02/20/2010

REV. TINA LESLIE, Executive Director, NHCM Canada

My dear ones,

Today is Saturday. Here at the mission, when there are no teams joining us, it means that there are far fewer people inside the gates. But that does not mean that it is quieter, by any means.

The sound of workmen and hammers resounds from the cement walls of the buildings. Today is a day of catching up on work we cannot do when our courtyard is full of sick people, moms with children waiting to see the doctor, the lame and the blind coming for food, and everywhere, children who are survivors of third stage malnutrition delighting in being able to run and play again.

Today, the men are putting a corrugated roof on one of the little houses they are building at the baby orphanage. Someone had the idea that the babies would be happier if they went to sleep at night in smaller ‘family’ units. So, we have been building little houses around the larger nursery, so that groups of six or less children, can sleep in a quieter place. They are such wonderful babies!

This should be a slightly quieter week, as we prepare for the surgical team which treats eye problems to come in next week. Our little recovery room is down to only two patients, now. Little Marita continues to grow stronger daily. She still gets fevers sometimes, but we have learned to pray for her, and let her body fight the germs that have tried to attack it. She seems stronger daily. Marita has a little cousin who sometimes comes to visit her. She has been going up and down the halls in the wheelchair with her little cousin pushing her, or tagging alongside her when she wheels herself.

Marita is such a tiny girl, so very thin, that by comparison, the adult wheelchair she uses looks as though it was built for a giant! We have smaller wheelchairs, but her nurse, Melissa, says that Marita has to learn to walk again, and we do not want her to become too comfortable with a wheelchair of her own. And, she, not knowing there is such a thing as a pediatric wheelchair, goes out to play… hospital gown flapping in the wind as she and her little cousin fly down the hall with the giant wheelchair.

With our two recovery room nurses going home, Marita has discovered Miss Beth. Miss Beth is the school teacher for the missionary children who live here at the campus. Those children are back in the United States, taking a rest after the earthquake.

The little missionary girls, all kindergarten through grade one, were believing that Disney World’s castle might have been destroyed by the earthquake, and were waking up crying, wondering if anyone had heard from Cinderella, if she was still alive. Her parents thought it was best to take them home, away from the trauma all around, to get them over the fear caused by the earthquake.

Miss Beth, their teacher, has been having her days free from teaching school. So, she has been spending lots of time with the children in the Miriam Center, the little ones with disabilities, who live with us.

Earlier this week, our Marita was out in her big wheel chair, and heard Miss Beth teaching the Myriam Center children Bible songs with sign language. She followed the sound of Miss Beth’s voice, until she found her. Every day she seeks Miss Beth out.

Now, there is no one Marita will allow to change her bandages and wash her huge leg wound, unless Miss Beth is there to hold her hand, and remind her that Jesus is there and it is okay. She can get through even this.

Nurse Elizabeth said that it was time for Marita to begin putting weight on her leg. If Marita does not begin to use this wounded leg, the muscles will not grow back as they should, and she could be crippled all her life. Miss Beth heard this. So, yesterday, when Marita found her, Miss Beth held her gently, and the two of them practiced walking. Together, Miss Beth and Marita and part of a miracle taking place. The day is coming when our little Marita will be able to go home, a whole, healed, walking, little girl. God is so very good.

We know that the life that our little Marita will return to will be a difficult life. But it is HER life and she is filled with joy. Every day, morning and night, when I go in to sing hymns, pray, and share the Word of God, our little Marita is there, singing louder than almost anyone else, eyes shining. It has been a joy to see her come back from an almost certain death. I know that God has a plan for each of our lives. I am waiting to see what Marita’s young life will unfold in the plan of God.

Our generator has been on for almost two days, now. Until today, that is. We burn six gallons of diesel fuel an hour when the generator is running. With diesel reaching $20 per gallon in the aftermath of the earthquake, we would only do this if life was at stake. And for the last two days, and very tiny life has been in the balances.

We had a young girl, maybe sixteen years old, come to the birthing center in premature labour. She was frightened. She was raped in the city last year. Very lovingly, she has been awaiting the birth of her baby, seeing him as the consolation for the pain she suffered. When he was born Thursday night, he was a pretty good size, but very undeveloped.

We already had two other preemies in the birthing center. There have been quite a few moms going into labour prematurely since the earthquake and the numbers have not declined. This little baby kept turning blue every time we took him off of oxygen. So, we ran the generator to keep his incubator warm, and the oxygen compressor providing the enriched air his little body needed.

Melissa warned us that the baby’s tiny heart had not fully developed. But no one had the heart to stop the extra oxygen, praying for a miracle. This morning our little baby died. And, today, following the appropriate conservation of diesel fuel, the generator was turned off for the day. The silence from the generator was like a voice of sorrow for his little life leaving. His mother knows that her baby is with Jesus. She understands. And she received the precious gift of holding him and feeding him, and loving him for the two days he was on earth.

O the number of precious little ones who will be waiting for us when we get Home!

Here on earth, tensions have been mounting among the earthquake survivors who were in Port au Prince during the earthquake. The two young men, Jocelyn and Fordieu, who have been working as my interpreters for the last few weeks, have come to me for prayer several times about the rain in Port au Prince.

Under normal times, the empty lots in that city flood very badly, sometimes as deep as three feet, or a meter. The lots that are empty are that way, because they flood the most and no one dared build upon them. But it is precisely these places that the tent cities have been built. Fordieu told me that his friend said that in the rain in Port au Prince yesterday, people had to abandon their tents, because they were filled with water to the knees and there as waste floating in the floodwaters. We are praying. Before I came here, several brothers in the Lord warned me that the real disaster would become apparent when the heavy rains started in Port au Prince. Now we pray and prepare and watch.

Today, having been feeding literally many thousands daily, our warehouse is empty of rice meals. We have containers waiting to be picked up in Port au Prince, and are praying that one will be released on Monday.

The reason we must pray about this, is because the shipping offices have all been destroyed in the earthquake. Now the container shipping lines have one man with a clipboard, standing somewhere down at the big dock. To get our containers out, we have to find that one man among hundreds…

I know that our containers containing precious food and medicine arrived in Port au Prince on January 11th and January 12th. The earthquake happened on January 12th just before evening. The food is there. We pray for the miracles we see our Lord perform daily to occur with those containers.

I know that everywhere there has been so much hurt and pain. Everywhere, many are still having trouble getting from one hour to the next. And yet, everywhere, I see the signs of rejoicing and the joy of life in so many who are alive because of the goodness of our heavenly Father.

I praise God for the joy of life I see in little Marita’s eyes as she sings hymns with us morning and evening, and the stories from the Word of God are told. I rejoice to see that young mother clinging to the love of a Father who cares for her tiny baby. And the sound of those precious children, whose tummies are full of rice and beans, running through our courtyard, glad to be alive and full… The sound of the young men singing in the power of their young manhood, praising God… who were saved though their dormitory fell around them.

There was a testimony I heard yesterday from one of the ladies I prayed with in the Recovery Room in 2008. She was so moved by hearing the story of the Gospel as I ministered to one of the patients, that she accepted Jesus and begged to be baptized.

Every time she found I was back in Haiti, she would make the trip out of the mountains to bring me gifts… an orange she picked or avocadoes… something she could find to tell me how thankful she was to know Jesus. Francine has always introduced me as her ‘mother in Jesus’ and says it is her job to take care of ‘her mother’. She has always been so thin that I have almost begged the Lord to not make me receive those precious offerings from her. I have had some real lessons in the widow’s mite from Francine.

Yesterday, Francine came to see me. I did not know that Francine had a grown boy. After she made Jesus her Lord, she went home and told her son all about Jesus.

Her son was living in Port au Prince during the earthquake. Francine tells me that he was in the second floor of a cement building during the earthquake. The walls were twisting and curving and moving all around him. Her son told her, “I cried out to the Jesus my mother knows…. ‘Save me!’ and suddenly, I just thought that I should push on the wall and tell it to fall the other way.” She says her son put his hand out and pushed on the wall, and it just fell outside instead of upon him, to crush him.

He doesn’t remember how he fled the building, but he found himself standing out on the street below, his building all around him. It took him a long time to get up to the mountains where his mother lives. He was changing clothes when the earthquake destroyed his building. When he got to her in her home in the mountains, he had still only the shirt and underwear he was wearing when Jesus delivered him from the falling building. She tells me confidently, “Jesus saved my boy.”

O, what a wonderful Saviour!

What a privilege to be here, helping in all the little ways – serving, praising, loving, singing. Holding on tightly to those whose lives our Father has rescued.

Our God is so very good.

In His very great love, Tina