We missed our blog last night, we were exhausted after dinner.  We all forgot how exhausted new parents are!  LOL  On Dec. 6 we went to a mountain village approx 45-60 minutes riding in the back of an supply truck with all our equipment.  The road was one lane, with an occasional passing spot, with ruts that threw you all over the back end!  I will never complain about my gravel road back in IA again! These mountains looked like some of the Rockies, especially when you are looking over the edge praying you didn't go over!  We all arrived safely thanks to our great driver Osbe! 
People were already waiting for us when we arrived.  We were set up in there medical clinic/school.  No electricity or running water, that day they decided to run wiring for electricity, we were dodging workers and ladders most of the day!  We sat up quickly and got to work.  Most of the people had not seen a doctor for 5-10 years.  Many people had walked for 4 hours to see the doctor, incredible!  We seen 113 people in 5 hours.  We seen many children who were incredibly ill, malnourished, worms, worms, worms,  many pregnant women,  and pneumonia.  We had a lady who thought her water had broken last week and had walked several hours to be seen, sweaty and tired.  We were thinking at first we might be delivering, but she was not in labor.  Many women die during childbirth due to difficulty during labor, sepsis and no help at home with delivery.  We seen many abdominal hernias on children and adults.  We had to have crowd control at the door again, people desperate to be seen trying to push there way in.  People were still waiting when we had to shut down, due to having to have daylight to get back down the mountain.  Heartbreaking when we shut those doors, because people had been all day hanging on to the windows begging in Creole, madam, madam, I have walked all day, please see me, I need to see the doctor! It brought tears to your eyes, but if you started crying you wouldn't stop, these people are in despearate need!
Many of the men stayed back and built shelves for the eye doctor.  He was extremely thankful!  Some men moved rocks from a foundation so they could continue to build on it.  Hot, hard manual labor!  Craig and Jim road in the back of a truck, with Haitian style driving, to the lumber yard to buy lumber to build the shelves.  The first stopped to change the American money at a money changer, which is a man sitting at a table with a roll of bills.  Then on to the lumber yard, which they both said was an aweome experience. 
When we all returned home, we were so excited to see baby David.  Angie weighed him an he gain 5 ounces.  He is growing and doing okay. 
Day 7-We went to a tent city today!  What an experience.  We were set up in there church, which was a scantly put together wood frame, covered with tarps.  We had a few wooden benches, to work with an a table.  Again we got set up and people were there already waiting.  The pastor of that tent church ahd complete control.  Those people were quite, polite, respectful of each other absolutely amazing.  We seen 153 patients in 4 hours, incredible!  I love this whole thing of no documentation!!!!!  Amazingly the kids seemed to be very healthy, and also the adults.  They hear the word doctor and they all want to come see him, and us.  We are different, and they are curious!  We ALL LOVE THOSE KIDS!  They are so receptive, and just love to be close to you and hold your hand!  We passed out lots of tylenol, ibuprofen for headaches, and generalized body aches.  Also vitamins and sunglasses.  We have seen lots of cataracts from sun damage!  During the day we had a few little boys come to the side of the tent that had a large rip in it.  They hung out and attempted to talk with us, they were selling bracelets.  We Learned the one little boy sold bracelets to pay his way and his brothers way through school!  Again Amazing children! The men prayed over all the patients after they were seen, and the team gave shoes to each person.  People were very happy!
We came back and started working on cleaning out the medical supply storage area.  That will take a few days.  We will be staying at the mission tomorrow and running the clinic here and working on organizing the storage room.  The guys will be building shelves in the medical clinic.
Little David was taken by part of the team to the hospital today, with aunt and grandma, to get checked out.  It was a free catholic hospital, and the er had to Ohio residents working in the ER.  They said the see at least two kids a day like this.  They kept him for IV fluids and feedings, the grandma stayed with him.  He has to have someone with him at all times to be able in the hospital.  He is doing amazingly well. We will keep everyone up dated on baby David!  The pictures are not uploading tonight, will try to upload more pics tomorrow!  

 Darbens Wadley Normil (David)

David and Jean Fritz 

Baby David

Dec 5-Our team started at the prayer rock for morning devotions.  What a beautiful day the Lord has made!  We then split up into two groups, part stayed back at the mission to build benches.  They built 19 benches to be distributed to several different churches.  They did an awesome job!  The medical team drove 20-30 minutes away to a nearby school and set up shop in a 3 room school. Some of the team did some VBS activites with the children waiting to be seen and also handed out Love Bundles.  The medical team went to work, in the first small room Angie triaged patients, we ended up seeing 91 patients in about 5 hours.  It became very chaotic, people were trying to push into the room to be seen.  The mission leader talked with the man in charge, and informed him that they needed to talk with the people and get organized or we would not be back.  We went to the bus to eat and then went back.  The number of people there had decreased significantly, people were sitting down and came up to be seen in an orderly fashion.  After triage they stood in line and came in to be seen by the doctor one by one.  The doctor saw the patient with an interperter, the triage nurse gave each patient a peice of paper with symptoms on it and the doctor wrote the medicine needed on the back.  After being seen they were taken next door to the pharmacy where Lari Jo and Darci, with an interperter passed out meds with instructions and education.  Some of the things we treated today were lots of diarrhea, fever, runny noses, some parasites, aspirated a ganglion cyst, & aspirated an abscess on top of a little girl's head. 
Things we saw today that we weren't able to fix were twins with heart defects, an elderly lady with a probable bowel obstruction, and a little eight year girl who was blinded during the earthquake, a door blew out and hit her in the left eye.  It's heartbreaking when you look at these people and tell them there is nothing you can do, or try something minimal and if it doesn't work they really need to go to the hospital.  They will never go to the hospital because it is futile because you need money to be treated, and these people don't have it.
Last and the most heartbreaking, a three month old baby, the team named him David Christian, was brought to us by his grandmother, weighing in at 3.3 lbs.  That is right 3.3lbs!!!!!  He was born at noon and his mother had died by 8 pm that night of unknown causes.  There was no one to breast feed him and the family was poor and had no money to buy formula.  The family was mashing up food and feeding him regular food!  We ended up bringing him back to the mission and putting an IV in and giving him fluid boluses, and feeding him formula with an eye dropper.  I am sure this will be a long night with a baby in the house, getting up every hour or two and feeding him.  I'm sure we will all fight over this opportunity, he is the center of attention!!!!  We have been back to the mission for about 3 hours and just since the fluid boluses and food he looks amazingly better.  We ask that all who read this, to please pray for this little guy!!!!  He is a fighter since he has made it this far and was brought to us today, God has a plan for this sweet baby!

Tomorrow we will go into the mountains to a village with our medical team.       

Jean Fritz Pierre in the Christmas Spirit!

Jean Fritz at the Kalico Resort posing in front of his first Christmas tree!

A close up of Jean Fritz at the Christmas tree.

IV HOPE for Haiti Dec. 1

Pastor Bob and Jeremiah led a team that finished putting up all the framing for the 2 houses for Pastor Louisainte’s orphanage.  This is where they laid one foundation several days before and the other foundation was already there from a previous trip – that one was the last foundation Filiberto did in Haiti.

The rest of the men finished pouring an 1800 sq. ft. foundation for our guest house behind the orphanage on our new property. 

The farmer who we are paying to take care of our plantain trees came to Ryan and brought him our first profit of $300.  Ryan instructed him on where to plant more trees on our new property so that will be a growing source of income for the orphanage – Ryan thinks it will bring in several hundred dollars per month until we need that property for orphanage expansion if necessary.  Later, he will have him plant other kinds of trees too.

There was a man in the village who came up to Ryan and thanked him for the blessing we are to their community.  He asked if we have any children and when Ryan told him, yes, one little daughter, the man took a bracelet off his wrist that he had just made and told him to take it as a gift for her.  Ryan was very touched by this sweet gesture of gratitude.

In the afternoon, Candice took Sally, Kerstin, Aly and I to a beach resort about 10 miles down the road.  It was very nice, but not Haiti’s nicest resort, there are others, but they are more expensive to get into.  It was SO beautiful.  The water was warm, the sand was lovely, the views were like any other gorgeous Caribbean Island would be.  We felt very spoiled having a snack to share of lobster, shrimp and drank straight out of a coconut that a man opened skillfully with a machete.  Candice said that they bring every team here for an afternoon during their trip to enjoy a relaxing/refreshing break from the work, but also so that we can have the opportunity to see another side of Haiti.  She said that so many people see the poverty and ugliness and see it as a barren land without God.  But God has always been in Haiti.  He made it an absolutely beautiful land that has much potential.  This place that has been ravaged over the centuries due to the consequences of making pacts with the devil and dedicating the country to Voodoo twice over the years and then continually making poor decisions, has the potential to be a beautiful place if they will turn from their ways back to the God who loves them and created them and this lovely land.  Ryan has never been to the beach and we found out that his teams are the ONLY ones that don’t get to experience this because he just wants to get as much work done as possible!  Oh my goodness…that’s Ryan!  He gets tunnel vision when he arrives in Haiti and never stops till the last possible minute.  I realize that when we go to Haiti, it is to serve God and the people and we aren’t there to be pampered or to be on vacation, but now that I have seen it, I will make sure that all of our teams in the future get to experience it too, if only for a couple of hours, even Ryan’s teams, ha ha.

IV HOPE for Haiti Nov. 29th

It was a wonderful day – no injuries and lots accomplished.   The building team is separated – the one at the Lifeline/IV HOPE property continued assembling panels for the buildings and began the foundation for an 1800 sq. ft. guest house that will include two Agriboard buildings next to each other with an expansion in the middle for a common area.  This means that many of you can come down here in the future and stay right on our property next to the orphanage and experience it for yourself. 

Ryan’s quote for the day, “I love backhoes.”  They got so much done on the property with the backhoe it was amazing – they are going to rent it for 2 more days.  The kids were jumping in the powder the backhoe left behind thinking it was so great – they had never seen in – only hard dirt with rocks.  There are sooooo many rocks here.

The team at Pastor Louissainte’s orphanage down the road finished the 2^ndfoundation for them.  We are giving them a building to house the girls and a building to house the boys.  I wish you could see their living conditions and then the heart of this pastor to know what a blessing this is.

John Ming is building a pulpit for Pastor Benis so he’s been busy in the woodshop at Lifeline.

IV HOPE for Haiti Nov. 28th

Today Ryan went into the city to pick up Joe and Sally from the airport, work on paperwork, purchase the property, rent a trencher and a backhoe – he was there all day and for a while tonight, we were getting worried because Joe and Sally got a ride back to the mission but then we never heard from Ryan.  We went out on the porch to make phone calls to find out where he could be and low and behold, a backhoe comes driving through the front gate and there is Ryan – some people were surprised, but to me, that was just Ryan – ha!

This morning, the girls sorted through some love bundles (gift bags prepared by people back home for specific ages and genders of kids) and took some to Pastor Louissainte’s orphanage to pass out to the kids.  This is the orphanage that they came across last year where the pastor has such a good heart, but no money, and the kids were starving and living in horrible conditions.  Since then, Lifeline has been giving them food and the kids are doing much better.  While we were there we ran into Pastor Moore and John Hawk who were teaching about 12 Haitians how to lay form boards for a foundation for a building they are going to build for the orphanage – this one is right down the road from our orphanage property.  The rest of the men were up at our site working away with another crew of Haitians, who basically get on waiting lists in hope of work with us – it’s a blessing to be able to bless them.

Now that we are buying the property, we are working on re-designing some of our plans.  They are going to lay the foundation for the guest house we are building for future teams that come in as well as for a small building to house our generator that was donated by a Valley farmer that will power the whole compound.

In the afternoon, Sally, Aly and Kerstin sorted through a whole bunch of donated shoes in the Lifeline storage room and labeled them for specific kids at another orphanage based on a list Candice had with names and sizes.  I think they will take those tomorrow.

The dinner the Haitian ladies made tonight was really good!  This team is just wonderful.  The men are such hard workers, have huge hearts, are great with the people and children here – the community loves them.  It makes my heart proud of our Valley boys.  J  God has really blessed this ministry with wonderful people and I can hardly wait to see the fruits of their labors when this orphanage opens – but even in the process, God is doing wonderful things.