Bon Swa!

MVI Team I  in Petit Goave, Haiti. 
Bud is 4th from left in back row, Ed is 2nd from right in green.
This great team is part medical and part construction. Awesome!

Bud's email to me from Haiti said...
Lots of work, got the pump in and now they have water for the first time

in that area that comes from a spicket. Showers, toilets, sinks, they are incredibly excited.

Started on the wall for security, and will hopefully have much done when the next team begins to work. The bus left here about an hour ago. They were really a great bunch of guys.
I say guys because the women worked at the Wesleyan clinic. The guys were all well versed in the jobs needing done and it was great.

This was home for Bud and the team.  Tents are also home for many, many Haitians...and some, as so many fotos have recorded, have much less than this.   The rains came while the team was there and even the new tents leak.

Kids are abundant in Petit Goave, especially in the area where Ed Lockett has worked for so many years.  The construction team got to play with the children when not laying pipelines, block or whatever the task of the day included.  Bud is staying in Haiti to work with the teams arriving.  Ed left with the first group for some R&R in Florida.

A word about our troops in Haiti

Of the many stories that have come out of Haiti, a favorite of mine is how kind our troops have been to the people...not just those in need in Haiti, but to the volunteers that have poured into the country as well.  I suppose many Americans don't have opportunity to interact with the military while they are 'at work'.  I've heard so many comments about how so many have gone above and beyond duty.  I don't think the media puts forth much of the kindnesses that are done by the military either.  So, just a reminder, pray for the troops there, too.

This is a woman being placed in the back of our truck for transport to the hospital.  Bud made many trips all over Port-au-Prince to take patients, doctors, nurses, to necessary medical locations.

Haiti...one month after the earthquake

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Atop the rubble of destroyed churches, in parks and on sidewalks, thousands of Haitians prayed Friday in a national day of mourning, one month after a magnitude-7 earthquake killed more than 200,000 and left this Caribbean country struggling for survival.

President Rene Preval wept during the service, his wife trying
to console him.
“The pain is too heavy — Words cannot explain it,” Preval said.

People raised their hands to the heavens as they sang. Hymns and gospel music pumped throughout the city’s apocalyptic landscape of flattened concrete and buildings uprooted at strange angles from their foundations.
“All families were affected by this tragedy and we are celebrating the memory of the people we lost." [msnbc news]

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come. Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."   Romans 8

“Mision Rescate” (Rescue Mission)

Bud and the medical team that went into Haiti, stayed inside the compound area for the Haitian National Police, across from the Palace in Port-au-Prince. This is where many of the police that lost their homes now live. There is electric for a couple of hours a night, provided by generators.  Bud slept outside in a sleeping bag.  Don't ask about the rats or the toilets. People are continuing to be cared for at about 500-600 people a day at this one site.

People are now being seen with stomach disorders, many with respiratory problems from living on the streets with so much concrete dust and dirt everywhere. Medical staff are preparing for the “second wave of death”, where the toll taken by epidemic diseases, infection, dehydration and waste born illnesses occur.

Part of what Bud did while in Haiti was to take  those needing more advanced medical help or surgery to the hospital or Miami University's, four-tent compound at the edge of the Port-au-Prince airport.  He transported them in the bed of our truck! 

That team left on Saturday, Jan. 30th and we are now preparing for the next trip.  We just got a huge donation of baby formula, tarps and medical supplies. Haiti needs a lot of ongoing care. Many  amputees will need limbs when they heal and orphans need a safe place to stay.  We are headed to Petit Goave, past the capital of PaP.  They need a lot of help.
We cannot thank all of you enough for your prayers, support, and financial contributions.  We are in this for the long haul and we believe that "greater things are yet to be done in this city!"....country!