Sunday Nov 2

OK, I'm giving up sending my last week's blog so you'll miss out on last week, which was a very interesting one, what with the medical team being here all week and then us having a sleep over at Chris and Leslie's. The most tiring weekend since I came I think. At least that I realized. It took more than a weekend to


Thursday

We've almost made it through another week!!! Actually, God gave strength, and it wasn't so bad. I just have some more resting up to do.

We had a cool thing happen today. Cenofa our computer tech here, set up the wireless so that we have it in our house now!!! I'm actually sitting on my bed relaxing!!! That doesn't mean no interruptions though. They come at anytime. Like this afternoon I was walking out the lane to do my exercises to/at/from the beach, and I hear a young voice 'Sister Elsie, I have a cough'. Sometimes they're at my door before I'm up and the other day I was even awakened from sleep in the evening. Mind you it was earlier than I usually go to bed, but I was SOOOO tired. I thought seeing as how my house was dark, they wouldn't wake me.


It's kind of cool when walking off of Canaan, I get people calling me by my name. Even if I don't understand what else they're saying. My Creole is picking up but not as fast as I'd like. I had two different people call to me on my walk to the beach.


The 3.3 kg 15 month old that we admitted to our Mamba program last week did real well this first week (picture on last blog). He gained half a kilo - that's one pound!! In one week!! Love it! The one negative was Maikel didn't show up and we were suppose to arrange to do his Echocardiogram in Port. Now it will have to wait another week, and we won't be able to send the tape of it to the Cardiologist in the States. If he has a hole in his heart, they'll be flying him up for the surgery. Pray he'll come next week.

Another challenge this week was a 5 yr old boy, whose mother brought him because of asthma. He had obvious breathing difficulty. Last month a doctor had told her it was asthma. I thought 'great, I've got a generator, I'll give him a nebulizing treatment and he'll be fine.' Not so. After consulting with my "American doctors" I think he has an airway obstruction. Mom says in Aug another boy choked him on the throat. He could have gotten injured, and now with a little inflammation from a cold or something, it could give him difficulty. Pray the meds will help, cause there's really nothing else I can do from my clinic. I may need to take him to an ENT (ears, nose, throat doctor) in Port. He was such a sweet kid. Reminded me of my nephew Aidan, his age, only different color :) He'd squint up his face when breathing seemed to get more difficult - no complaints. He could only whisper, so didn't say much.

Sunday night..

Sorry for the delay in this post. Internet has been very sporadic.

Pray for us this week if you think of us. P.Henri and S. Gladys are at a training center in the States, and things always run a bit differently when they're gone.

This weekend has been good. We spent yesterday afternoon with our friends in Pierre Payen and this afternoon, we took all the younger kids to the beach. It was windy and the waves were huge for here - some even 6 ft high. The beach wasn't very good but the boys esp. loved the challenge, and change of beach I think. A little dangerous for the little ones, so I was glad I got them back home safe and sound. I'm not used to driving the big truck either.

So much for this week!!!
Thanks for all your support and prayers!!
Elsie

Medical team pictures

the blog for this week has been written. Just need to figure out how to get it posted. My laptop wants to give up on me (it's not even a year old yet!) - for some reason doesn't want to open up on me. I'll post this now and get the letter later. 

As you'll see from the pictures, we had a medical team here and everybody had a busy week! I was more tired than I realized since the weekend before was spent working too. 24 hours at Leslie's house was great, but I still went to bed at 7:30 last night, and with Bobi's special coffee this morning, the day wasn't so bad! 

Maikel - the child with heart problems as well as malnourished and kidney problems

Looking out over our future new clinic

Working late!!

Mandy (nurse), Tony (MD), Ryan (PA) working on a sick child

Dr Ric

This is "Marasmus". He was fed only diluted cows milk, so into the Medika Mamba program he goes!! Bobi did an excellent job all by herself with all the Mamba patients, with Fabiola has her translator. 

Izralinda graduated!! She was such a tiny, listless 10 month old when she entered our program. Now she absolutely sparkled with laughter and playfullness.

427 patients seen in 3 days (not including the mamba patients!) Good job, team!!

Working weekend

Sunday/Monday - Oct 20, 08
It is 1:20 a.m. and for some unknown reason, I can’t sleep. Considering the weekend I’ve had, I don’t know why I didn’t drop off the minute my head hit the pillow instead of 3 hours later, and counting. Was it the coke I had tonight? But I often have that for supper. I don’t think it’s because of the medical team that came tonight, though I’m very happy to have them here, and the next few days are going to be interesting. I’m not specifically worried about anything.... I guess everyone has these nights once in awhile. Thankfully they don’t come around very often for me.
So back to you... I haven’t been very steady on my blogs here lately but to tell you the truth, I’ve been busy; with a lot of things, if you want to know. This week it was preparation for the team that was coming.
Awhile back when we had the break-in at the clinic, they put re-bars through the concrete wall to hold the bars at the window. Since then they have been sticking out on the inside. Seeing as this week I’m expecting to have around 15 people in a room about 12X10, working all day, I thought that might cause some hazards with re-bars everywhere, so on Thursday and Friday some men here went down, and sawed them to about 3 inches, cut holes into the concrete big enough to hammer the re-bars in and then re-cemented everything. Now that’s not very nice to look at, so we decided to give everything a coat of paint – so off to the depot we go to see what colors are available. We ended up with white and a purple, which later we couldn’t figure out what colors we had mixed to come up with that. However the doors and rebars, which were a green before needed oil paint and we ended up with blue – not exactly a modern choice, but.... hey, we’re not necessarily very modern here in our trends. So Sat morning Bobi and I headed down to the clinic with 6 other boys and started working. It took ALL day! And we almost finished. Too bad we couldn’t start earlier in the week. Now we had to return Sunday afternoon to put everything back in place!!! And the hour or two I anticipated turned into 4. Not the way I wanted to spend a Sunday, especially considering the day before was also so busy. But what has to be done, has to be done! Not all the paint was dry yet, so Monday morning means going early to put back the rest and make sure the place gets cleaned better.
Oh yes, and sat was laundry day for me too, including sheets in case they were needed and cleaning my own house (finally got a mop to clean) so it was 10 p.m. by the time I could relax.

Having said all this about my weekend I need to share the best part yet. This morning, we (the missionaries, as we’re called here) were practicing a song to sing in church (we had promised them last week) when we were told the leaders weren’t going to be there, so me and the others were to lead the service. Hmmm... Of course all kinds of excuses come up at the moment. I can’t do that; not today, I don’t feel spiritual enough; somebody else can preach; I don’t have anything to say. Finally I’m like, what are we here for anyway? If we’re missionaries, we should be able to lead a meeting where routine is totally excepted! Anyway we don’t have to preach, we can do other things. So we sang the song “Take my life”. Bobi shared a little, then I shared about the song, challenging people to get back to the time where they were consecrated and committed to God, if they weren’t there now. After the service, P. Joel brought an eight month pregnant 17 yr old girl up to me, she wanted me to pray for her to become a Christian. I was quite amazed!! The first time I “led” a church service, and a girl became a Christian. Her name is Erline Delicate, if you want to pray for her. She lives here in ‘Sou Boy’. Pregnant by a boy who just wanted to show the family he could get her pregnant, then abandoned her, she’s got a poor, hard life ahead of her. She seemed very sweet and sincere.
So we have a team of 11 here now, Sunday to Friday. Mon – Wed are clinic days, then they have one day off here. 2 are doctors, who have been an immense support to me, since I got to know them on their last visit in March, 2 are PAs (Physicians Assistants), one nurse and many willing hands. We’ve handed out 100 tickets for each day, so we’ll see how many patients come. For the Haitian people it’s medical care; for me it’s a time to learn.
Earlier this week, we received 3 new members to our team here, Kristy, Bethany, and Lydia. They’ll be helping out at the school, giving special attention to the ‘learning to read’ program. They’ll be here 2 months.
OK, it’s past two a.m. so I’m going to try sleeping again.
God bless!

abandonment

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Loveline. At age one, her mother died. Her dad took her with him and went to the Capital, leaving behind two stepdaughters. At some point Dad decided he could not take care of her, and she was taken to an orphanage – too young to remember any of her former life.
One day, when Loveline was about 11 yrs old, a lady came to the clinic at the orphanage. She said her two year old daughter was Loveline’s sister and that her dad had died awhile ago. It came as a bitter shock; she felt very alone – alone, with no family; alone because her father had made a life without her. Gone was the dream that someday, her dad would come and say “you’re my daughter; come to me!”
A few months later, Loveline got sick and had to go to the clinic herself. After she was called by name, a lady comes to her, asking for her full name; What was your dad’s name?? What was your mom’s name? Then the ultimatum “I’m your sister! I’ve been searching for you for a long time. Someone told me you were here, so instead of going to a hospital in my hometown, I brought my sick daughter to be seen here at this clinic, almost an hour from my home, in the hopes of maybe finding you!! And here you are!! Can I come visit you on Saturday?”

This made this girl very happy.

The end. (not for her)

This is a true story. The clinic is my clinic. Can you imagine how it feels to have this saga unfold in your own clinic? It was pretty amazing for me to realize!! Some felt sad – it is sad to have all that sad past, but for me it seemed so ‘happy’ that they found each other!

Life continues busy, busy.

Sunday, we met again at Chris and Leslie’s, and I met some interesting people. They’re with AMURT, which I didn’t know either, so don’t feel bad, and I’m not sure I know well enough yet to explain to you. A non-religious (I think) organization, they work with rebuilding after disasters. I met Amber, who’s a lawyer, and she’s deciding at the moment whether she’ll be here long term. She’s working in Gonaives, sleeping without a roof over their heads, she was SO happy for some table and chairs they just got – now they can have an office. AMURT is working on getting a model out – kind of like a compound (my impression) for around 20 families, and they’d have their agricultural areas, their private and public places, water systems, etc. Basically everything they need. They’re building the first there now, hoping to get it done quick so they can show it works and start working on more. They’re combining a lot of systems into one area. The individual systems are all in use in some part of Haiti, but not together in one place. Their goal is not to just get the people of Gonaives back to their barely bearable state of living like before but to have something better, something higher up, out of the low areas where it’s bound to flood again.

Monday I got us a small generator for the Clinic!! My goal is to have it there for when I need to use some things like a nebulizer for asthma patients, but also just for fans – it gets so warm sometimes and just zaps your energy right out of you. I don’t know the price of gas, and being the frugal person that I am, I don’t know how much I’ll run it just for fans, but I’ll see. It’s a good time to buy it (actually this is why I thought about it) because next week with the coming of the doctors, we’ll be like 15 people in one little room, and it gets quite uncomfortable!! I think nights are starting to cool off, thankfully. Still, I don’t think I’m ready to switch weather with the people of my Canadian hometown – not ready for freezing weather yet!!

I have a question for one person.....

Baby Lucivens Paul came to my clinic for the third time today. He's almost 3 months old. First time he came was because of stomach pain and diarrhea. Probing a little deeper, I find the mother has abandoned him; the father brought him to his sister and left him there and has gone back to Port and his sister has no money for food. They're feeding him cookies!! I happened to have a couple cans of infant formula donated by Christian Aid Ministries, and I gave him one of the last ones today. I don't know what they plan to do - continue with cookies I guess. I told the aunt last time to call the dad and tell him to provide milk. She did, and says when she said what I had told her, that he needs to buy milk, he hung up on her. And now, he won't answer the phone when he calls.

My question is: would anyone want to take on this baby and feed him with milk for a year or whatever time you feel able? I'm not sure what the price of formula is but I think it's similar to North America. (I tried to post a picture but I can't from here)

Let me know if you do!!

OK, I better go. We're trying to get a room ready for 3 more girls coming tomorrow and we conned Mark into helping us move in a couple bunk beds by promising to share our rare treat (apple crisp) with him. And it's already 9:20. If I wait much longer, they'll be done without me.

Till next time!! Please remember us in prayer!
Elsie

Birthday Pictures

Hi! Got some pictures uploaded finally. Couldn't do more, with our slow internet service.

We're kept real busy as always. Thanks to many of you giving money, this week we've been able to prepare more food for a lot of people - both in Cabaret and in our surrounding areas. People keep coming begging for help. How do we respond????

This week has been busy for me because I finished moving into my apartment. Doesn't mean I've found a spot for everything yet! Thankfully I've got suitcases because I sure don't have a lot of furniture. My furniture consists of one desk (with two small rusted drawers), one dresser, and my bed. Oh, and I can't forget.. P.Henri gave me a birthday gift yesterday - a 2-burner propane hotplate. Once they set it up, I'll be able to heat water, if I get something to heat it in. One of these days, which I can't see happening for another 2-5 weeks, I plan to go furniture scouting. Next Sat. is Canadian Thanksgving and I've been invited by friends to go celebrate it with friends of theirs who are Canadians, whom I've never met. Sounds interesting, right? Especially since there's a pool....

I better go. Just wanted to share a few more photos!



Bobi (doctor's assistant as she calls herself) with a little two month old that came in with a high fever


Bobi and me chatting (and working) at the clinic :)


The neighborhood goats love to sleep under our porch. This little kid got too adventurous and couldn't get back out through the bars.


Bobi, Mark, me, Sister Gladys and Pastor Henri at Club Indigo, taking me out for dinner. Imagine the Carribean ocean in the back.


Officially Canaanite now, per Pastor Henri

Birthday

Happy Birthday to me it was! I had a great day Tuesday, from start to finish. Made me feel very blessed to have so many friends.


When I got to work, my Haitian nurse had a song, scripture, and a nice prayer for me, as well as flowers. (Real flowers in Haiti is rare based on my experience).

Then when I came home for lunch, everybody was waiting for me in the cafeteria with cake and cookies and candy and pop, balloons everywhere, and cards and some gifts!! It's interesting how they can make a celebration fun without having the abundance we're used to. They love to celebrate, and made me feel very special.


In the afternoon, Bobi decided she was comfortable enough doing the Mamba clinic that I didn't have to go down. We made sure our 'walkie talkie worked and off she went. Meanwhile, I moved into my new bachelor apartment! Yes, I actually did! and it was fun. It's right beside the other place, attached to it, but separate. It really feels separate. Except Bobi and I kind of miss each other (we're close!)


Then for dinner, Pastor Henri, Sister Gladys, Mark, and Bobi took me to Club Indigo (the nicest place in the area) for a wonderful buffet dinner. And after that, we went to our friends Chris and Leslie for cake and homemade ice cream.


A call from home and 16 email birthday messages finished my day.

OK, I was hoping to add photos, but since I don't know when that will happen, I better post this now.

God bless you all!!

Elsie