A Friend's Haiti Update

SO HE SAID, "GO FORTH AND STAND ON THE MOUNTAIN BEFORE THE LORD "
AND BEHOLD, THE LORD WAS PASSING BY! AND A GREAT AND STRONG WIND
WAS RENDING THE MOUNTAINS AND BREAKING IN PIECES THE ROCKS BEFORE THE LORD;
BUT THE LORD WAS NOT IN THE WIND.
AND AFTER THE WIND AN EARTHQUAKE, BUT THE LORD WAS NOT IN THE EARTHQUAKE.
AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE A FIRE, BUT THE LORD WAS NOT IN THE FIRE;
AND AFTER THE FIRE A SOUND OF A GENTLE BLOWING.
WHEN ELIJAH HEARD IT, HE WRAPPED HIS FACE IN HIS MANTLE
AND WENT OUT AND STOOD IN THE ENTRANCE OF THE CAVE AND BEHOLD,
A VOICE CAME TO HIM AND SAID, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, ELIJAH?"
1 KINGS 19:11-13
Scripture used by Haitian pastor in Port-au-Prince Church on Sunday February 7, 2010

Week 1: PORT-AU-PRINCE JAN 19, 2010
I leave for Haiti on a small jet with a team from Medical Teams International. The transportation and fuel is generously provided by a private company. We fly high above the other air traffic at 44,000 ft. and descend upon Port-au-Prince.
We are given only a few short minutes to land and de-board. Each ‘slot’ on the tarmac is timed and accounted for. Aircraft quickly land and take off making room for the next arrival. The roar of helicopters, jets and massive Air Force cargo planes is deafening. UN vehicles and armed soldiers are everywhere. I see the American flag on a military ATV and am thankful that my country is already on the ground, responding to this disaster. I can’t help but notice all the Hearts for Hope HAITI wounded Haitians sitting under a tarp, lined up in chairs with casts and crutches, as though curiously watching this theatrical buzz of activity at the airport to pass away the time. Later I learn that these are only a few of the thousands of hopefuls…trying
to leave the country. I leave the airport, my pocket full of torn papers with names and addresses scribbled on them…given to me by desperate people in the mob that presses in on us while we wait for transportation to headquarters.
King’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince has about 25 beds…and new cracks in the walls that are being checked frequently by engineers.
The building is yet unfinished. It wasn’t scheduled to open quite yet, but the earthquake changed that plan. Patients with broken bones, burns and unseen emotional trauma arrive in a constant stream. Many post-ops have their ‘bed’ outdoors in the dirt under the trees. Because of fear, many others would prefer to be outdoors. When the aftershocks come, they find their way
outside… quickly. A young man in his 20’s is admitted, screaming in anguish and pain over his crushed great toe. The wound is infected. He will have to have an amputation. As I care for him, he breaks out in a familiar song, “This is the day. This is the day that the Lord has made, that the Lord has made. I will rejoice. I will rejoice and be glad in it”…He moans intermittently through the verses. This is the strength only God can give. I am amazed. In the operating room, the surgeons are completing their 4th amputation for the week. Then his case will begin.
I scrub into surgery with Dr.Lou Zirkle and his team. There is no electricity, no suction, and no X-Ray. The operating room is hot and humid. None of these obstacles seem to matter. Dr. Zirkle is gaining world renown for his SIGN method of internally fixating femur fractures in developing nations…and this disaster has provided hundreds of cases for his marvelous method to be
put to use. At the end of the long day and only 2 cases, I am sopping wet and exhausted. Placing all my weight on the broken legs to give traction for several hours while the surgeons worked is quite a workout.
One little girl particularly moves our staff to action. She comes in with serious burns to her face and neck. She had felt the initial shaking of the quake and ran out of her house, only to be run over by a car, the hot exhaust pipe severely burning her fragile body. Miraculously, she got up and ran back into the house to save her mother just before the house collapsed. MTI is able to
get her on a flight to Florida for follow-up burn care and grafting.

Week 2-BALOOSE, SUBURB OF PORT-AU-PRINCE
Dr. Steve, Carol, RN, and I are assigned to Baloose. The sight is the private grounds of the Haitian Baptist Seminary in a hilly suburb of Port-au-Prince. It is estimated that anywhere from 2,500-4000 people are camping on the grass here at night. We have come to provide medical care. It is just one of literally thousands of IDP (Internally Displaced People) camps in and outside of the city. Sheets, tarps…and star-studded sky providing the shelter for these wounded people. The night I arrive, I hear singing outside my window; I decide to go see where this ‘choir’ is practicing. As I walk down the hill, hundreds of people crowd the grounds. Standing and singings praises, their hands are lifted high in the warm night air. They are dancing and swaying to the worship music flowing out of an outdoor PA system. I join them. There is little room to move. I will never forget the feeling of this night’s experience. It is a taste of heaven in the midst of a hellish nightmare. Only the touch of God can bring such a sweet melody to a thousand broken hearts. Patients sit in chairs waiting all day to be seen by our little team. This is when I am reminded of the prayers being said on my behalf. Where does my strength come from? Where does this love come from that flows from the depth of my being? His presence is felt. I listen to countless heartbreaking stories. A 24 yo woman complains of a head wound. “A building collapsed and hit me in the head.” I remove the dressing from 42yo Sergo’s arm wound to find bone exposed and huge chunks of muscle cut away…an incredibly complicated injury. Amazingly, he has full use of his hand. We refer him to another facility where he can receive the care he needs. An 11yo girl sits on a chair in front of me, trying to hold on to the squirming 1 month old baby in her skinny arms. She is obviously ill at ease with the infant. She tells me that she is the only person able to care for the baby whose family perished. Her complaint, “The baby is not eating”. Loveson, 28y, a handsome young man, winces as I remove the poorly placed stitches from his crushed nose. His wound is infected. His face is seriously disfigured. I talk to him about the love of the Lord. He looks at me and says, “I am a Christian. I know God allowed this to happen to me because he knew I would be able to handle it.” Another young girl holds her little waif of a sister, Coraly, in her lap. I have to give Coraly painful wound care. It is so hard to inflict more pain on this precious little one…but I know it is for her good. She is one of 5 sisters
left to fend for themselves after losing their mom and 15 other family members. No dad is in the picture. Little Coraly, may Jesus help you and be your Mommy and Daddy. Francise and Tranquile are 2 elderly women in their ~80’s that Carol and I find on the grass in the heat of the midday sun. They seem so helpless just sitting in the midst of the crowd, baking to death.
They are both suffering from mild dehydration. We hang a couple IV’s on them and get them to a cooler spot. Jean, 25y, tells me how he crushed his finger while digging through the rubble of his home. I can smell alcohol on his breath and sense a profound despondency in his demeanor. As I suture his finger, I share the hope of Christ with him. I feel a deep love and compassion
for him, knowing that I, too, once turned to alcohol to deal with pain. It is so natural to talk with him in a nonjudgmental way. But for the grace of God I go. He returns for wound care several days later with a huge smile on his face sharing that he surrendered his life to Christ. Tears of joy flow from my eyes. In one day, we admit 7 patients to the Israeli hospital. Two are woman with broken pelvises who somehow find their way to our station. They have been untreated since the quake…2 weeks of living with an untreated broken pelvis. We return to headquarters in Port-au-Prince. I join a team with the 82nd Airborne Unit that has made field assessments and is accompanying our medical volunteers to IDP camps where people have not received medical attention. Several of the clinics we hold in the next few days have tense moments when we are grateful for what seems to be overkill at first: a group of fully armed soldiers in combat attire fending off the desperate crowd.

Weeks 3 & 4-LAOGANE AND OUTLYING MOBILE CLINICS
I guess Laogane is pretty close to the epicenter. Getting there is a sport: trying to get through mobs of people, traffic and cracks in the pavement. Our team spends several days at a time there. Some days the trip between camp and Port-au-Prince takes an hour. Some days it takes over 2 hours. We sleep in tents on the grounds of the Ayuda à Haiti (Help Haiti) headquarters:
a Non-profit organization from the Dominican Republic. We are joined by humanitarian aid workers from around the world. The make-shift mobile hospital is just a big circle of open tents. Examiners take their places and the hundreds of patients who are checked in early in the morning wait under tarps for their turn to be seen…sometimes all day. I seize the few
minutes I have in the morning before heading to my examining tent to sit on a broken block, and sing songs and witness to the hundreds of people gathered there. Their laughter and smiles fuel me for the long day of work ahead. It is in Laogane where I learn about the MRE: meals ready to eat (the soldiers clue me in on the best ones) and also that SOS means “Save our Ship”. In Haiti, it is a cry for food and water…or any attention at all. Handmade signs are everywhere.
At the mobile hospital it becomes clear that my dental tools might come in handy. Dr. Steve encouraged me to bring a small set. “Bring them just in case…you never know!” he said wisely before we left the US. So, in the midst of disaster relief, I find myself extracting teeth, with my audience of wishful patients growing each day. To prevent a riot, I develop my own system
of turning patients away. I draw numbers out of the hat at the end of the day, reminding my patients, “I am not God!” I guess the hardest part is knowing the disappointment of those I can’t treat. I am reminded that these people, in the midst of all their other suffering, are victims of chronic abscesses and tooth pain. Few of them have had any dental care at all before
the earthquake. Charles, 6y, comes with half of his face twice normal size as well as his eye nearly swollen shut. He has a fever of almost 103 degrees. I have a special drug that I am able to give him to sedate him and make the extraction extremely easy. Pus flows from the wound. His mother is so sweet and caring, so attentive to him. After he gets his antibiotics and medical
intervention for the fever and abscess, they are on their way. Once again, I am grateful I have something to offer these people that blesses them. We go even deeper into the rural areas to hold several mobile clinics. On 2 occasions, we actually hold clinic at the sight of voodoo temples. Apparently this area is known for its heavy concentration of voodoo practice. While we are treating the witchdoctor as a patient, our souls are being bathed with the sounds of worship from the tiny Christian church on the other side of the hedge. It is such an obvious example of the light dispelling the darkness. I only get ‘violently’ sick once…and just ‘regular’ sick another time. It is a small price to pay. At the headquarters in Portau-Prince, I have made some very special Haitian friends. It is the group of people who live and sleep outdoors on the grounds of the mission. The kids are particularly fun. When I get home at the end of the long hard day, or have been gone for several days and return, they all run up to me, take my bags and guitar…and are ready to ‘play’. I fight the urge to crash out and go outside to join them. We dance. We sing. We color and make crafts. I am so glad I don’t give in to my physical exhaustion…just yet…this is too precious of a moment to pass up. Commercial flights to Haiti are supposed to begin again on the 19th of February…just in time to take me back. It was just too perfect a ‘fit’. As I return to the devastated nation I left behind, I am reminded of a Scripture:

“BY MY GOD, I CAN LEAP OVER A WALL.”
PSALMS 18:29

It seems so a propos in the lives of those Haitians in whom I saw such tremendous inner strength, strength that came from their unwavering faith in a God that has helped them “leap over a wall”…the wall that came crashing down upon them.

Thank you for your prayers and financial support.
All His in 2010 –Kris