My sister Michelle had surgery today to remove part of her liver that was cancerous. Pray for her as she recovers from her surgery. In another week she will have further surgery on her liver to remove another cancerous portion. Pray that non-cancerous, healthy tissue will grow. Pray also for her family. Today was a day spent thinking and praying for her and a day of not doing much work.

JUNE 1 - BEGINNING OF HURRICANE SEASON

Hurricane season officially began on June 1st. Here is one Hurricane preparation task. Tether your vehicle to a stick. This will prevent your vehicle from getting blown away from the winds or carried away by rushing waters :)

LAST WEEK OF SUNDAY SCHOOL

Last Sunday was the end of year service for Sunday School. The children who participated in the different classes were involved during the service. Manu stood up at the front under the watchful eye of Ruth Van Dam and prayed before the offering was taken. Manu also participated as one of the ushers passing the offering bag down the rows. Manu did a great job and he wasn't nervous standing in front of a crowd of people :)

EARTHQUAKE COLLAPSE - MAY 2012

Our street had some post earthquake damage done last week. The garage which is next to Pastor Octaves' church had a leaning wall caused by the earthquake of January 12, 2010. After a heavy gust of wind last week the wall came falling down right on top of this parked tap-tap. The driver was taking a nap in the back of the tap-tap and was injured by the falling rubble. He was taken to a hospital for medical treatment.  That night I had dreams of earthquakes! As you can see the vehicle received quite a bit of damage. It would have been worse though if the driver had been sitting in the front of his tap-tap. Rubble removal and demolition of buildings is still an ongoing process here in Port-au-Prince. Pray for the post-earthquake rebuilding process. It is estimated that it will take 30 years!

BUSY, BUSY SCHEDULE :)

I haven't been posting much in the last few weeks. Things sure have been busy here and I finally just had to take the time, shut the door and work on some reports. Now I am all caught up and can join the blogging world again:) I have taken pictures of some of the work that we have been up to. In the last few weeks we have hosted a few medical clinics, been involved in bringing food to Bernard Mevs Hospital for the hydrocephalus surgeries done by the University of Miami Neurosurgery team and today started bringing food for the plastic surgery team from the University of Miami, who are primarily doing cleft lip/palette surgeries. The school program has been busy and the end of the school year is rapidly approaching! We also have been doing a lot of running around. It sure feels good to be almost caught up. Although I didn't get to take my vacation on May 28th I should now be able to take time away in August. Now I hope to post on a daily basis again. I just wanted to say to everyone that I am back on-line! Karen

KIMOSABEE HURT

One of our running around errands in the last couple of weeks resulted in poor old Kimosabee getting hit by a bus. Nobody was seriously hurt. Johnny and I both got bumps on our heads and had a sore head and neck for a few days but now everyone is alright. We were in the process of bringing Marie's sister Chrismanie to the Medecin Sans Frontieres Maternite Hospital on Delmas 33. She had been bleeding and in labor all night and at 5 in the morning Marie came and asked if we could drive to Cite Soleil and pick her up. I saw a bus in the rear view mirror and decided at the last minute to delay making the left hand turn to the hospital gate. The next moment there was this big bang and I wondered what hit us.

We went and brought Chrismanie inside the hospital and then talked with the bus driver. He had also side swiped a car driving in the opposite direction. His excuse was that he had no brakes. The front end of his bus was severely damaged from an accident the prior evening. We asked him for his id and he had none. He was wearing a Moulin d'Haiti shirt. We flagged a police vehicle down and they told us that we would not find anyone at circulation to deal with the accident on a Sunday morning (don't have accidents in Haiti on a weekend :) ). The policeman told us to go out to the Moulin Haiti flour mill out in Titanyen and try to talk with someone there and we followed the bus driver.

When we got to the flour mill the director was summoned and it took a bit for him to arrive. The company has a mechanic and I told him that the bus has no brakes. The driver of the bus then said that the brakes were working fine. He was just planning to pass us and there was not enough room. The director summoned the justice of the peace to do a report and the justice of the peace from Cabaret came along with some Haitian Police and UN Police. We both made a report. The story of the first accident that the bus driver was involved in was very interesting. He said that on Saturday evening he was driving the bus on main Delmas and turned by Delmas 41. 3 guys on a motorcycle stopped the bus at gunpoint, boarded the bus, bound his hands and put a bag over his head. They then kidnapped him. Around 1:00am they released him by the bus and the bus was severely smashed at the front. The windshield had been shattered and there were 2 large rocks on the passenger seat. Because he was so shaken up he drank of bottle of Bacara rum and then started driving. That is when he smashed into us. What is frustrating is that the police and the UN did nothing. We are now trying to go through insurance to fix the truck. The Haitian people at the house tell me good luck, it will take 3 years :) Pray that the insurance comes through or that funds are raised to fix the truck. We rely on Kimosabee a lot.

Coram Deo - Haiti Update - May 3, 2012

“Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil because of the son of man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.” (Luke 6:22, 23)

Hi! There has been a lot going on here in Haiti the last week. Last week Monday started as a day of protests by supporters of the police. The police themselves were on strike and several areas of the city; especially in the Carrefour area had burning tires and barricades. Vehicles attempting to go around the barricades risked having their windows smashed with rocks, thrown by the protesters. Motorcyclists who tried to go around the barricades were stopped by protesters and had their keys taken away. Workers from the Mayor of Port-au-Prince decided to go on strike at the cemetery, demanding payment of arrears of 6 months pay, and blocked entrance to funeral convoys trying to enter the cemetery. Families who wanted to bury their dead were forced to arrange passage with these striking workers. The striking workers used coffins as barricades and also smashed some.

Tuesday through Thursday were rainy days and I think God sent the rains to calm down the protesters! Workers removed 500,000 m3 of sediment/debris carried by the rain/flood waters on the streets of Port-au-Prince. 10 people died who were swept away by waters or killed in landslides and one person is missing. More than 7,600 families were affected by the damage from these rains. 3,818 homes were flooded in the neighbourhoods of Cite Soleil. 2,328 people affected were those who live in camps in the West district of the country. 62 homes were destroyed. In agricultural areas there have been substantial losses in terms of livestock being washed away, as well as crops of corn, beans, and bananas. Pray for those who will need to rebuild after these storms.

President Michel Martelly spent a couple of weeks in the United States for treatment of a pulmonary embolism. On release from the hospital he thanked God for his grace in preserving his life. It is good to hear this coming from the leader of the country. The Mayor of Delmas is organizing a week of prayer services at the Mayor of Delmas offices, and dedicates the country to the Lord. Pray for the leaders of Haiti as they deal with a lot of difficulties.

Last Tuesday a team of community health workers from the government came here and vaccinated children in our school program who were up to 9 years of age. The children received polio, measles and chicken pox vaccinations, as well as albendazole for worms. This is a major public health project for Haiti, and it is good to see the government at work. Pray for this massive vaccination campaign to vaccinate every child in Haiti.

Last Wednesday a team from Mission Services International came to do a medical clinic here at Coram Deo. They treated over 400 patients. This was a special team in that there were both foreign and Haitian medical personnel involved in the clinic. 3 Haitian nurses, did the intake (blood pressure, diabetes) exams, 3 Haitian doctors did the consultations, and the team from the Kentucky area were involved with giving injections and filling prescriptions. Haitian evangelists prayed with each patient before they went to the intake table and 55 people made decisions to follow the Lord. A contact list was made and we will pass this on to local churches in the neighbourhood to do follow-up contacts with these people. An American who writes children’s’ stories organized activities for the children and they had a lot of fun. The materials have been translated into the Creole language, so we hope to use them in our school program here. They also gave a gift of food to each patient and gave us a bag with a lot of different vegetable, fruit and a few flower seed packages too. We are going to give these seeds to Pastor Pierre to distribute to farmers in the Kenscoff mountain area. We give the Lord thanks for all the help that was provided at this medical clinic.

We get a Haitian newspaper delivered to the house and we all had a shock on Wednesday when we opened it and saw Johnny’s picture, along with a heading saying “Johnny Jean will be going in front of Uruguayan justice”. Johnny happens to have the same name as Johnny Jean, who was the victim of a sexual assault by members of the Uruguayan military. If you Google the name Johnny Jean there will be 3 pictures, one is our Johnny Jean, the next is a Brazilian UN general, and then the real Johnny Jean sitting with his lawyers. The article talked about how Johnny Jean would be testifying in Uruguay on May 10th. The Haitian people here were all concerned, thinking that UN soldiers might try to target Johnny on the streets and when Stephanie, Johnny’s niece, saw the picture she started to cry and thought that Johnny was in trouble. I wrote a letter to the editor, and the journalist who did the story, and the next day they printed a retraction and an apology. Pray for the real Johnny Jean as he goes to testify at the UN trial in Uruguay.

On Tuesday, Amos and a couple of the guys drove out to Love a Child where they picked up a donation of 25 boxes of Feed My Starving Children rice meals. This food donation will help us to continue to provide the school children with a meal at the end of the school day. We also got a surprise gift of a couple boxes of t-shirts. These t-shirts will now be the school uniform for the rest of the school year! It is neat how that every year a donation of shirts serves as our uniform. This year is special too that Coca Cola sponsored the event pictured on the shirts. You can look for photos of these shirts on my blog. We give the Lord thanks for food and a uniform for the students!

May 1 was a holiday here in Haiti, for agriculture and workers. To commemorate this day we purchased a mallard duck. His name is Daffy and he will now be Aflacs’ mate. The children put fresh water into a cuivette so that Daffy and Aflac can have a mini-pond. Everyone is excited to one day see baby ducklings waddling in the yard. While I have been typing this update one of Marie’s chicken’s just wandered into the room and it hopped onto my bed. The dog and I tried to chase it out of the room and Marie came into my room to help when she heard her chicken squawking. She told me that the hen is looking for someplace to lay an egg, and then carried her chicken outside.

Life is difficult here in Haiti for the poor. A man came to the house last week carrying a small baby. He told me that his wife had died in child birth and that he has been trying to look after the baby but is having difficulties. He has a job as a cement mason but since his wife died he hasn’t been able to work. Because he isn’t working he has no money to buy formula. The baby had been drinking sugar water for the last 4 days and was very jaundiced. He had already brought the baby to a children’s hospital and they wanted to hospitalize the baby, but the father would have had to stay with his baby. He doesn’t have anyone who can help look after his other 2 children and he ended up walking away from the hospital, and then someone told him about Coram Deo. He came here and we gave him some baby formula. I don’t know if this baby will survive but please keep this family in prayer.

Chrismanie, our cook, lives in the Bois Neuf district of Cite Soleil. Bois Neuf is one of the problem districts within Cite Soleil, and everyone living in that district lives uncomfortably. After the earthquake she moved into a refuge camp in Bois Neuf. She was given a temporary home. The gangs are starting to cause more problems in Cite Soleil and several weeks ago a director of a mission in Cite Soleil, who was also the director of a radio station, was killed when the vehicle he was driving was riddled with bullets in front of a school. The people in the area were angry and said that a couple of bandits from Bois Neuf were responsible. We happened to be in Cite Soleil doing a medical clinic with a team of Dr. Ed’s. We saw a group of people, both men and women walking, running and riding a tap-tap, and some were armed with machetes and sticks. It was weird in that they were everyday people and it was almost a party atmosphere. Later in the day we heard that 3 of these people had been killed by some of the bandits in Bois Neuf. The people in return were plotting revenge against Bois Neuf and Chrismanie was told that the camp would be burned down, as this was the area where the bandits were from. She took refuge with her children for a few days here at Coram Deo until things calmed down. We gave her some money to hire a carpenter to take down her temporary home and move it to an area where her sister-in-law lives. The police were even insulting the people of Bois Neuf. Chrismanie even heard it from policemen that the camp would be burned down and that the people of Bois Neuf were no good because they lived with bandits. 2 of Chrismanies’s oldest children were stopped by police and asked at gun point where Youseline’s (a girl friend of a bandit) house was. The children knew but were more scared of what the gang would do than telling the police where she lived. The president of the camp committee is a pastor and even he cannot live in Bois Neuf anymore. Rival gang members threatened to kill him because his wife is a nurse and they accused her of providing medical care to people wounded in gang fights between the rival communities.

There is a lot happening right now. I’ll update more in the next update. Have a good weekend!
Karen Bultje, Coram Deo