This is an excerpt from an e-mail that my mother sent us concerning her time it Haiti. It is a little long, but you will find it very interesting.
I see the trembling lips… of the woman who came seeking help for her spinning head, heart palpitations and stomach pain. We treated so many persons with these symptoms, understandable after all the emotional trauma that has been suffered, not only in the initial quake, but in the dozens of aftershocks since. Already-damaged buildings are continuing to collapse as the shaking continues. Knowing the pure terror I felt the morning after my first arrival when a 6.2 quake jolted me awake and sent me flying from my bed for the door, I can’t imagine what it must be like for the multitude of those who lost homes and family in the 7.0 quake. Any sizable aftershock causes a few heart-stopping moments as everyone pauses to wonder if THIS ONE will be even worse than the first. She stared straight ahead as she tonelessly related to me the horror of searching for her infant daughter for three days before finally finding and digging her bloody, lifeless body from the wreckage. It was another two days before her nine year old son, trapped in the crumbled ruins of their home the entire time but miraculously still alive, was freed from his prison and rushed to a hospital in another part of the country. She has not been able to visit him since.
My nose pricks… with the acrid, sour stench of vomit. My stomach recoiled as my flashlight beam picked out the unconscious form of the man lying on the ground in a pool of slimy, partially digested food. Don Mobley, our GMC resident missionary in Carrefour, tapped on our door that night at 10:30 p.m., saying that one of the night guards had just called to tell him that a man was very sick. What an understatement! We moved him to a table in the clinic where, for the next three hours, another team member and I fought desperately to save the life of the diabetic man who had inadvertently taken a double dose of his long-acting insulin, bottoming out his sugar and putting himself into a coma. He’s still alive today because God put us in the right place at the right time.
I taste the raindrops on my lips… and remember the welcome coolness two nights before we left, of fresh washed night air from the first rain since the earthquake. My shoes sloshed through the water and mud as I walked the short distance from the clinic to my room. I ducked under the tarp that had been stretched over the area closest to the door I needed to enter, where several dozen of the hundreds of people still living in the yard were trying to sleep. The bright moonlight played over bodies lying on soaked blankets on the muddy ground. My heart was wrung at the sight. I felt guilty lying down on my dry mattress covered with a dry sheet sitting on a dry cement floor with a waterproof tin roof overhead…
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All the teams are home as I sit at my computer and record memories of my few days in a world so vastly different than that which we here in the heartland of America casually take for granted. I flipped a switch on the wall this evening as it grew dark and did not waste a second’s thought in wondering if the light would come on. The candle flickering on the table is burning solely for the luxury of its scent and romantic touch, not because it is our only means of illumination. In a few minutes I will open my refrigerator and from its abundantly stocked shelves collect the makings of a warm, well-balanced supper, to be added to stomachs that have already this day digested two other adequate meals. This morning I ironed a week’s supply of shirts for my husband, and that didn’t begin to exhaust the number of them still hanging in his closet. A pile of laundry in the hall needs transferred to my washer downstairs, where the touch of a button is all that I need do for the load to be washed and rinsed with no further effort on my part. I hear the sound of my son taking a shower as I write. He didn’t need to stand in line with a five-gallon bucket this morning to get our family’s water ration for the day from a well, or worry that there will be none left for the person who follows him if he uses more than a small basin full…
I am so blessed! I pray that God will keep fresh on my mind how truly trivial are the petty things that so easily irritate me. May my life be one that He can use, wherever He chooses, to show His love to as many as possible, in whatever way He sees best.
I wonder if it is raining in Haiti tonight…
This picture was taken from the porch of our unit. We only saw the very top of the volcano once or twice because of the clouds, but it is a perfect cone. Notice that the right side of it is burned bare. This volcano spews lava almost constantly.
We didn't have much time to do much sightseeing but we did stop by the Basillica, the biggest Catholic church in Costa Rica and one of the biggest in all of Central America.
