Clinic, Dump and Orphanage Visits Begin

Well, the video is up and running. Thanks to Shlee and Josh for an amazing job; and of course Ryan for have the technology know-how to post it! If it was up to me, it would never come to pass. I wrote a nice long update this afternoon, took about an hour, hit send and I lost the whole thing. So now, here I am starting over in MS Word and using the little button marked “save”!

School. The walls are almost done on the first floor, well over 6 feet high all the way around. Our goal is to have it done by the end of the week. We seem to be training up some great cement mixers and brick layers!

House re-building. I hear it’s going well. It’s obviously taking longer to build than to tear down!

Orphanage visits. I’ve heard a lot of great reports. We had to tear a number of our people away at the end. We thought we’d have to leave a few behind. These kids are abandoned because they are all special needs kids. Our kids came with gifts, and just loved on them. They don’t often have people holding and hugging them. You could tell they loved the attention even though most of them couldn’t speak.

Sosua Dump. Probably the most intense part of our week was the visit to the dump where people have fled Haiti to live there with their families. They make a living by sorting through the garbage for recyclable materials. We brought a hot meal of chicken, rice and beans for everyone. Just to give you an idea of the significance of this meal. We spoke to one gentleman who just finished working for three weeks, every day. He received a wage equivalent to the one meal we brought for him today.

Medical Clinic. We honestly didn’t know how this was going to work today. We hadn’t done it before. It went really well. Between Dr. Yogi, a medical student and two registered nurses, they treated over 140 people today with everything from parasites to belly aches to malnutrition to diabetes to pneumonia. We have two more clinics this week and three next week, all in different surrounding villages.

The weather has been amazing. Not too hot, hardly any rain. Kyle says Hi Mom, I miss you and I love you lots. (He’s sitting next to me watching me post the blog and he wants you to know he’s okay.)

Krissie says hi to her parents but she forgot to tell them about the blog. So she says hi to all the parents of Hero Holiday children. Kelsey says hockey rocks, but ice has melted in Sosua. Oh darn.