Miracle

Do we serve an awesome God or what!!!!! Do you really REALLY believe in a God of miracles?

A few days ago I wrote about how tiYoldy can see (maybe it was on facebook, not here). She was scheduled for eye surgery on the 18th. What I didn't know till today was that while getting ready to go to the hospital, she told big Yoldy (who's taking care of her) that she could see. When she held two fingers tightly against her good eye, she could see her fingers. She went in anyway, and the doctors couldn't believe it!!! They said it could only have been a miracle!!! tiYoldy told people "we prayed!" And people there have been asking about Canaan... So yes, she's able to see, but she's not had a surgery yet! I guess God knew we didn't have all the money yet! I don't know the exact story - whether she'll still need the lens change, whether she can see well or not, but this is a miracle!

So today (Friday) was an interesting day. There are pastors in Citi Soleil that have been wanting S. Gladys to come visit them. So today she, P. Henri and I went to see where the churches were and if it's really as bad as they say. Citi Soleil is like a suburb of Port au Prince, considered the most dangerous area, though presently it's not so bad or dangerous. It's a place where the kidnappers would

 hide out, poverty is rampant, and it smells like a pigpen (seriously and literally). There's trash and kids everywhere. I think that place produces children by bulk (hope that's not too crude:) - and they all have huge bellies, but they're so cute even dirty. Imagine a baby just crawling naked in the dust. His whole bottom, front and back and legs, are covered in dust. And the mom is just standing there. The houses are set so close together, and sometimes not bigger than the inside of a truck. They're made of sticks, or wood or blocks (broken and otherwise) and sometimes have a roof, although most of the tin was red from rust and broken, and sometimes the roof was missing. Some place had houses that looked a little better - small houses made by USAID or some group like that. They're concrete, about 6X10 maybe, with two to one building.                                                 

Houses are side by side

There are so many children everywhere!

It smells like the pigs everywhere, even where there are none. 

And flies galore!

The walls were broken out during the 3 year uprising because this is where the bad guys were hiding.

Water is scarce - one church had two bio-sand filters, which are really heavy, but he had to chain them up so they wouldn't steal them. A rare and special commodity!! 

Several of the churches try having schools - some actually had adult chairs for the kids to sit on. Others spread things on the floor for them.

Now my minds racing, wondering how I can manage a clinic there. If nothing else, to give worm medicine to all the kids!!! It's amazing how big some of those bellies were! There's got to be so many diseases! I'll admit I was surprised to not see so many really malnourished kids, but we're finding families will often keep those out of sight because of embarrassment.

From there we stopped in to see P. Henri's mom, and you see the total opposite. She's 'bujwa' (the rich, elite class), not a christian. She has a beautiful house, lots of trees and plants, maids, white leather furniture... OK, something a lot of you probably have, but here it just feels so very elegant! What a difference in lifestyles here!!!!

OK, I better let you go, but here's a few pictures from kids here at Canaan. Internet actually allowed me to upload them!!! 

This fellow below is our Navedson. He's about 18 months, and has been at Canaan since July. He's the little fellow that was left on my clinic steps. What a difference since then!! He was dehydrated and malnourished. Now he's learning it's faster to walk than crawl. With eyes like his, he wins people over with no problem!

Rolancia is 2 months younger than Navedson, but was quicker to walk. She has a peaceful disposition and everybody loves her, even our construction workers!

For Thanksgiving, some of the kids prepared some skits. Here you have King and Queen Nebuchadnezzar

Canaan

I've been getting comments that I haven't been writing much, so I'll see if I can write something before the kids come back from devotions.

First, I'm all better. Thanks for praying!! Wether it was a non-falciporum type of malaria or just the Influenza, guess I'll never know. Symptoms are similar. Feels good to have energy again. 

Which I needed today, because I got 73 boxes of medicines and other assortments from CAM. They had some extra stuff, like a standing scale!!!! I am so happy for that one, but now I have the daunting task of teaching my staff to use it (yea, it's not automatic that you know that)

My latest "YUCK" has been lying awake listening to a rat in my wastebasket. I know it's there because I saw it run under my bed yesterday morning. The problem at night is there's no light so I don't want to get off the bed! One of the missionary guys here had one run over his chest twice in one night. So now I'm trying the Rat Zapper. We have one of those here and it's going the rounds of the houses. Do you know those things cost $52.00 on ebay??? And here I had hoped to order me one for my house.

A blessing this sunday was - we had 3 fans set up in church. Only those that have been here can understand that blessing fully. It was connected to an inverter/battery system. YES!

I'm still doing French lessons. Need to start using it more though. It's an interesting language - such a mixture of Creole and Spanish. 

OK, this blog hasn't been sent yet and it's already the 19th. I'm over at Leslie's so am even trying to put up a few photos. (Nope, not working!)

So Yoldy's eye surgery was for today. Hopefully everything is going OK.

God bless you, till next time!

Elsie

Yoldy

GOOD NEWS about Yoldy!! 

The doctor says the retina looks intact!! If that's injured, they can't really repair the eye. He has high hopes that her eye can be fixed. She has something like a cataract which has to be removed, and the lens has to be changed. However they have to wait 3 to 4 weeks for her cornea to heal.

Now the bad news!

This is going to cost a pretty penny!!! Doctor estimates at least $10-11,000.00. Are there enough of us out there willing to share some of what we have to give a little girl her vision back? Her other eye isn't too good either, so she needs this one also.

If you can give some money, please send it to Chris Hlavacek and designate it for Yoldy's surgery. 

www.canaanorphanage.org

Chris Hlavacek 
1034 Thornrose Way 
Wake Forest, NC 27587 
(417) 263-2240 

 Thank you so much!!!

Praise the Lord!

WFP

Hi,

Just want to share about my meeting in Port on Wed, so you guys can pray about all this, since some people have been asking for an update. I'm excited about it. I'm seeing us branching off into another area. Or rather, expanding the area we already started. That is focusing even more on the malnourished people, and now more than just the under 5 year olds in the Mamba program. I see it as more a complete Nutrition Center. It won't cover every one, but maybe there's other ways of reaching out. I'm doing one at a time.

So the lady I met was from the UN's World Food Program. They have 3 different programs: 

#1 Children under 5 that have graduated from the Medika Mamba program, Malnourished and anemic pregnant women, and lactating women up to 6 months so the babies will be able to only breastfeed.  

#2 Patients with HIV and TB

#3 Families that meet the criteria

It'll take awhile to get the proposal in and approved but hopefully by the first couple months of the new year we should be able to sign a contract. 

I can see a lot of potential in all this, so please join me to pray for God's will in this. I think it is His will because He's taking it further almost faster than I can follow. 

Thank you all for your interest and support!!!

Elsie

Haiti

Hello,

Hope this finds you all well. I am also, and busy as always. I thought I would have more time now that I'm not seeing patients so much anymore, but I'm still always busy. Yesterday Bobi and I cleaned out our medicine storage place. It's tends to get filled up with boxes and boxes and you end up not even knowing what you have. That and being gone for almost 3 months, it was good to catch up on what we have there. Even found some much needed treasures (meds)for the clinic. That took a big chunk of the day.

Today we had another blessing. Lori, a lady that comes to Haiti 3-4 times a year, came to Canaan this year and is giving two days to check everybody's teeth! Thankfully most of the kids have good teeth, but she pulled 3 and there's about 5 fillings, plus cleaning and polishing a bunch. She's offered to come like twice a year, so I'm glad to have them get regular checkups. That's one thing I'm not very interested in doing, though I was given a quick hands on course in it. It was also good personal timing because I just had a filling fall out this last weekend.

Tomorrow I'm going to Port to meet with a lady from the UN - W0rld Food Program to see if they have a program that could help us help the people. I'm looking for something that we can help poor families with, or families that have kids in the MM program, or kids that are malnourished but too old for our program or older people, etc. You get the picture! There's a lot of need. I want to learn who/what I can tap into in local aids already in the country.

I've been so busy I haven't even started on the other project I was going to do as soon as I got my 3 new people trained - and that's attacking the Creole and French languages. Also setting up the new filing system hasn't gotten off the ground yet.

For those interested in Yoldy, the girl that hurt her eye - She's still in the States. They did an ultrasound but there's so much blood inside the eye that they haven't been able to do anything nor know the extent of injuries. Prognosis is not good, but nothing is impossible with God.

Bobi is leaving tomorrow, "going to get married". Marcus is accompanying her but returning next week. The wedding is Dec.12, in Missouri, and they're returning to Haiti in Jan. She's asked me to stand up with her, so I'm planning to go to the wedding too. I'm excited - it'll be a fun trip. Our friend Leslie here is also going.

Yes, our internet's on again. And the battery/inverter system is on so supposedly we have internet all day. We're so not used to that, we forget to take advantage of it! 

Thanks for your support of Canaan! God bless your life!

Elsie

Happy Thanksgiving - Canadian

Hello, everyone

Life here really never is the same. This has been quite the eventful week (ok, by now it I'm talking about last week).

Thursday I was sick most of the day. 

Friday I felt better and Bobi and I were able to go spend the day at Club Indigo as planned. Bobi took me there for the day for a birthday gift. Then we stayed over with our friend Lorraine there (she's part of the management there) for the night. Had a "girls night out", which was fun. 

Sat. we celebrated the Canadian Thanksgiving. Friends that are renting a house from another resort had all of us over, and side benefit is that we could all go enjoy the beach and pools for the morning, before heading back to the house for the usual awesome Thanksgiving meal with all it's trimmings. Got to know more fellow Canadian missionaries here, which was awesome!

Canadians in Haiti!

The not so awesome thing that happened was what I mentioned in my former blog. Yoldy had surgery in her left eye on Friday. Her cornea is torn. The result wasn't good, and she has now been taken to the US to see if more can be done. She is a brave girl!! Please keep praying for this!

Big Yoldy took her to the States, since Gladys and Henri were both there already. That leaves Canaan a bit short on administrative staff. It sure is felt, though people are trying well.

Clinic's going quite well - numbers are down to in the 30s and 40s so it's quite manageable. My new staff is also doing quite well, mostly. The nurse has more education that many, and I just have to start saying something in my broken creole and she can take over and explain it in a language they understand, and I know enough to be happy with what she's saying. That makes training much easier!!! We're really happy with the other nurse too, who's doing the Medika Mamba. We didn't even have to teach her how to convert pounds to kilos!! And she takes initiatives. It's restful to have people like that to work with.

Friday Bobi and I are planning to head to Port. We're meeting with a lady from an organization that we're hoping can help us with food for people. There are many out here - we just need to learn who to ask. Another one of my "jobs' here.

The filing system is the next big project for me to attack (besides French and Creole lessons).

 Thanks for all your prayers for Yoldy. I haven't heard this week how she's doing, since she's in the States, but.....

God bless all of you!!

Elsie, in hot Haiti :(

Hello there,

Just a quickie tonight because I'm sending out a prayer request. One of our little girls, Yoldy, who's about 7, and already handicapped because she was born without kneecaps got hit in the left eye tonight by a piece of a CD cover. Nobody quite knows or says how it happened. I don't like the looks of it. The bleeding has pretty well stopped but the eye is cloudy, can't see the pupil at all. She's on the way to the hospital, (which will cost tons!) so please pray that she won't lose her vision in it.

Our God is powerful, and I want us to take this beyond the usual prayer for her. Let's pray in faith!!! Yesterday Sister Gladys felt God telling her to put all the CDs into our Container. Of course, that caused an uproar (fringing on people's rights??), but was disobeying worth losing an eye? Are we sensitive to God? And obedient? 

The Spirit is in this, so let's pray!!!

Thanks!!

Elsie