kites on the beach and read and relaxed and enjoyed unstructured time. It was just what we needed.

Sadly, Barb and Jeff were not feeling well part of the time there and are recovering now we are all back home. And Heidi succumbed to what Jeff had once we got back.

We are looking forward to having all the staff houses full for a while and to having many hands to make the work light. Please pray for us for our health and ministry. Pray that the Lord would keep us well and would use us in all that we do to make His name known and to show forth His grace and mercy and love.

June - September 2009

It has been a while since I posted to the blog. I am sorry, but when I tried to post in June, I spent 10 hours trying to upload the photos for a post and the sessions kept timing out. I finally gave up! Then I was traveling and visiting all summer.
It was a crazy summer. We hosted several more teams after the veterinary team, prepared the teacher contracts for the coming school year and got arrangements made for the students going to the national exams. Then at the end of June I left Haiti for the US and spent 10 weeks traveling from coast to coast to coast (yes, three coasts)!
I drove to Pennsylvania and then flew to the west coast where I visited family and friends in the Seattle, Portland, Sacramento and Los Angeles areas for 2 weeks.

Mission Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA.

I spent a couple more days in Pennsylvania before driving to Portland, Maine to take the ferry to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island where I spent a week and a half visiting with the veterinarians who have been to HAFF.


The CAT Ferry between Portland, Maine and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

I went back to Pennsylvania for a few final days before heading south. I stopped to see an old high school friend in northern Kentucky, spent time with Greg and Barb in Georgia, and visited with the church in Tallahassee, Florida that sent a team this year. I wound up my time in the US visiting with people in the Fort Myers, Naples and Sebastian Florida areas.

September 3rd I flew back to Haiti with Greg and Barb and their dog Sophie and with Heidi and Jeff and their dog Rugby! Sophie and Rugby got off to a bit of a rough start that morning, but it was a stressful day for both of them. They quickly made friends once we got to HAFF and are good buddies now.

Greg, Barb, Gabi and Sophie at their home in Georgia

Jeff and Heidi and Rugby in Haiti

Heidi and Jeff will be with us here at HAFF till sometime in December. Heidi is doing agricultural research for her doctorate and Jeff is a medical doctor and an artist. There will also be a young family coming in October for 2 months to see if they will be coming with HAFF full time. Add in teams of visitors, and a large financial report due in to the Haitian government by the end of November and it looks like a busy fall even without counting the school and other educational programs that are the heart of why we are here!

Please pray for the HAFF ministry team, Haitian and American, as we work together to reach people for Christ through the medium of education. Pray for the devotions each morning in school and in each session of the non-formal educational programs. Pray with the staff weekly during the 1:00 Wednesday prayer time we have established.

Haitian and American HAFF Ministry Team members gathered for prayer

Please pray for Haiti. The rains failed completely this summer. There was so little rain that the dirt roads are in no worse condition now than they were when I left. With no rain, there has been and will be no harvest. People are hungrier now than last year at this time and some are saying that God has forgotten them. Thankfully there have been some rains since we've been back that give hope for harvests of sorghum, congo peas and black eyed peas and sweet potatoes. Please pray that we would have the wisdom and resources to have an appropriate response to the needs around us. And pray that we would be able to bring encouragement and the assurance that God has not by any means forgotten about His people in Haiti.

Canada Veterinary and Rhode Island Eye Team

It has been an unusual week for me and my colleagues at HAFF this week.

Monday a retinologist from Rhode Island and 3 veterinarians, 3 veterinary students and an animal health technician from Canada arrived for 8 days at HAFF. Since then, things have been very busy!


Normally when a team of veterinarians is at HAFF, I spend most of my time with them, translating at clinics and seminars. This time, with a retinologist on hand, and since I work in the HAFF eyeglass clinic, I have been spending most of my time with Dr Lory. I did take time away from the eyeglass clinic yesterday to spend the morning at the vet clinic translating for Dr Lory's daughter Thais, a vet student who is graduating this month.


The veterinary part of the team has been busy with neutering and spaying dogs and mules

and vaccinating and de-worming and treating sick animals.

Their vaccination clinics have been a race to see as many animals as possible before it rains!

Dr Lory has been seeing BTI students who need glasses and who have dry eyes and folks from the community with all kinds of problems such as macular degeneration, cataracts, needing reading glasses, a freckle on the cornea, eyelids that turn out, eyelids that turn in, just to name a few. With 114 students and 84 community people signed up, the days in the eye clinic have been long – not ending till between 6:00 and 7:30 pm, even though not everyone signed up has come.


Thursday morning, the veterinarians showed the students at school how to care for donkeys, chickens and goats and about parasites. Dr Lory showed them the structure of the eye and talked about how the eye works and what can cause it problems.

Monday the local veterinary agents will come for an all day seminar on surgery and post surgery care and the structure and function of the eye. There will also be one more eye clinic in the morning.