Do you have that too? You listen to words you have heard many times before but all of a sudden they seem to have a new, very profound meaning. Last Sunday morning that happened when I was listening during a prayer in the humble, little church of Matthew 28 in Haiti. The worship leader was praying about that time to come, when they, the church members, would no longer be hungry. In our church we pray for hungry people, but all of a sudden it hit me that here we were praying among the hungry people.
Isn't that what Jesus said: the poor will always be among, or with you. So we should always be among them, right.!
Are we? I know I am not.
Plenty of things happened again that are still stirring up my mind. Good things, such as the agriculture project we started this week. Our first rice harvest is expected in 4 months! Jimmy Eldridge frolicking in the field catching bugs in his net, in order to see if they were the good or the bad kind. Bringing "Proclaimers", solar powered MP3 players with the New Testament on it, to feeding centers and orphans. This in an effort to spread the Gospel to those who can barely or not at all read and that's just about everyone in Haiti. Helping the sick in the mobile clinic and praying with them. Working on improving the fish farm. Hanging out with the orphans and teaching them English at night, I am an hilarious teacher they say. And then, we are feeding lots of children again, thirteen centers, times fifty kids, four times per week. Oh, it was so beautiful to see them sit a the new tables filling their tummies. Thank you Lord.
But then bad things too. Very disturbing, one night we get a grandpa in the court yard. He is in a panic because his grand child has been in the clinic with cholera since 4 days. They gave the child nine IVs, the medication did not work and now they told him they were out of options. He wanted to take the child to the big hospital and he had no way to do it. Our truck was out on an errand and not going to be back for a few more hours. So I tried to get something else going. As a new grandpa I felt what he was going through. Something had to happen. So I asked to call our truck back, but it had broken down with a flat and the spare was flat too. Than we called around to find the phone number of the local UN battalion. We finally got it but they said they had no vehicles available for that purpose. The clinic was not going to use it's vehicle for it and that was it. Frustrating. Our truck came back a few hours later and we unloaded the wood it was carrying in a rush and sent it off to move the child to the hospital. A while later the driver came back with the news that someone else had brought the child to the hospital. What a relief. I hope the child will live. It is just not good for your nerves.
Good things again. We met with Laura Lynn and Emory her boss, in Gonaives. By the way she helped out with the clinic we did this week. It was nice to work together again. Their mission started working on home construction and has just begun with building houses made with poured concrete. Seeing their design brought some new ideas to my mind and we might start soon with poured houses ourselves. They can be build much quicker and are likely even stronger than the ones we were going to build. Our first foundation should go up by the end of March. Right now we are working on building the access road. Remember "What about Bob"? Baby steps, baby steps.
The water tower should go up as planned. The design is almost ready and a team from Detroit is warming up to come in May. The March trip should take care of some of the preparations for that project like pouring a foundation.We still have open spaces on that trip.
Oh there is so much to do and we need so much more support to accomplish it, but in all honesty the things that have been done during the last year are enormous. People from all over the world are now thinking with the Haitians about solutions. Just got the coolest brochure from Jimmy about concrete mixers. If you are interested, check it out. It explains in a way why the damage in Haiti was so extensive. I will put the link at the end of my story.
Now listen to this: We are going to have electricity in Bohoc. Can you believe it! It should be available around May. For a mere $6,000 we can get our own concrete power pole with a transformer. Of course we should not dream too hard because in countries like Haiti there is usually power for only a couple hours per day but it's a start. Now we can wire the entire orphanage with lights and think even about maybe a freezer to keep food from spoiling or keep serum from going bad. The options are endless and it means there will be opportunities for people to improve their lives. Just think about it: what would change in your life if there was no power. Now reverse that. Wow!
Enough for today it's time for you to read it. Please pray for our work and for the children of Haiti. If by any chance you feel moved to help us, give me a call or an email: hein@matthew28.org
Blessings and thanks for staying with my blog.
Hein
The link for the mixer story http://www.theconcretemd
