doing battle...

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/articles/battle_stories/

from the heart...

We’ve been on R and R in the Caribbean, and have been trying to get good rest while eating lots of food to fill up our reserves since “good food” and “Haiti” don’t particularly go together. We’ve so appreciated the support and the prayers that we know people are lifting up for Haiti. It’s been hard for us to be away knowing what is transpiring there, but at the same time we know it’s necessary to be able to rest, so we can give fully again. Plus, we are aware that the programs certainly don’t need us to go on.. We’ve been working some crazy hours, like the rest of our team, and we are all rotating to take a week off. We have had limited access to email and internet since we’ve been here, which is probably a good thing, for unplugging purposes. We’ve watched little coverage on the situation there, and are trying to protect our purpose for being here. 

It’s been really good for us to get away and process, because we were wearing thin emotionally. I was close to tears at any moment the last days when things started to get really bad, and Justin and I had some emotional moments the night before we left. We were torn, knowing that we had to leave and that we needed to leave but desperately felt like we should stay. It was certainly hard. I think writing stories and capturing photos has been an intense way to watch cholera unfold, because I have to reprocess it as I write for others. Patient care and management has been equally intense for Justin, on a different level.  I am quite grateful for the way I was able to connect with people through allowing them to share their story. I never had one person tell me they didn’t want their photo taken, and when I came to the clinic the next day it was like seeing an old friend. And I can’t say enough for our nurses, the way they selflessly give. I’ve been so blessed watching Justin and the others care gracefully for these very sick people. There was a trust that was created in those tents.  And we are both humbled beyond words that we get to be a part of caring for people during this time in Haiti. It’s so much bigger than us, that our organization. 

We’ve wanted to write a really lengthy personal update here.. I’ve been doing a lot of writing for our organization so it’s been challenging to find time to blog… but it’s always on my mind, the things I want to say. I will get to it very soon. Until then, I’d love for you to read about the stories and see some of the photos of the people I encountered below. This writing is very close to my heart. Thank you again for your love and support…

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/articles/stories_of_hope/

Photos I shot over the course of this epidemic:
http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/In_Pictures/photos/haiti_cholera_epidemic_rises/

meaning and stories

Recent CNN article with story and picture from our clinic... and picture of one of boys below...
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/11/11/haiti.cholera/index.html

Below is also a recent article i wrote for the SP website, which should be up in a day or so. I thought I'd pass it along here. These past couple days were filled to the brim with emotion. I've shed many tears, and said many prayers. They are saying this could be the worst cholera outbreak in 100 years, because the Haitian people have no immunity to the bacteria... and they estimate over 200,000 could become infected over the next 6 months. These are big numbers. Tomorrow we go on our R and R. It is incredibly difficult to leave, but we must get rest.  If this thing should still be raging when we get back, we have to be rested to be the best we can be for the people here. Thank you for your love from afar.
----------------------

There is a scary tendency to become drawn into the numbers and sheer quantity of people becoming ill, without making it personal. For us, it has become extremely personal. It’s impossible to care for people at this level, to be so near when they are in their hour of need, without becoming fully vested in their survival. This is what our staff is doing 24 hours a day here.

I wonder if it is possible for a heart to become overwhelmed from fullness of emotion. I felt this today as I watched a mother’s love manifest itself in ways that only God could instill inside someone. The gentleness and tenderness from the day replays as I write these words. Mothers that laid on soiled beds next to their sick children, hooked up to an IV, watching over them. They weren’t afraid of getting cholera. They just knew they needed to be near their little one as their chests breathed up and down quickly, trying to recover from their sickness. Mothers that sang over their children, and caressed their backs as they vomited repeatedly. Mothers who rode in the back of pick-up truck beds and motorbikes seats, pulling their loved ones close as they drove for help. Each story we heard from a mother shared their laments that they thought their child was going to do. Cholera is miserably quick to attack.

Today, our beds at our Bercy cholera treatment center were full. These makeshift hospitals tell the story of cholera. Family members holding their sick, rocking them as they moan in pain. In another tent, mothers fan the flies away from their infant’s sleeping bodies. Wives clasp their husband’s frail hand.  Daughters pour water over a mother’s face as she hangs her head back in despair.( daughters) Bed by bed, we listen to each story, and watch love make a way. There is something very healing and validating when you are present and listen to someone share their story. They should matter, and they do. We want them to know that God is bigger than this. Cholera becomes very personal when each patient begins to matter more than just a number on a checklist. I watched Lesley live this out as she comforted a sick child getting an IV. She has a special way of drawing them to her. Although he was in pain, he felt safe, because he trusted her when she said it was going to be okay.  This is the kind of thing that happens  here. 

There is an ebb and flow of feeling as you watch a cholera epidemic unfold. Heartbreak as you watch the sick be carried in, or as you look into the vastness of a child’s sad eyes as they wait out the hours… but then comes the joy, as you see a young woman like Vanessa, smiling brightly and sitting up in her bed.  

“I thought I might die when I came in here Wednesday. I was very sick. But the staff here has brought my back life, they have been kind to me. Now I am going home and I can see my child. And now I know what to do to prevent her from getting ill,” she shares confidently. (pic called Vanessa).  Or like Matilde, who watched her son bounce back overnight. “I am so happy today. I didn’t think he was going to make it. Now I can smile, because he has life again,” she said through a smile.

Then are these God-sized miracles that happen.. like the interosseos IV that wouldn’t go in to a child who came in close to death. Dr. John, Mike and Tiffany tried every vein to get a line started and they couldn’t. They decided to do an IV into his bone, and couldn’t find the spot… it was tense and the child was close to slipping away. “We need to pray.”  They pleaded that God would intercede and immediately the IV went in and the child begin receiving life-giving fluid. They knew, instantly, that God had intervened. And yet another story, of a 64-year old woman who came in comatose and near death. She received fluids for over a day and this afternoon, she was completely unresponsive. She was near death, and Dr. Chuck couldn’t get a pulse. They thought this was the end. Our team of Haitian pastors and our BGEA chaplains prayed and sang over her. They watched her rouse, sit up and begin talking. They said it was a miracle. She was on the ledge of death and came off of it.

At the same time an hour away, our team was doing an assessment in a mountain community where several people had fallen ill overnight. We were returning from dropping off supplies when we  stumbled across a woman  being carried on a rusty bed frame up  a bumpy dirt road. She was incredibly sick, and it was clear they had been carrying her for quite a ways. We got her into the truck bed and her elderly mother held her in her lap as we drove her to our clinic, rushing to get here in time. This fight for survival is in the soil, in the air here. The Haitian people are so resilient, even in the face of cholera. Our team was there to receive her and started an IV on her immediately. We stopped and thank God that He had brought her to us. I smiled thinking about this group of people, struggling to carry this their loved one in her bed, when suddenly a carload doctors who were heading toward their cholera clinic pulled up. How much more proof is there that God is here, fighting with us?  

Carrying a woman, close to death.

Her mother, comforting her, as she raced toward the clinic

One of the boys whose mother died - from the article CNN referrenced us in above... he was crying all morning and then his father came, and he finally was able to rest

This daughter was reading the bible to her mother, and her mother had tears rolling down her face... it was very moving.

Vanessa

soggy but in tact

Dear friends... thank you for your prayers during this time. I feel like we have been needy in the prayer department, but never would we have thought a few months ago when we signed up for this wild ride, that we'd be in the center of so many things colliding at once here. It's been a whirlwind, and we are going on three weeks straight of work. Justin and the medical team are doing amazing, forward-thinking programs. They are forging into areas that others are too afraid to treat, like Cite Soleil. Tomorrow, they will be opening a second rehydration site in a new area, south of where the first one was, where there have been several reported sicknesses. We've been fortunate to get new help and a great group of volunteers to take us through this next phase. With prayers, and God's favor, we're getting ahead of this.

The media has had their attention on Haiti. I've felt blessed to capture the images and stories of the people here, images that have been seen all over the world on BBC and CNN and even was asked to phone in for a live interview with CNN Intl news the other night. I don't say this to boast but quite the opposite-- my work is incredibly insignificant in the grand scheme of things... this is so much bigger than us, and I feel that God is giving us an opportunity to share about the beauty and resilience of the Haitian people in a way that brings dignity to their reality. I so desire for the world to not see Haiti as a big mess. There is so much more here than that. It's the story of God's redemptive love, playing out here, each day. And if God chooses to use our work here as a team to do that, than what more could we ask?

I'd love to write more, but as you can imagine, I am exhausted. Justin's been out for a couple hours. He has an early morning setting up the new center. We weathered the storm here- it was a lot of rain but nothing near what it could have been. Our biggest concern now is the aftermath, and the spread of cholera. Our team rescued 5 people from a clinic nearby who most likely would have died... the clinic was closing at 8 and didn't want to do more, so our doctors and nurses brought them back to a makeshift cholera treatment center at the edge of our base that we created, and cared for them through the night. Each one of those people left today, better... our staff is literally saving lives. God is leading us to people and places that we would never find otherwise. It's moving, and I have tears in my eyes thinking about it. Your support of what we are doing here is giving us strength, even though we can't talk to each of you personally at the moment to tell you that. So thank you, a thousand times.

Life will seem a bit boring I suppose once all this is over... but we might be ready for a bit boring at that point. More in the next day or so, we promise. Until then, here is an update i just did that details more of our last couple days during the storm. And some photos of those weathering the storm, and aerial shots from the helicopter of the flooding.

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/articles/weathering_the_storm/
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/11/07/tropical.weather/index.html

batten down the hatches

It's been a bit of a manic week as far as the forecast goes. Hurricane, no hurricane, tropical storm, tropical depression, headed for Haiti, barely missing Haiti. It's hard to get a grasp on what will actually occur. This morning we woke up to some serious wind gusts of probably 30 miles or more an hour and the sky is darkening. We've heard reports that the larger IDP camps in Port au Prince are beginning some evacuations, although it's unclear where you could really put over a million displaced people. The feeling is a bit apprehensive here, tentative, anxious. Regardless if it touches down as a hurricane or not, we are still projected to get over 8 inches of rain- which is quite a mess when you consider the spread of cholera-- increased water being mixed with waste and increased flooding in low-lying areas are prime conditions for the spread of  cholera. On top of this, our resources are stretched responding to the the outbreak as well continuing programs that are meeting the needs of earthquake victims. It begs the question.. how much more can Haiti endure?

We're in full preparation mode here, going to our shelter communities and communicating to them that there is a storm coming, and instructing them to get extra food, clean water and to secure their tarps. We are also urging them to be cautious of the spread of cholera with increased rains. We will update you more in the coming day. Until then, thank you for your prayers and support as we 'weather this storm'.

securing down tarps

mothers are asking how to protect their young