Haiti Updates

WOW. what a crazy day.

Brian left this morning so we had 3 providers to see all our patients. And yet those few carried the presence and purpose of our God. We saw advanced stage cancer, 104 temperature, weird skin diseases, and the strangest complaints. I am not a Pediatrician or Dermatologist! God shrunk and decreased the pain of a thyroid tumor, healed two people’s sight with cataracts, and more. The people who came today really needed medical help. And the sad thing is, we have no medical teams scheduled anymore. I will have to close the clinic next week and just run women’s health and prenatals with the Midwives for Haiti midwives. PLEASE SPREAD THE NEWS AND PRAY FOR DOCTORS AND NURSES TO COME!! We need any, but especially pediatricians, family practice physicians, and dermatologists.

Anyone interested contact John Stoltzfus (717)226-0751  jj510ff@yahoo.com  Please let me know as well so we don’t have to close our clinic: szehr@alumni.su.edu

“Jezi, mwen reme la vi’m” That’s what I said to the Lord as the Haiti wind blew my ocean soaked hair on the bed of a full pick up truck on our way back from a brilliantly fun and refilling Sabbath at the beach. “Jesus, I love my life.” I said. After a long hard week of working in the heat, being continually pestered with requests for food, land, clothes, milk for babies, money, and houses, praying and witnessing, giving out health care, building houses, clearing land…we dove in the beautiful water (though their might be trash on the black sand everywhere), Rodney and Chad wrestled each other off a tied boat, Rodney lost his wring and Micah miraculously found it in the mud again, snorkeling through 3D land minds of jelly fish to explore God’s world of coral reef (mostly dirty), sea urchins, star fish, sea anemones, puffer fish that look hilarious when they you chase them and bat them to the ground with a stick so they puff up, and you can toss them back and forth in the water….:) Our God is so good…
I met Miseure Denizara at 7:30am to walk with him to his small Haitian church. He is the old man who could barely open his eyes 2 months ago. At 9:15 when I had to leave to go to our own church, they were still singing…That’s a Haitian church for you. They said it finishes at 1pm. But, do they really know the Father?
Continue praying for the ministry school, the medical clinic, and our teams who are building houses. We want to be more than a just another clinic, more than just a team of men building sheds. Money, medicine, and houses are just our means of getting in to touch their hearts. Rodney said in our church his morning as we sat around on our poured concrete in chairs, “The Haitians will never change until they receive the Lord Jesus with faith.”

Here’s a quote from Mark who’s been here for two weeks and is here again:
“Haitian people are hungry not only for the gospel but for English…it’s almost a tension…Sabrina mentioned the other day about people coming to the clinic about post-traumatic stress or they just wanted to talk to someone…for me it’s been really fun for me to teach English. They are hungry to learn. They’re wanting to grasp at hope, sometimes they don’t see hope. It’s been an opportunity for me to encourage and hopefully bring hope. I feel like I’m a hope broker.” ~Mark

Sabrina, for HFM

April 22, 2010
“I’m havin’ a good experience. Life is pretty good, and the ministry school. After I was walking back and thinking about how everything is devastated by the earthquake here on Jan 12 and how Ricardo and Rodney teaching about…reality, and how God’s word is Real. That’s the only thing we have that’s real. And the devastation we have from the earthquake, we still remember how important God’s word is to us. I’m learning, life changing. You know you can go through a crisis and you don’t really think, crisis comes, and you’re reminded of how small you are and how big God is. It really brings out how big God really is. It’s been really rewarding. I’ve enjoyed going to ministry school, learning with the Haitians, learning God’s word. …working, it’s been great. When you finish with a house people all smiles, a little house to keep their things from getting wet and live in. It’s overwhelming. They try to talk with you and help you, they bring us water, everyone is happy that we’re here…It’s a good experience for anybody. I’d encourage anyone to experience what I have down here, the culture and how they live. You have to experience it first hand to understand. I can’t comprehend what it must’ve been like to go through the earthquake…it’s been good. ” ~~Ivan Stoltzfus

We saw 116 patients today. Tomorrow Quisqueya can’t send me any medical staff. They are spread thin and closing in 3 weeks. I have no idea what we’ll do then. For tomorrow I asked God “what will I do??” So we will commence our first health teaching day in our neighborhood! Topics will cover the most frequently seen conditions: Acid reflux, high blood pressure, diabetes, fever, skin diseases and preventing infections, women’s health, and fever.
We put up 7 houses (sheds) just this week already. We’ve been doing about 2 a day, at least 11 a week. We have 14 left here and more (hopefully) coming in another shipment.
There are 30 regular students coming to the nightly Ministry School. But usually 45 show up everyday. Ricardo taught Mark 8 today. Tomorrow all of our campers and the Ministry school students will read Luke 1-3 and teach on Mark 9. On Fridays it is open to anyone, hopefully everyone we invited will come tomorrow!!
Thank you for all of your prayers!!

April 20, 2010

Wow, what a crazy two days. I’m sitting here at my desk in the medical room munching on dried wasabi peas and beans surrounded by shelves of meds and supplies. The indispensably valuable ceiling fan is wonderfully evaporating my fresh sweat after a much needed shower. We had a huge group leave yesterday and Mom and Dad Smoker and Chad left this morning to lead another one of the seminars in the province for the local pastors. But previously had 30 people using the same bathroom/shower for a week. Monday morning was definitely a Monday here at HFM. The construction team is busy going out to clear land and built sheds for families’ homes. Because all of our wonderful Restoration medical team left I had to run home clinic with 5 new volunteers from the Diquini Hospital and help staff the pharmacy for the hovering crowd of patients. We’re seeing between 120-165 patients a day at our clinic. Today a girl came with an arm that had broken last week and was never set. It still moved in the deformed area.

Last week we had 8 patients pray to receive the Lord into their heart in our clinic!! Praise the Lord for medical team who preach the Word of the Good News.

Ricardo’s Ministry school is going well in its second week. Some of those who received the Lord are now going every evening!

My friend Sella came to see me again yesterday. She is 22 yrs old with a 4 yr old and 1 yr old twins. Her husband died in the earthquake. Previously she told us that the mother of the twins died and we were setting up an orphanage leading to adoption, and supplying her with everything. Just before the twins went to the orphanage she told us she was the mother. Last night she came asking again for milk, food, clothes, diapers, and money. She asked me to take at least one of her babies. I talked with her for ~45minutes about God’s love for her still, His provision for her, His desire for Him to be her Husband, His pain knowing her every need. I prayed with her. We laughed together. Saturday I hope to get a chance to go with her to where she stays and see her twins again.

This is just one of many stories.

I thought Ricardo was joking when he said that we were going to go to the beach after our wonderful church service this morning.  He words were that if he can find gas we will go.

Well we found gas!  We piled 10 people in the 5 seater truck, and off we went.  An hour ride into the country side out of Carrfoure.  I have never seen Haiti for what it really was I we have experienced till this point was the devastated city dusty and smelly and over crowded.

We drove at what seemed like 100 mph  like we stole the truck and I have not asked how fast we were actually going because I don’t want to be accountable for that information. :0)

But when we arrived, it was awesome.  That feeling of the cool water after a week of living in the Haitian oven.  The water was a little churned up it was beautiful, blues and greens that only the caribbean style waters can have.

We spent the best part of the day in the water and washing off the stress of the week.  It was so good for some down time because the pace has been pretty hard, but totally worth it to see the results in the work that was done.

We are headed home tomorrow, and I am happy for the chance to see my family.  I miss my Kids!  God has had his way here and excited to see what he will do after we leave.  I look forward to praying in the house to haouse revival that is going to take place in Haiti, and if we watch close enough, we may even get to be part of it!

God Bless,

Seth Adkins

‘We have found the best chicken dish on the planet.  We call it bangin’ chicken.  It is this chicken ( we think) and it is cover in onions and sauce and it is a little bit spicey but it is soooo good. If you look at the facebook photos on haiti family or on Ricardo’s iphone uploads then you can see all the yummyness that we partook of!  And wow it was yummy!

Oh though it was so hot last night.  Sleep.. well good luck.  The air was stale you just sweat all night long.  Couldn’t really fall asleep and that is taxing on the body.  Not to mention that the city has hit and miss power so some days we have electricity and some days we are running on the solar panels charging batteries in the camp.  With that power comes radio’s loud ones that are like DJ systemsthat can be heard for blocks and at 2:30 am they started like a night club and went till 4am.  wow good times for somebody.. just not us!

Saturdays the teams here take a slower day in prepping for the day of rest.  We still worked, the Medical staff went from 8 to 5 and they went hard.  The building crews finished the little stuff they could not get knocked out during the week earlier.

after the finishing touches we got to go the market.  This place was like something you would see on the travel channel.  It was an open air market and exactly what you would expect in a 3rd world country.  Raw chicken with flies, fish, grains in large 100lb sacks and all the domestic veggies that the nation had to offer.

We found this stand in the middle of the market, if you didn’t know what you were looking for you would have missed this place all togther.  It was like walking into another world.  But this stand with the most beautiful mangos you have ever seen.  Oh so delicious!  Get could get 4 for 5 haitian dollars or 25 goudes.  Crazy math down here.  two money systems us to haitian is 7.9 to 1 and then haitian dollars to goudes is 5 to one so there were two conversions for every transaction.  But in haiti shopping is a pleasure!

Those mango’s were the best fruit we have ever eaten!   Well we just ordered more bangin chicken so I have to run.  I have great video of the market,but I cannot upload it here the system is too slow.   watch for it on monday or tuesday of next week.

It seems that there is always something to do here and wow it doesn’t take a break.  It is great to get all the stuff done, but the list builds just as fast as we can mark it off.

During the day we have been working on field innovations.  What I mean is for the clinic we have figured how to make a privacy room for the doctor to do more private consults but rigging tarps to mangles steel in the rubble, we have re-wired solar panels to power the battery/inverter systems.. that was fun.. especially when you have never seen anything like that before.

There is a little reprieve however, there a lady who just down the block form us sells cold soda.  it is so nice to every other day with lunch or right after enjoy a lukewarm coke.  Sometimes it even borders cold!  Oh another way to find the goodness of Jesus in Haiti!

The Medical team Lindsay & Doctor Johnson & Mike Miller are super troopers. Mike was formerly on the electrical team, but her was recruited to do triage so the docs can work faster. These guys along with a couple of others from all over the world, are going from 8:30 to 5:00 with only a rotation for lunch.  They are going non-stop but it has really made a difference.

Yesterday Doc Johnson was working with a woman who was thinking about an abortion.  He wanted to show her the baby so he pull out the Sonosite donated portable ultrasound machine and showed her the child in her womb.  The baby waved hello to the mom as they check it out.  It totally changed the mind of the mother and as they were finishing up the baby waved again.   One more life saved!  It is amazing the wonders that God has inside of us and when we can see them it changes our perspective to life and its riches.

We every day are teaching english classes and in the process are slowly, very slowly learning bits and pieces of Creole.  There is so much to say and to learn to communicate but Love goes a long way!  the children are so sweet.  They want to hear and learn as much as they can.  Today I got to give a little bit of my food to one of the babies here.  and when I did she giggled and in her little 2 year old voice said Merci and then blew us kisses.  it was probably the most rewarding reaction I have gotten since I have been here.

The last job our electrical team did today was for a lady who lost two of her teen-aged daughters in the quake.  She did this while I was trying to wire up her electrical stuff in the shed that we build for her.  That was probably the most moving for me as she looked at me and said “they are with Jesus and I will see them again.”  It really broke my heart cause her eyes watered up and I could see the pain and the hope, but she said “Merci Jezu” which is thank you Jesus.

It is the people and the love that makes the hard work not seem so hard. And the heat not seem so hot, and the love of Jesus than make it all feel like family.

Good night..  Seth

Matt 5:14-15

“ You are the light of the world, a city on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lamp stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.”

Such is the focus of work down here.  To not only light a light but to pass the flame to others so they can be the light as well.  From medical Clinic, where are treat the body, to the school where we lift the spirits of the church this place is doing it all.  I am impressed on the level of organization that has been set up.  We have teams of authority and the people in charge are strong, but loving and they lead, not lord and it brings such a peace to the camp.  Each one facing their own personal struggles and battles but allowing the truth of the Lord to change who they are and make them into the next wave of the release of His amazing power and presence.

This morning we had worship in the pharmacy, which is also Sabrina’s room, the middle room, and the supply closet.  We were listening to songs on the Ipod docking station and there were five of us.  The worship began and we all went silent and one by one tears and joy from His presence came. It was so sweet to stop in the middle of the morning to be able to take time and make that the way the days will be.

The presence of the Lord is in this place, and the fruit is evident.  In the small way, 35 people sharing 1 bathroom, there has to be patience, and understanding!  But also the sweetness of the living worship,   consistent word being shared and read.  Whenever there is someone taking a break they stop with the word, bible open and looking to hear from the Lord.

It is refreshing to be in a place that is so busy, but that the Lord’s presence is so strong.  I really accredit the flow and peace to the leadership here.  They are solid, and not in a hurry, but they are moving things every day.  Teams build 3-5 sheds a day which is really moving, they expect to see 150 people per day in the clinic and last night in the first day of ministry school there were over 30 people there for the teaching.

Right now one of the big needs medically is a mobile Eye Clinic.  Sabrina looks at me and says “how can we get them down here?”  I said “Well I can put the word out there and see who responds.”  The need would be for the team to be completely mobile with all their gear in bags that can be moved quickly from one place to another.

Gotta go for today.

Seth Adkins

Wow, there is so much work to do, and it is so hot that you have to keep your focus or you pass out.  But there is some relief with the breeze and the times we stop for a water break.  The people here are moving toward hope right in my face as the demo on the abandon houses begins, and there are city workers filling up dump trucks with shovels.  Men and women & even children carrying buckets of rubble in manageable amounts to the piles where they are filling the trucks.

How were the pyramids built?   One brick at time and that is what it feels like here.  How will we rebuild Haiti?  One Family at a time.  We have built 5 sheds today that we are setting up for temporary houses today alone, and shortly I will head into wire them up with a connection to the public electricity and also a set up for them to plug in there battery systems.  Each house gets a light, a switch and a power outlet.

It is an amazing thing to watch, folks from all over the world working together to build things that will really make a difference in living conditions for the families who get to be in them.

In the past two days the Medical team has seen about 300 people and lead a few of them to Christ.  Come ‘On Somebody! I love to see people working both spiritually and physically.  It is neat to watch the people responding to the calling of Jesus.  It is the biggest miracle that man will ever see.  While I would love to see legs growing back and the like, I am more grateful for the miracle of salvation.  Jesus Is amazing.

Well there is still much to do, so I must get off the computer and get back to work.  Blessings.. Seth Adkins

Day One:

Leaving at 3:30 without coffee was easy, because our friend Brandon Ables brought me monster energy drink.  We flew a lot.  And once we arrived from Maimi, we got the opportunity to enjoy the new understanding of 4^th world customs and immigration set up for baggage check.  It was not the most pleasant of experiences, but we were greeted with Ricardo’s smiling face and quickly loaded up the truck and were on our way to the base camp.

It is funny how you can have an Idea in your head about something, we all do it, but when you arrive it was completely different.  I wanted to think that I would have some Idea as to what was going on here, but really I didn’t.  It was amazing. This place has changed so much.  What once felt home a few short months ago, now feels like a strange new adventure.  The places where I slept last time are not even there.

Still remaining is the cocoa nut tree that I enjoyed my first wild fruit from, but other that it is all gone.

There has been many improvements, such as a 3 section building, for the work crews, clinic, & bunk house, and there is now running water for the bathroom.  Wow… a toilet.  It is amazing I am looking forward to using it.. it think.

There is so much going on and the people here are very very busy with the ministry, building and the medical stuff..  There are so many teams that it is hard to keep them all straight.  We have people here from PA, Colorado, locals and now we are the Florda team rockin it with the rest of the group.

It is getting late and I wanted to get some sleep!  This is going to be a great trip, because I can sence the presence of God in this place and He is excited about meeting with us!

Day One:

Leaving at 3:30 without coffee was easy, because our friend Brandon Ables brought me monster energy drink.  We flew a lot.  And once we arrived from Maimi, we got the opportunity to enjoy the new understanding of 4^th world customs and immigration set up for baggage check.  It was not the most pleasant of experiences, but we were greeted with Ricardo’s smiling face and quickly loaded up the truck and were on our way to the base camp.

It is funny how you can have an Idea in your head about something, we all do it, but when you arrive it was completely different.  I wanted to think that I would have some Idea as to what was going on here, but really I didn’t.  It was amazing. This place has changed so much.  What once felt home a few short months ago, now feels like a strange new adventure.  The places where I slept last time are not even there.

Still remaining is the cocoa nut tree that I enjoyed my first wild fruit from, but other that it is all gone.

There has been many improvements, such as a 3 section building, for the work crews, clinic, & bunk house, and there is now running water for the bathroom.  Wow… a toilet.  It is amazing I am looking forward to using it.. it think.

There is so much going on and the people here are very very busy with the ministry, building and the medical stuff..  There are so many teams that it is hard to keep them all straight.  We have people here from PA, Colorado, locals and now we are the Florda team rockin it with the rest of the group.

It is getting late and I wanted to get some sleep!  This is going to be a great trip, because I can sence the presence of God in this place and He is excited about meeting with us!