December 16 - Peters' 13th Birthday

PETER'S 13TH BIRTHDAY
Peter is a boy who became part of our Coram Deo family in July 2013. We were stopped at a stoplight on Airport Rd. and he approached us begging for money. We started a conversation with him while waiting for the light ...to change. He had burns on his face. When we asked him what happened he said that other street children burned his face with the drippings of a burning plastic coke bottle while he was sleeping. It was punishment for giving away a bag of water to a man who said he was thirsty. My heart was touched and we decided to bring him to the house until a placement could be found with a mission that helps street children. At the house we talked with him more about what led to him to living on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

He was born in the north part of the country, in Cap Haitien. He lived with his parents and 2 brothers. His parents didn't get along and his mother left the family to live in the Dominican Republic. His father developed an infection in his leg that went untreated. Soon he developed gangrene and his leg was amputated at the state hospital. He died soon after. Peter's aunt took in the children and looked after his younger brothers well but ignored Peter. The others went to school and he didn't. When he had a cut on his arm and asked to get medical treatment his aunt pushed him outside and closed the door. He then decided to leave his aunt's family and started to hang around with other street children. He spent some time in Ouanaminthe, and Cap Haitien living on the streets and then decided to go to Port-au-Prince. He hopped on a bus and went to Port-au-Prince.

He lived 2 months on the streets here before we found him. He hadn't toughened to the streets yet and we were happy to find him before things got worse for him. Peter was illiterate and had never gone to school. We started to to teach him the alphabet during the summer and he is now a part of our school program. He now knows how to write his name and is no longer illiterate He also doesn't know his birthdate. All he knew was that he was 12 years old and that he was born sometime in December. We decided to make his birthdate as December 15th. Yesterday, we celebrated his 13th birthday with cake and ice cream. He has settled into our Coram Deo family and no longer wants to live on the streets. We asked him what he would like to do when he gets older, and he said that he wants to help the children who live on the street. Peter has a caring heart. Pray for him so that one day he may be able to help the other street children.

 

December 15 - Bringing Food To Hospital - Neurosurgeries

Twice a day (morning and evening), our food service team goes to Bernard Mevs/Project Medishare Hospital to bring meals for the hydrocephalus babies and their parents. The cereal we give the babies is called Nourisoy and it is vitamin fortified and nutritious for the babies. We buy wholesale at the 4C warehouse. The rice meals are donated by Feed My Starving Children and distributed by Love A Child, located in Fond Parisien. We are grateful for this food assistance. Love A Child helps several missions feed the Haitian people. By doing this Love A Child participates in helping many people. We give the Lord thanks for their assistance. The meal we brought to the hospital in the pictures shown was rice, with a salmon sauce. That is my favorite way to eat rice and it is nutritious too The surgeries occur over a 3 day period and by the time the last patient is discharged from the hospital the food service team serves over a one week time period. We have made food for the hospital many times over the years. The people here at Coram Deo do everything. My part is to supply what they need. We never have a lack in volunteers for our food service team. The people here enjoy helping their people. Pray for the food service team as they go about their work in assisting the parents of hydrocephalus children.

December 14 - Dallas Neurosurgery Team - Project Medishare/Bernard Mevs Hospital

For the first time a neurosurgery team from Texas is at Bernard Mevs/Project Medishare Hospital. The hydrocephalus program is growing! Currently the St. Louis, Missouri and the University of Miami are making 2 trips a year. Each trip means that around 25 children receive hydrocephalus surgeries. The sad thing is that each time doctors are faced with a large list of patients to choose from. The combined Canadian/American flag hangs out front of the door where the hydrocephalus patients are. Maguy Rochelin of Project Medishare, is the project co-ordinator for the hydrocephalus program. She is shown standing in the 2nd photo. The woman holding a baby seated on the lower bunk bed in that photo is a Dominican from the Dominican Republic. This was a first for the program. Good news is spreading! Michela is a 14-month old baby girl who had a shunt placed in the Dominican Republic. She came for an evaluation from the team and was told that the shunt was functioning and that nothing more could be done for her. We brought her to the Caribe bus station early this morning. The other photos show the Haitian nursing staff who are responsible for the nursing care of the patients while they are in hospital. Each time there are surgeries is more experience for the nurses in treating hydrocephalus patients. Yesterday there were 8 surgeries and today another 8 surgeries were done. Pray for the children who will be having surgeries and for the medical staff who will be treating them.

December 14 - Ruth - Premature Baby

A family came to us yesterday asking for help in finding an orphanage for a premature baby. The mother developed eclampsia and an emergency c-section was done on November 30, 2013 at Hopital Nos Petits Freres et Soeurs. The baby survived but the mother died the next day. The mother was 40 years old and Ruth was her 6th child. The father turned to his family for help and his sister has been keeping the baby alive so far. The family lives in the Soleil 17 section of Cite Soleil. The baby is small. We tried to get an estimate weight by having the aunt stand on a scale with the baby and then another weight with just the aunt by herself. The difference in weight was not much. Her weight is about 2 pounds. We started making contacts with orphanages. Amos went up the mountain to speak with Dixie of God's Littlest Angels and she is willing to take in Ruth to her care. We give the Lord thanks for this opening We spoke with the family today and they will be bringing Ruth to God's Littlest Angels on Monday morning. Pray for health and strength for Ruth. The photos show how tiny she is.

December 12 - Suze Ann Dora Privert - Malnourished Baby

Suze Anne Dora Privert is a baby whose mother brought to see the Lakeland Florida Medical Team who held a couple of clinics here at Coram Deo a month ago. Suze Anne was very sick and needed hospital care. We brought her to the state hospital on Delmas 33, Hopital La Paix and she was admitted. At the beginning of her hospitalization she needed oxygen to help her breathe. After one month of being in the hospital Suze Anne was discharged yesterday. Here are some photos of Suze Anne of her last day in hospital. Her mother is a good mother and stayed with Suze Anne the entire month in hospital. From the attached photos you can how happy her mother is to see her daughter healthy. We give the Lord thanks for his healing mercies :)

 

 

Steevenson Petit-Frere - 7-Years-Old - Cancer

 

We lost the fight against cancer for a young boy. Steevenson Petit-Frere, 7-year-old died yesterday at Bernard Mevs Hospital. There is a children's mission hospital here in Port-au-Prince that has a small cancer program. In May we had sent Steevenson and his mother to the children's hospital. The mother told the doctor that a mission sent her. This children's hospital has good care but they don't work well with outside missions. The doctor contacted us and told us that Steevenson would need a cat scan and a biopsy done. They said they couldn't do it for free and I asked them to send a proforma of the fees to us. They wrote the proforma and said it would be $900US for the cat scan and 2,000 US$ for the biopsy surgery. Those are ridiculous rates. A cat scan with contrast at Bernard Mevs Hospital is $200US. We couldn't pay for the fees, and went to Bernard Mevs Hospital seeking help.

Bernard Mevs/Project Medishare Hospital is a private hospital. Project Medishare brings in medical teams from the United States and Canada to work at Bernard Mevs Hospital. Dr. Henry Ford, is a Haitian-American pediatric surgeon and when his team was here a couple weeks ago they did the biopsy procedure for free and Bernard Mevs Hospital did not charge any fees. They returned to the United States with the sample and sent it for analysis. The results were going to be given on Friday but on Monday Steevenson's mother brought him to the house and he was in bad shape. The doctors at Bernard Mevs Hospital admitted Steevenson to the pediatrics room where he died during the evening. We are grateful for the care Bernard Mevs hospital staff provided.

We know that Steevenson is with the Lord and suffers no more but what I don't understand is why missions can't work together to help each other out. I don't really know if the American director of that children's hospital knows what is going on with his administration staff but it is sad. Now I know not to show my white face and make sure to tell the mothers of the children we send to the childrens hospital to never let it be known that a foreigner brought them to their mission hospital. Pray that missions in Haiti could work together in respect and in a network. Pray for Steevenson's mother as she mourns the loss of her son. The following photos are of Steevenson and his mother after his biopsy procedure 2 weeks ago.

Unwanted Child

A few weeks ago there was a medical team from Lakeland, Florida who came to Coram Deo for a couple of medical clinics. One of the patients who were seen was a sick little boy who had bit his lip during a seizure due to a high fever. He was very weak and we brought him to Bernard Mevs Hospital. He was admitted to the pediatrics unit and received good care from the Haitian and foreign medical staff. He had a bad case of pneumonia and brain damage caused by the seizures and high fever. By the grace of God and good medical care, ten days later this young boy recovered from his bout of pneumonia. We paid for his hospital bill and asked the mother where she would like us to bring them. She told us that she lived in the Rte. Frere area of Port-au-Prince, but that she needed to go see someone in the Delmas 65 area. We drove her as far as the ravine would let us and she said that she would walk the rest of the way to the place she was going. We felt good that this boy was going home with his mother.

We found out today that after we dropped the mother off she backtracked and took a tap-tap back to Bernard Mevs Hospital. She told the security guard that our vehicle had broken down and asked if she could wait inside the gates until we had fixed our truck. The security guards know us and let her in with her son. She went to the clinic area and left her son on the bench and walked out of the gates never to return to the hospital again. Now the hospital has an abandoned child to look after until a placement is found. It is sad that the mother used our name to get in the hospital gates to abandoned her child. We are going to tell Bernard Mevs Hospital staff to refuse access to anyone who says they are coming from Coram Deo, Karen unless accompanied by Amos or myself. I don't know how a mother can do what this mother did. If her child would have been left untreated he would have died. Pray that a placement is found for this child.