Haiti Updates

June 28, 2010

Biernie is doing so well!! I’m sitting on the floor right now and she’s scooching all over chasing a balloon. She looks at you in the eyes, makes daffy duck faces and gurgles and smiles on occasion. Patrick, our doorman, is listening to the Brazil-Chile Futball game outside. Ricardo is working on his truck. The nurses, midwife, medical help, and construction guys are resting or laying down for a nap before heading out in the HOT sun again. This week we’ve had 4 people sick. We prayed over all of them in our 7:30 gathering this morning. Anna had nasty stomach stuff and fever twice. She’s doing better now but please keep all of them in your prayers.

Our good friends Elya and Justin left this morning. They’ve been here for a month and we’ve all grown to love them. Elya was amazing help for the clinic. Godwin left for 2 wks for his first break in 5 months. Next week we start ground breaking on the new camp and the Restoration team comes!!! Louise needs us to move everything off his property now to bring all of his family back and we are scrambling to find where to go. Pray for God to provide a place. This week the PA team here has sutured 4 gashes in the clinic already. They’re loving it.
Twenty-six ministry school students graduated on Friday from 10 weeks of intensive Biblical studies. They gave testimonies and sang their created song of 2 Tim 3:16 before each on came up for the certificate and received prayer. Afterwards they all celebrated with a ton of food. Sunday we went to the pool at OMS for a day of relaxation, a cake for Alyssa’s birthday and baptism of Matt and Ryan. It was awesome, praying for them in the pool together J That was after the guys finished Rodney’s brilliant idea of competing for the best belly flop. Eeouch! crazy boys…

–
In His Grace,
Sabrina Zehr, CNM, ARNP
Medical Director of Haiti Family Ministries

June 23, 2010
As Kirstie (midwife), Janette, Jean and I stepped out the gate to visit Roselaure who is now 40 weeks pregnant, two women came up to ask for me. It was Shiella and Zoe, the two sisters of Junie. Last night Junie never came to pick up her baby Biernie who we were watching so she could sell the clothes and shoes I gave her for a business. Biernie is 21 months, very malnourished and neglected, cannot walk, and did not interact like a normal child. When Junie didn’t come to pick up Biernie last night the oppression of yet one more person who takes advantage of my care set in. But this when I talked to Shiella she told me, “Last night the father of Junie’s pregnancy came and beat her up, he beat her belly. She is very sick. She has contractions.”
Our destination immediately changed. We walked 10 minutes through the winding back paths to find Junie lying on the cement floor of an unsafe earthquake effected house. She is ok and her 25 week baby is ok. We asked why he beat her. She said it was because she had the business. He also took all her money she had made and threw her other 4 month old daughter KiMara on the ground and busted her lip. We prayed over her and gave her all the warning signs and my phone number. She has no food. Her sister has 3 children who’s father left her a year ago for other women. They walked back with us and we loaded up 2 suitcases full of clothes and shoes to sell and a bag full of food. Biernie will stay with us for a few days and I will go to see Junie tomorrow.
Oh Lord, what can we do?! These are the things that we deal with. This is our surroundings, the people we live with, we minister to, we build houses for, we teach, give to, play with, laugh with, and see in the clinic. Holy Spirit teach us your wisdom!
Roselaure is doing ok. She has a urinary and candida infection, blood pressure raised over her normal, and hip and back pain, but the baby is head down and she could go into labor anytime. Kirstie and I took her the medication to treat her infections and a bag full of blankets, clothes, and birth kit supplies. She may call tonight!
Tonight we have our second baptismal. The plan was to go to the beach again but rain and wind has changed it. So instead it will be in the Francois kiddy pool in our front yard of our camp! This Friday the ministry school students graduate and get a certificate if they completed all the homework and showed faithfulness. So many lives changed! It is amazing to see.
The last 2 weeks our construction team has been going back to all of the 50 sheds that we built for homes and adding porches, cutting windows, building shelves, outhouses, and making them into welcoming homes. One current project is hauling cement in wheelbarrels on a 1 ½ ft wide wall with a 10ft drop into a sewer ditch on one side to build an outhouse for one of the homes. Quite the challenge! But they love it.
Thank you so much for praying for help at the medical clinic. Our PA team is great, and tomorrow we have a physician’s assistant and dietician coming as well. Thank you Lord! Please pray for the Friendship ship and the Haitian government to let us get our heavy equipment and other shipment that has been at the port for 4 months so we can start the building the new church and camp!

~Sabrina Zehr, CNM Medical Director

Last Sunday on our way back from the respite pool with the 27 person Ohio group the first truck witnessed a man getting stoned, literally, with a rock. Shawn jumped out of the driver’s seat and took off after the culprit with a vengeful speed. We unloaded the person piled truck bed and Katrina went to transport the severely injured victim to the hospital. Fighting. Rocks, bottles, punching, biting…Lord, if they could receive Your Spirit’s revelation of love for each other…we would have a lot less injured people.

We had another small aftershock last week as well. Not enough to cause any great fear. This week we had no team. They guys did some work around base, plumbing, sand sifting, and getting base ready for the next big team. Godwin has several teams going out demolishing houses and removing rubble for the Danish organization. We struggled a bit in clinic with the limited help. But God is good and has a purpose for all. Three young girls are now following all day at clinic for me to teach them how to be assistants. Judith, on of our long time translators for the midwives, saw patients then asked me for consultation. After discussion with our leaders, we have decided to charge a very small fee for patient consultations this Monday. This is for the purpose of limiting those who have less than minor complaints, and very frequent repeat costumers, to encourage a respect for the care and not a demanding spirit, and to help a very slight bit with finances to pay Haitian nurses or those I will apprentice to become midwives. We will see how it goes! Thursday Rodney and Chadd drew up the plans for the new compound on Rodney’s land. It looks great! Church building, clinic/birth center, long termer housing, team housing, and storage garage. How exciting to be a part of something in this stage!

Dad Lloyd, Katrina, Elya, Justin, Davnel and their group came back from Oriani and the seminar. Katrina taught a health class while they were there and said it went well. Today Anna, Tattoo, Chadd, and I went on a ~13mile hike at 4am on foot from here to the top of the Diquini mountain, built a fire and eat, and walked back to the ocean. How beautiful, to get away from Carrefour for a breather and to be physically exhausted. Matt and Shawn took the bikes to the beach. Ricardo and Kendra picked up our load at Agape and the Labady’s, and Godwin took his boys out camping again. Right now there’s bustling around camp and I’m very ready for bed. Thank you for all your prayers and thoughts!!! I wish I could post pictures more often, but you can find some of them on the facebook group page: Haiti Family.

God bless

–
In His Grace,
Sabrina Zehr, CNM, ARNP
Medical Director of Haiti Family Ministries

June 14, 2010

So I didn’t have Typhoid after all. One of the doctor’s said it could have been Brucellosis. (Which is equally cool sounding.) But I am healed “net” regardless (completely). Thank you SO MUCH for your prayers.

Today the whole Ohio team and Justin, one of our previous long-termers, left. You’d think we’d get used to this coming and going after awhile. But it’s still strange sometimes. Dad Lloyd and Katrina arrived!! And the Francois and Anna are all here. It’s been great to have a full family here. We all love the kids. Once they learn Creole they’ll be running all over with the neighborhood kids. Anna’s been helping out at the clinic being ‘pharmacist’ and running up to grab supplies. She’s actually not feeling well right now so you can pray for her.
His mercies are new every morning

–
In His Grace,
Sabrina Zehr, CNM, ARNP
Medical Director of Haiti Family Ministries

“It has been stretching. It has made me do things that I’m not necessarily comfortable with but God has been faithful, and He has given me words, and I knew He would, but it’s just as amazing, you know. I have enjoyed seeing humanity through different eyes. And meeting new people. I have seen hope in places where people say there should be none. And I have seen the power of God stretched out to the far corners of everywhere I’ve been. I have seen that this power never collapses and never even fades at all, it just exists and all we must do is live in it’s existence and be with God living through faith and being where and what God wants us to be in the moment.” -Elya Maust, nursing student

Thank you for ALL of you who prayed for me. I had a fever since Monday night up to 102. Wonderful Elya ran the whole clinic with 2 pediatricians and a nurse that divinely showed up (and some walky talkies) while I laid in my brand new shed home. Thanks to many prayers, my tender hearted many friends and Haitian visitors, and an IV, I woke up this morning feeling like a different person. The doctors tested my blood and it came back positive for Typhoid O, but negative for type H. I’m not sure what that means yet but I’ll let you know. God is a curer of Typhoid! Please keep me in your prayers though, as I may have overdid it a bit today. I did start another low grade fever.

We have 27 people at camp now. Things are back up and running! “The construction team has four different job sites right now. Things are really busy. We have Shawn in the truck all day long delivering things we forget. We called him once today and said, ‘Hey Shawn, Justin broke his leg!’ ‘what?!’ ‘actually, we just need a hammer.’” (Chadd Yoder) Godwin is teaching a short series on honor in the ministry school. Ricardo and all his family along with my good frien Anna are coming tomorrow! Today we did three health teachings for our Wednesday health teaching day. At the end of the pregnancy class I insisted to the 40 women that they are beautiful! And special, and a gift created by God reserved for one man as the Church is for Christ. And even if their natural men misuse and abuse them and leave them, Jesus, our spiritual husband would never do that. To see their eyes as I told them something thy may have never heard before in their lives, it was a treasure.

–
In His Grace,
Sabrina Zehr, CNM, ARNP
Medical Director of Haiti Family Ministries

June 5, 2010

What a week. Yesterday we faced the reality of no medical providers to run clinic, except me. “God, what am I supposed to do?” We set up the tarps and carried down the benches and chairs like every other day but left all the medications and supplies inside. Elya and I sat on the backs of two chairs and spoke to the people gathered around. I read to them “If possible? Anything is possible to him who believes.’  “How many people believe this is still true today? How many of you want to cry out, “Lord! I believe! Help me overcome my unbelief!”? … wants to come for us to pray for first?!” An elderly woman walked up with chronic back pain. We prayed and it went away. We prayed for a woman with knee pain, it diminished but remained. I asked for a word of knowledge and felt that she had something in her life that was holding her back that this knee was a representation of. She had a husband that left her and another that died. I prayed freedom over her. A mother brought her young girl with >102 fever. Elya and I prayed over her, I had her mother and sister pray and all the people watching stand up and join us in prayer for her. It decreased. I felt she should go home and bathe and come back. When she did she still had a fever. Elya gave her Gatorade to drink and Lillian and Rodney came down and prayed over her. The next time Elya put her hands on her she said, “Wow, feel her, she feels a lot better!” It was true. Her back still felt warm, but her head and hands that were previously burning up were near normal! As Rodney massaged her neck she started to get drowsy. Her mom took her home to sleep and come back in the morning. This morning WidLove came to our door smiling! Her temperature was 99.2 and I sent her with some ORS packets. Praise the Lord!
The boys are all out to Oriani to camp for the weekend. We have more girls here than we have had in a month! Kate & Lindsay for 4 days and three new from Midwives for Haiti. This morning Davnel took Lindsay and I to play “professional” soccer on a real field with the Haitian veteran players at 6am. When we got back we had a home visit for Loodsi’s 2 day old baby, an ankle gash Chadd sutured again, a man with colicky abdominal pain sent to Red Cross, and a little girl with a cut. Just another day in Haiti!
Friday the guys built a shed for Mom and Dad Smoker (that I get to inhabit until then ) Friday evening we had our first service in a different large tent city. We walked around the camp to talk with people, invite them and pray with them before it started. Rodney, Sadrac, his brothers Pice and Loy and the rest played with the sound system for the people on benches and standing around. It is alwawys interesting, to watch their faces, to wonder what they are thinking, what is sinking in and what is hitting a stone wall, who is there just to gawk at the “blah’s” and who is there to really worship the Lord, who will really change their lives after prayer and who is just obliging us.
Lord alone knows. We are only his servants.

–
In His Grace,
Sabrina Zehr, CNM, ARNP
Medical Director of Haiti Family Ministries