Haiti Updates

That’s right! Chadd and I have upgraded from our adorable comfy 8×12’ shed and first home to a …(drum roll please…) “Sky blue studio apartment –with an ocean view.”J And guess what, we have RUNNING WATER!! A double basin sink, beautiful cabinets hand crafted by my husband, and we bought a stove, refrigerator (with freezer!!!) and a real mattress!! The first night we slept SO well. It was the first time I woke up without feeling like a sore old woman in 2 months. We woke up relaxed, rested, and ready to start the day. Breakfast only took 10 minutes to make! No bending over, washing out of buckets, or running up and down to different camps to grab things. It is amazing what a difference sleep and convenience can make. When your simple activities of daily living take all of your effort and time you have no reserve left emotionally or physically to give to anyone else or to handle all of the potential straws taunting to break your back. We still have a very obnoxious club playing music every night. We keep praying their speakers will break down.

Chadd and I have enlarged our exploration and skill in our couple snorkeling hobby, thanks to our friend Kurt who was here last week. Imagine flying underwater up to 40 feet below the surface in a whole world of fascinating coral, schools of shining blue fish, blow fish the size of your head, sea anemones, caves, valleys, and dangers of the ocean. We have learned to respect the ocean a great deal. We’ve seen an eel, a humungous yellow fin tuna larger than myself, tiny nearly invisible jelly fish that sting and itch like mad, spinous threatening needle sea urchins, and poisonous lion fish. Yesterday we caught 20 lobster with a spear gun and spear Chadd hand made out of a piece of old rebar after losing the other one. We only have one spear gun so I stabbed them by hand with a pointed rebar. It is the most exhilarating thing in the world. And SO delicious! Thank you God for your blessings. Especially when reminded daily of those without food.

Chadd enjoys every day working with his growing friend Wilson. Wilson has become his fast-learning apprentice. They learn new skills and teach each other language. Wilson has said, “I want a wife like yours.” He asked Chadd how he got a wife like me and Chadd has opportunity to live out truth daily with Wilson. This is what we are here for!

Lloyd and Darlene arrive the 7th. We are super excited to show them all of their new home. It is an analogy of when our Father comes and approves or disproves of our work. That anticipation of seeing His face and hearing those words, “Well done!” We can’t wait to see our spiritual parents again!

Today Chadd and I start online Bible school through LTS (Leadership Training Seminar) out of Church of the Word in Lancaster, PA. It is a 2-year school that will award a license to minister upon graduation. We are very excited to delve into the alive and penetrating Word of God. We crave knowledge of the Lord to help us more effectively live this life of faith.

Biernie is now crawling on her hands (instead of her elbows)! And she is standing up and pushing the walker- mostly backwards. She is such a delight. Oh, she is so Beautiful! Her mother took care of her over the weekend and we both missed her terribly. Our home is complete again.

May the Word, Christ, find a resting place in you.

Chadd&Sabrina (& Biernie)

Yesterday Tabitha, Jessica, and I painted all morning. The rooms are finally finished enough for Jason and Amanda to move in last night and get settled for the birth of their baby! Chadd and the men work hard every day, finishing after dark. Lillian and Amanda made us all DELICIOUS papaya smoothies for a snack yesterday. Mmmmmm!
Please do not worry about our safety. We unendingly appreciate your prayers that most likely have peaked hearing of the election protests and continued cholera epidemic. But we honestly are in the Lord’s hands and have had minimal exposure to either. The news states that 2000 have died of Cholera since it first broke out. Medically, we are safe because of our hygiene, strong immune systems, and constant hydration. Haitians with these are safe as well. The country gave the results of the primary election yesterday, which all Haitians are not pleased with. They all say that it was rigged by the former president. Yesterday and today people barricaded streets and protested. Our cooks can’t buy food for lunch because no one is selling, so we’re having spaghetti and all the kids are around because the schools are closed. But most of the “action” is in the cities. The rest is as a result of fear. Chadd and I climbed the water tower and could see a smoky haze over PAP from burned tires. But here in our camp at HFM we are secure and happy and work on the new buildings goes on! Last night we played cards and dice the this weeks’ team and laughed the evening away.
Chadd and I feel strongly that we are in a season of learning. We are pursuing our great Lord and the quizzical lessons of His upside down Kingdom. We are learning how to deal with the daily encounters, questions, and conflicts of our Haitian missionary life, serving the Smoker’s and Haiti Family, and studying Creole too! Boy, without Chadd I would be at a complete frustrated, stressed, and lost girl. We crave time together. Praise the Lord for our little haven shed. Every evening I look forward to being with my husband. I love being married!
We’re reading Heidi Baker’s book “Compelled by Love.” These hard and sometimes confusing lessons of the Beatitudes in action have been our Kingdom education. The thing is, Jesus didn’t and doesn’t want us to react the same way for each situation. The attitude of our heart is key. What does it mean exactly to be poor in spirit- craving the truth of the Gospel and time with Jesus- pure in heart, and yet rich in faith? These are the lessons we are learning.

Yesterday we got to see the miracle of God’s drastic healing power in the most obvious undeniable way. On Tuesday a boy came to the clinic who had fallen on his back. He was suffering from severe back pain. He could hardly walk and when I asked him to bend forward he even cried from the pain. His face showed the severity of his pain. I felt up his vertebrae and it indeed felt out of place. After explaining that to him I said,
“I can’t fix your back. But I do know who can. Do you know who?”
“No.”
“God. Jesus.” I described our God’s power and asked if he believed God could heal him. He said yes, but unenthused. I prayed over him and had him try bending again. Still painful. I prayed again. Then had some of the medical team members pray over him. When we left he road back on the truck with us for me to give him a back brace and wrap it up tight before sending him back to his tent city, still gloomy and walking very painfully.

But yesterday….after an exhausting morning of morbile tent city clinic, after my brain was fried and my patience tried,  this same boy came up to me with the HUGEST grin on his face. He proudly lifted up his shirt to show me his back brace. I instantly realized…
“Oh my word! You’re better?! You don’t have any pain? None?! Bend over”  (He bent over with quick ease. “Wow! You’re healed!!!”  When the rest of the team saw him move and smile everyone applauded the miracle of God. It was terrific !
“Do you know who healed you?” I asked
“Sabrina, you.”
“No…not me…”
“Jesus?”
“Yes! Jesus Healed you!” Oh it was so beautiful it was amazing. When we started driving away he came up to RUN beside the truck. Wow. From hardly able to move to running. That’s incredible. That’s our God.

The buildings are going up quick! How rewarding, to see all that hard labor and hold ups for so many months, all the planning and preparing finally take form. Beautiful. Chadd is more enthused than ever, taking charge of the construction team and driven by the visual product of his blueprint. And we get to be a part of this. Thank you Lord.

November 12, 2010 Friday

Well, we are soon to complete our first week back at in Carrefour. Chadd and I arrived Tuesday morning and set right to task greeting the exclaiming welcomes and setting up our new wonderful shed home. We walked to visit Biernie first thing. Junie delivered her baby at the Carrefour Maternity Hospital and is living in a separate shack. Chadd picked up Biernie first. She has the same weak cry and has lost all the weight she gained while spending the days with us. She is weak and hardly interactive but may faintly recognize us. She laid her head on Chadd’s shoulder and put her little arms on his neck. Wow, how a little girl can so pull at your heart.

We have a team of 18 here now from Lancaster. The community center on our land is up with tin walls and roof. The cement flooring and final touches are to be finished in time. We now have a two bowel real sink (with drain into a 5-gallon bucket). This crew has done a lot! The medical team ran a mobile clinic at the large camp by the shore everyday. It’s a bit more organized with nicer tarp structured homes and a tent with benches for us to see patients under. But the illnesses, need, and anger when the day is over and they haven’t been seen are still there!

So, Cholera has hit Carrefour. A woman from MSF approached me today at the camp and gave the run-down of the recent epidemic. They have found ~20 cases in Carrefour and 8 cases in our immediate area. 3000 total cases in Haiti with 800 deaths. She directed and we will up the scale on our clinic hygiene with hand washing stations on entry into the tent. Despite the bleak situation she painted, we have a God who is greater, who does not give us the excuse to be lazy and naïve but who gives us the privilege of abandoning fear. Thank you for joining us in prayer for protection.

Lillian’s family just arrived moments ago. All in for 27 people at camp this weekend!! Oh it’s so good being the camp newly weds though. We get to turn in to our lovely private honeymoon shed J Goodnight!

-Sabrina YODER!!

I don’t have time to write much, but things are going well. A group of us are heading out to Oriani with Dad Smoker for 5 days, including the Francois, me, and Anna. We have not had a medical clinic because of the construction going on at that location. I have been going out visiting the sick and pregnant in their shanty homes amongst their naked children and real lifestyles. I carry baby Biernie tied to my back with my medical bag in my hand. How much more fun can life get than visiting the people with a baby on my back! We still have many medical requests come to our door. Sunday I started out the morning bright and early with suturing a man’s foot. On the weekends we get to relax and go hiking or go to the pool for fun. It’s so necessary and so good for us as a family to work hard and play equally hard together.

The construction team got the foundations laid for the two housing buildings. They have been having awful difficulty with the skidloader breaking down. If the man could come to fix and run the back hoe they’d get done in 3 hours what will otherwise take days or weeks. Ricardo is trying to start up cell groups. Yesterday no one came to the leadership cell because of rain, so he canceled it.

Life is good, and hard. Pray for Rodney and Godwin and Katrina. Godwin had a horrible hard event with his Yung Goddies that brings shame and struggle and a trial of a leader. Katrina and I just sat down to listen to a girl tell us all about her family’s attack from demons, they killed her sister at age 5, a month ago killed her father, and now she has the same pain. She said they’re assigned to her family. Lord…

Oriani will be a wonderful respite.

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

July 14, 2010
Each day more you live in a place called Haiti, each experience you have and touch with the lives of the people, the more you learn of humanity’s depravity and corruption and the trial of your effort to help getting stolen, beaten, or unappreciated. Yesterday Katrina and Priscilla were walking to change money and someone called her over to where a crowd of people had gathered. A ~5 month preterm baby lay dead on the side of the road. Katrina called me and we took it away from the stares to bury it under rubble and dirt by the sea. Last Friday Luckenson came to me near tears and said that the Border patrol of Haiti/Dominican stole and burnt all her livelihood of eggs and merchandise she had to sell for her business that we helped her start. Godwin and I went to comfort her and speak words of hope and encouragement and prayer this morning. On the way back we were stopped by the police. Two men were murdered the night before and still lying on the side of the road. They held us detained for no papers. You can see the corruption, they would have easily let us go if we had offered to pay or work out a bribe. We ended up getting let off by Rodney sending the cop over who he was just in the process of fixing his broken down vehicle. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Rodney said. What you give out comes back I guess!

Roselaure had her baby! She ended up not waiting for me and went to the Red Cross. Lord knows. Her baby had severe meconium staining and needed resuscitation and oxygen for a day and a half afterwards. She is now back home and beautiful Annabelle (my choice) and Roselaure are both doing well. Roselaure’s family was about to get kicked out of the dirt floor, holey ceiling garage they live in. Just before Annabelle was born I lent them 6 month’s rent for this home. Her friends’ husband (who also live there) used to have a well run business that crashed in the earthquake. He hopes to somehow restart it.

The construction for the new camp is well underway. The guys are out long hours with the rented back hoe and skid loader digging the basement and getting ready to pour the footers for the two houses. One will be for long-termers and one for teams. The whole blueprint includes a church and clinic. The entire project that would take 6 weeks in the states will likely take 5 months here. They work hard and always have a crowd of spectators. Just now they broke the hydraulic line in the skidloader a third time. Pray for smooth efficiency! We are also looking into hiring Haitian masons and carpenters to help the drastic unemployment in Carrefour. If anyone wants to help but cannot take the time off work or travel here, your plane ticket alone would pay a mason’s wage for 6 weeks.

Anna has been teaching an English class MWF and now has a Bible study afterwards. They get into very deep discussions and it has been interesting for her to see some of the inside of Haitian cultures and beliefs. Yesterday they talked about God’s merciful heart towards sinners and each person’s individual responsibility for effecting change in the world. Their mentality is “Who am I, I’m nobody, what difference can I make.” Anna spoke purpose and hope and encouragement into their lives. May they go and sew the seed!

Our God is good. Things do not always happen the way we think is best, but boy, am I glad that He knows better than we. Let us not forget the reason we’re here. Not to build or tend the sick or meet physical needs alone, but to bring the water of the Holy Spirit of Christ to a dry and thirsty land.

May God be with you!

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

” As I got out of the Port Au Prince airport nothing could have prepared me for the chaos I would experience during the next four hours. Carrying our luggage me and the team walked along a high chain fence over a broken road to try and find our ride to Carrfou. The smell of sewage and body odor would stay in my nostrils for the remainder of the week. On the other side of the fence were little children begging for things. They didn’t just ask for food they were asking for anything good. We crawled into the back of a colorful bus that looked like it was a transport car for lions in a circus or something of that sort. We drove through town I got a good view of just how awful the effects of the earthquake really were. Few if any buildings standing, roads cut in half because rubble and ruin covered them, and cars crushed and rendered useless. There were many building crews clearing rubble and building buildings and it’s hard to imagine the hectic disorder of a project like rebuilding a whole city in such utter ruin. When we arrived at our destination I was amazed at what I experienced next. A family of servants working hard from dusk to dawn at not only rebuilding a town but building and expanding His kingdom. I was greeted with an embracing welcome and a smiling face, not because of relief but because of love. Nothing about these people felt burdened or burnt out, on the contrary they were willing and wanting to give more to feel and experience more of the love of Christ. In the morning and afternoon we would work on either painting a house or clearing a foundation. But in the evening we would go into a tent and have an Encounter service for the leaders of the church. We as a team would pray and minister the love and forgiveness of Jesus to the group. The Holy Spirit moved gently and powerfully during these sweet times of healing towards the group. On a Thursday afternoon I joined Anna as she taught a group of thirty or forty Haitian men and women English. Anna had to leave an hour early so she announced to the students that I would be sharing a word from the Bible with them the remainder of the time. I read from the story of the good Samaritan. The group was so hungry for truth and relationship. They were pulling so much out of me and I was giving everything I had encouraging them in the faith. I preached my heart out, and thoroughly enjoyed it! Later that same evening we had a worship service. I had been learning as much Kreyol as possible and was enjoying my time entertaining the children with my bad accent. During worship a lady in her mid thirties manifested demonically and went to the ground gathering an audience. Katrina came and grabbed me and we went to the woman. We moved her to a secluded spot and started to pray. Once the lady was calm we found out that her husband’s family cursed her and said they were going to turn her into a goat. So for five years the woman has been tormented with many episodes. We broke the curse over her and cast out the spirit. Drained and weak we stood the woman up and began to pray for an infilling. She went away from that place a delivered woman with strength and peace. I was also able to pray for a man with head, chest, and stomach pains. After fifteen minutes of prayer he was healed. Sharing the gospel many times throughout the trip I quickly found out that my approach wasn’t working. Asking questions like what “do you need”, “what do you want”, with the intention of showing them God is real and in love with them simply doesn’t work. For example: “What do you need?” –food, water. “What do you want” –money clothes. It simply doesn’t work here. I quickly changed my approach to trying to hear what God was saying and trying to see what He was doing. One of my favorite things about my week in Haiti was experiencing the life of the Mission team. These people have more fun in one hour than most people I know have all week. And yet they are constantly looking for opportunity to love Jesus in the least of these. I was honored to serve them and serve with them. My name is Stephen and I fell in love with a group of Servants and the city they serve.”

~Stephen Swan

Hello everyone checking us out in cyber world. I’m sorry this is my first post, but we’ve been having trouble with the internet connection here. The team is doing well with everyone working hard and taking in the new culture. Learning to operate together as a team and working with the long termers here has been a good challenge and lesson for the future. We had some interesting deliverance encounters tonight which we all learned a lot from, I’ll take a moment to share a little bit about everyone,
Stevo-His goal is to impressive everyone here with his creole that he is learning these first few days. He is actually doing quite well
Matt-loves to dance before the lord and is standing up to Caroline in the pranking department
Alan-is of course being loved and loving all the little ninos and ninas around here. Loves to start water fights.
Andrea-living the dream
Caroline-learned what a weave was and currently has horses hair braided into her own
Tara-trying to stay alive from all the bug bites. She has sweet blood
Jamie-Everyone loves her here and she makes us all laugh and smile. She carries a genuine love and joy.
Nate G.-Well…learning to get whatever sleep I can while sharing a room with a bunch of other ppl. Gotta luv it
Well love you all and please keep praying for us.
In HIS Shadow,
Nathan Groff

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