Aug 3-2011
Oriani congregation was able to finish the new church building in time for Junel and Daffney`s wedding. Nobody seemed to get a very accurate count but there must have been close to 400 people there! It was a nice wedding and the couple are a joy to be around. Haitian custom is for the bride and groom to sit on chairs below the pulpit, facing each other, for the sermon and then for the vows the minister comes down and they just stand up where they are, and say their vows, also while facing each other. After the vows are said they all go up to the pulpit and the minister, the witnesses and the couple all sign their names in the appropriate places. Then the minister reads the whole marriage certificate to the assembly. After the service was over, we all stayed in our seats while the Oriani church brethren did an awesome and efficient job of handing out the hundreds of plates of food. I think they had everyone fed with a plate of rice and beans, and a fruit drink, within 45 minutes or less. The direct simplicity of it all was truly a blessing.
The clinic saw 1355 patients this last month. A record. Where is this going? How can we keep up? The little house that we rented for a clinic is already too small. The bank account is almost empty. What shall we do? But the people keep coming because they need help and they seem to be happy with the help they are getting. In the business world you have certain marketing tools (price being one of them) to somewhat control the numbers of customers. Here I can’t do that. Raising the price for a consultation from 50 gds to 100 would probably cut back on patients, but it would cut out the ones who are the poorest and have the big families. Paul Farmer (read the book Mountains Beyond Mountains) is a man who has done a tremendous work in the health field in Haiti. He has one cardinal rule for his hospital and clinics... ``EVERYONE regardless of social status HAS to pay the 50 gd price, except the ones who can`t pay it, which happens to be almost everyone.`` We also have that rule here at Clinique Confiance En Dieu, but we find that most people are quite willing and able to pay it. Sometimes we get gifts of bananas, avocados, etc brought to us too. It’s always touching to see their appreciation. Dave Wenger from Faunsdale Alabama was a great help to us in finishing up the plumbing in the clinic. All the water system works great. Our electrical system works fine too and the solar panels are easily able to keep up so far. CPS is donating us their old generator so we are excited about that. It has a problem with compression finding its way into the water system so we will have to take the head off and do some repairs but we hope it can be fixed for a reasonable price.
Help us pray for a replacement nurse for this fall when nurse Kim goes home to Bonners Ferry, Idaho. We have some leads still, but some have not turned out successful , and nothing is certain yet. Ashley Dirks, a CNA from UC, Kansas has been a great help here for the last 3 months, but is leaving in a few days. Maybe God will inspire her to come back after she finishes her schooling. We really enjoyed her. In the three months Ashley has been here she has really picked up the language, and can talk to people quite well.
I am spending too much time away from the clinic and my family, on purchasing trips, and also running down the mountain with seriously sick people. I cannot let someone die because I don`t feel like going down YET AGAIN, so I am looking for solutions for this problem. I have been begging all the major NGOs in Haiti lately (to no avail) for a vehicle we can turn into an ambulance. We can’t afford to buy one now, but if we had one... we could set it up with oxygen and IV, etc., and then I`d hire a Haitian (whom I know is a good driver) to take some of these runs for me. I can see that working quite well in the future. I had 2 different ladies just about die in our truck this last week. One was having delivery complications and would have died had we not gotten her to a large hospital. Even then we just about lost her in the hospital. I will spare you the gory details. The baby didn`t live. The other day I was driving and some people stopped me and begged me to take a lady down that was in serious trouble. Her family had hauled her on a bed for 2 hours, out to the road, and were vainly seeking for some vehicle to take her down to get help SOMEPLACE, they didn’t have a clue where. This young lady Monique had the desperate look of someone who knew she was soon to take her last breath. She was so anaemic from her last baby 2 months ago that she was having heart failure, and was not able to talk anymore, but had that wild-eyed, desperate, yet weak, look. I took her on the 2 hours ride down to Fond Parisian, and after lots of frustration, and milling around, and trying to start the ambulance, abandoning one ambulance and finding another, then trying to find oxygen etc., we got her loaded into a real ambulance (that they were scared to drive because it had no licence or insurance) and off they went to Port with her. I trust she will be ok, but we haven’t heard today yet. I really wish you could hear the expressions of thankfulness from these people. Makes us cry with them. They knew she was in critical condition but they were praising God that at least now she had a CHANCE!
Our son Trevor (18) is signed up to go work at Christian Public Service down in the Port area in September. They are still building earthquake victims houses. He will be there for 6 months. I think he will find it a different temperature than up here in the cool mountains! Ha. Hope he can handle the change. Zack (16) will be lonesome, but we do have lots of other missionaries around as well as many visitors to this area, and he gets along great with the Haitians here too, so he has lots of friends. Our youngest three, Cam, Chase, and Christina, all fluently talk and play with our neighbour kids. They work in the yard with their friends, they play soccer, skip rope, play dolls, and ride and fix bikes all summer long.
Next week we as a family are going back to Ontario for 20 days to visit, tie up some loose ends, and get some supplies so we can return. Our teacher Lacey Toews is coming back in Sept to start school. She will be teaching Min. Dallas Koehn`s son too. Dallas`s are soon coming as missionaries, replacing Clinton Holdemans.
I believe more than ever in the power of collective prayer. The other day I thought of it this way... A dark world where every ascending prayer is like a shaft of light reaching up to God. I think it must be a pretty sight to God to see many spears of light beaming up to him.
Help us pray for, our neighbours Jude and Miranie and their 3 children who are absolutely penniless and can’t find work or food, sufficient funding to keep the clinic going, an ambulance, a nurse to replace Kim soon, and for wisdom and ability to keep going (we feel pretty weak and out of our league many times).
Thanks for your support and God bless you all,
Keith and Candace Toews
Oriani, Haiti tel... 1-809-816-4899
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