Sept 8 2011
Rain Rain Go Away,
Come again another... another... in another location far far from HERE!!!
We have downpours almost every day. The road to our house is a mucky slick redmud mess. But, the nice thing is that we have about 6 hours of sunshine everyday as well. Every morning looks like an awesome day, and then at noon its grumbling and rumbling, and the dark clouds are billowing around. When there is loud thunder that booms around in these mountains the Haitians say that God is rolling rocks around in Heaven. (they don’t actually believe that). Too much rain has ruined a lot of the farmers potatoes. The only thing that does well in rain is cabbage, but... the cabbage price is so low, and the trucking to the big markets so high, that some people never bothered harvesting their cabbage. I wrote last time about our neighbours Jude and Miranie, and now Jude has left the family, and slipped across the border into DR to try to find abit of work and money. But he left Miranie with nothing to feed the 3 children and her pregnant self. They have no family alive that can help. They live in the shadows of our house basically, so what do we do? We cannot walk by and continually say ``have a good day!``. We cannot sit and close our ears to hungry children cries. What would Jesus do? Life is hard here, and I think it makes them long for Heaven more.
We as a family went home to Ontario for a little visit. We had some things to tie up and arrange there so that we could return and stay here in Haiti longer. We enjoyed the visit, but it felt good to come back home to Haiti. When someone else is running the farm, someone else is renting our house, and we stay in other peoples places for night.... it felt like Haiti was really where we for now can call “home”. Things back in Canada are so different than what we have been immersed in, that it about wobbles our equilibrium!
The clinic functioned very smoothly while we were away, thanks be to God, and thanks also to the great team we have. The numbers of people needing help has doubled at the clinic since we opened in January. EVERY month the numbers climb. Sometimes it about breaks our heart to see the needs and the sad situations. We desperately pray for guidance and wisdom every day. Without His help and guidance in this effort, we wouldn’t have made it half this far. So we thank you all for praying too. We are inspired by your emails and words of encouragement and the many many of you who tell us that we are in your prayers almost every day. It really is special to us!
We have been wanting to get into vaccinating, but so far with Mr Time squeezing us by the neck, it hasn’t been possible. It is next on the list of things to pursue. The Department of Health says we need to have a refrigerator in place before they can sign us onto the program. A propane fridge and tanks etc probably cost $1500 US Dollars. We have been submitting our own version of a report to the government each month, and the Department of Health has been sitting up and taking note of what’s happening here. Even though we are still officially under the annex of one of the CSI clinics, the Dep of Health is now offering us our own licence. This has all worked very nicely. It’s better that they offer us our own licence because of their confidence in us, rather than us chasing them to convince them that we kinda know what we are doing. I think this is very cool. But not as cool as a fridge ;-) (a pun).
I mentioned needing a vehicle that we could use for hauling patients down to Port -au-Prince when necessary, and the response was amazing. We don’t have it all solid yet, but we are working on it and have potential for one. Very cool indeed.
Our prayers for a replacement have been answered. When Nurse Kim leaves in Oct, we have Ashley Dirks from KS coming back for a few months. She spent the summer months here with us and has a working knowledge of the language. We are still looking for a suitable RN for starting Jan 1. Please add that to your thoughts and prayers. The need is great and the work is rewarding. The people and country are beautiful and safe.
The boys hadn’t ridden our horses for awhile and they (the horses) have been getting fat on the good grass. Fat and feisty. The other day Cam and his new friend Travis went to catch them and after 2 hours they came back filthy muddy, and worn out, ... sans horses. The horses were so aggressive that they never could control them, and in the melee one Haitian boy even got kicked in the neck. Luckily it was just a glancing blow, and he is fine.
Our oldest son Trev (18) is leaving us for 6 months while he volunteers at Christian Public Service (CPS) close to Port. He and 4 other young men will be building earthquake victim housing, and doing other such projects. Waylon Litwillers (from Deridder, Louisiana) are the house parents. www.cpshaiti.com
We are sad to see our local missionaries, deacon Clinton and Ruth Holdeman, go home to Lime Springs Iowa this next week. They will be sorely missed. Clinton was like a good papa to us here with all his wisdom and long term Haiti experience to draw on. Minister Dallas and Linda Koehn from Cimarron Kansas is the new missionary family that replaces Clintons. It will be exciting to get to know them. They have a 12 yr old boy and a 18 yr old girl. They also have spend 5 yrs or so here in Haiti earlier (but in a different area of Haiti). The local congregation at Oriani is by`n large doing well and is looking forward to 20 or so baptisms soon. There is another bunch of people who have been born-again and who are asking to start Bible/doctrine classes. I suspect Dallas will probably realise what the term “full time” missionary means. J Pray for us all here that the Lords work can continue strong, that suffering can be relieved, and the Gospel can continue to reach and save souls. Because THATS what it’s all about.
In Him,
Keith and Candace
Oriani, Haiti
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