Cholera Treatment Center tents in Hinche
I arrived in Port-au-Prince yesterday after spending the last seven days and nights working in Hinche with patients who had cholera. This morning the J/P HRO group loaned me a computer so I have been able to catch up on some of your responses. Thank you so much for your prayers and notes of encouragement!
It can be so challenging be aware of God's presence when one is physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted. I thank God for your prayers, and praise God that in the last few days I was really able to gain a better perspective in the midst of the horror. Too tired to focus in prayer, I listened to a song with the following lyrics, "I will lift my eyes to the maker of the mountains I can't climb...'cause you are and you were and you will be forever...you fashioned the earth and you hold it together." How true! God is always moving everywhere to bring life and healing and hope.
Thank you for your prayers for Odlin. He was not on his cot when I arrived to the tent hospital the following day, and everyone assumed that he was dead. What joy to find out the next day that he had been transferred to the neighboring "real" hospital and that they were treating him for typhoid fever. We had already been giving him the antibiotics that treat that terrible disease. I was able to visit him yesterday and he looked somewhat better, although he is very weak and still has diarrhea. There was no family by his side, although I heard that his mother had been around some days earlier. Please continue your prayers that he would not be alone, that he would be assured of God's presence and that he would be completely healed.
Before leaving tonight for my "home" in Cap Haitien I will be visiting the site where we will be holding a Community Health Evangelism (CHE) training in December here in Port-au-Prince and working out logistics.. My computer is still not working due to viruses, but my brother-in-law has sent several CDs and SD cards of material to help it to work again and then to de-bug it and our office computers. Until I get his package and, Lord willing, am able to resurrect my
computer, I may not have much access to the internet.
I will be in Limbe all next week, a town 20 km (one hour and a half) from Cap Haitien. Our team will be training people to be trainers in new villages using the holistic CHE tools. Our volunteer trainers continue to go to village after village teaching cholera prevention. Cholera is spreading quickly in Limbe and in Cap Haitien and many other places in northern Haiti. There are not enough supplies or medical personnel. We have one more shipment of supplies arriving
from the Dominican Republic tomorrow. For the next few weeks I will be facilitating communication between those who want to come short-term (particularly nurses) and the areas of need. I also hope to be able to help get experienced groups such as Doctors without
Borders to the remote areas we work in.
In the name of the one who has defeated death and the grave,
Liz
