Monthly Archives: February 2015

Once again, we have had an amazing week. I can already anticipate that I will have a hard time coming up with creative new ways to start my blog posts after teams leave because every week is an amazing week at Hope Center, Galette Chambon.

The FBC Pensacola team at dinner on the first night at Hope Center just before orientation.

2 Corinthians 9:8 says, “And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” This promise is evident every single day here where we are in Haiti. God just keeps sending what and who we need even before we realize we need them. I could list story after story of times when we recognized a great need here after a team arrived only to find out someone on that team specialized in that very thing. The cool thing is, that person said yes to God to come here having no idea how he or she would be used. It’s tremendous! It shows God’s hand in the big and the small things, and it shows great faith on the part of the individual who obeyed God’s call even without exact details about what he or she would do here. Once here, that person was able to “abound in every good work” that God planned for him or her to do.

On Wednesday, we went on a walk through the village and stopped to pray over the well in our village. It has been broken since December and where there once were many people drawing water from the well to take to there homes, there is a quiet bareness. Please pray that God will send someone to fix our well!

This week we had another team from Pensacola. This group was from FBC Pensacola. They arrived on Sunday afternoon, February 15^th and immediately got busy with the tasks they came prepared to do. Since FBC Pensacola is one of two churches that sponsor the orphanage, and they want to continue to develop a relationship of trust with not only the children but the workers there too, their priority as a team was to come to love on the children at the orphanage and continue preparing the space for the interns. They had a long list of items they wanted to accomplish, and as the week progressed, they crossed it all off. They were even able to do a few extra things up here at the Hope Center too that we were not expecting!

Jim Hinson working on a lattice divider next to the interns apartment at the orphanage.

Pierre and Makil worked all week in the orphanage garden continuing the work that Doug and Charles started last week. Before long we will see another great harvest in the garden! it’s so cool to see people making money doing work in the community!

Another priority for the week was getting our clinic back up and running again. Now that we are registered with the Haitian government as a health care facility, we need to put into place a more detailed and thorough record keeping system. Even though it was quite a monumental task, this team helped us get our files set up. Mountains of forms were copied, hole punched, stapled, and recorded both on paper and in the computer so that we can begin keeping patient records efficiently. It was trial and error for a couple of days, but by Thursday, we were seeing our first return patients and were able to quickly locate their charts and follow up with their care! It was so exciting!

Dr. Shubert with a mother and her five children in the clinic.

Hallie, Susan, Lori, and Karen working on files for the clinic.

While team members Jim Hinson, John Hosman, Galen Counselman, and Matt Johnson worked on projects at the orphanage, several other members of the Pensacola team worked in the clinic. Dr. Gannon was our visiting doctor, and Lori Kizziah, PA, worked in the pharmacy. Karen Mabie & Susan Hill assisted Lori in the pharmacy, and Merill Ray, Kathryn Kizziah, Hallie Hill, and Anna Johnson all helped with triage and any other need that we came across throughout the day. Every single person that came through the clinic this week saw and heard about Jesus as each of these ladies and Dr. Gannon let Jesus use them to minister. Every day was precious.

Susan, Junior, Lori, and Karen working pharmacy in the clinic this week.

Lori, Dr. Gannon, Hallie, and Susan after a very busy day in clinic. 

On Thursday, the team loaded up all of the orphanage children and workers and took them to Club Indigo Beach for the day. The children had never been to the beach or to a swimming pool. They absolutely LOVED it. The team was able to play and splash with the children all day long building life-long relationships and memories.

The Team and orphanage children at Club Indigo pool. 

Now for the surprise God had in store for us…. Lately we have been struggling with our Internet gobbling up data with no real explanation. It has been costing a lot of money to maintain our Internet and we had gotten to a point that we were hesitant to even use it. We have seriously needed someone that knows what they’re doing to look at our system to see if it can be resolved. Another need we have related to technology is a program that will allow us to put patient records in a database and be able to pull up charts when patients come in and compile research data to send to the Ministry of Health. We had searched for some medical recordkeeping software before we left the US in January, but everything we found was connected to the cloud. With our Internet issues, we certainly didn’t need to be dependent upon the cloud to keep up with our records. We had decided we would just have to figure out a way to use Excel to keep up with patient records. This was going to be very labor intensive and was not going to make it easy to find patient charts. Last week, as I knew time was approaching to open the clinic and keep records, I began praying that God would send someone soon who could help us figure out both of these problems. On day one of this week, we found out that team member Galen Counselman is an IT specialist and genius when it comes to technology, and team member Matt Johnson is also a technological genius who writes programs that can do just about anything you want them to do. Galen looked over our Internet and all of our computers and other devices to make sure nothing on them was silently running that could run up our data usage, and he resolved several issues that could have been a problem as well as researched a possible unlimited data plan that we can subscribe to. Matt sat down with Tony and Dr. Gannon to discuss things that our medical record keeping software needs to be able to do and said that he could have us a program written that would do everything we need it to do in no time. Yes, God knew what we needed, and he sent the people here to get it done. They didn’t even know that He would use them in this way when they came. …BUT GOD knew.

Matt, Galen, and Dr. Gannon looking over programs in one of our computers. 

Before I sign off, I want to shout out a special WELCOME to our new intern Rachel Charpie. Rachel is a music therapist and she is going to be serving in our orphanage for the next two years helping coordinate team interaction at the orphanage as well as help create more structure between the staff and children at the orphanage. She is going to be a huge asset here, and we are so blessed to have her. We look forward to working with her over the next two years. We also look forward to hearing her sing in church as she has an AMAZING voice and loves to honor the Lord with her voice.

Our precious intern Rachel Charpie!! We welcome you to the team!! 

We are so grateful for all of the teams that come here and serve. Each week we are blessed in a unique way and God uses them to bless the people of this village tremendously. It’s hard to say goodbye, but we know that many of them will be back to love on the kids again, so we don’t say goodbye; we say see ya next time!! We love you!

Last photo of the week before the team loaded the bus and headed to the airport.

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As the new year begins at Hope Center, Galette Chambon, we feel so blessed by the many teams that come to serve along side us in our village. God uses so many faithful people to do His work here, and on behalf of the people of our village, we say thank you for saying YES to God’s call to serve. I am going to try to get in the habit of recapping each week’s team activities, but if you have been here before, you know how crazy-busy things get around here! It might be a rather steep goal, but I am certainly going to give it a try. Thanks for stopping by to check things out!

The first team of the new year was a combo team from Gulfport, MS, and Pensacola. It was the perfect team for kicking things off because they helped energize us, encourage us, and get us ready for the many teams coming behind them. Our friends Kaye and Doug along with a dear friend Renee, all from the Pensacola area, joined us once again to minister to the orphanage staff and children, work in the orphanage garden, and help us get the clinic ready to open back up. We also had a group from the Gulfport area join us. Kent, Kim, Victoria, Amy, and Clarisa were amazing in VBS, Ladies Bible Study, and just general help in and around Hope Center and the orphanage.

VBS games in the church at Galette Chambon

For several days, the team helped Tony get the clinic completely cleaned and organized for opening hopefully next week. Each morning around 9, they would host a ladies Bible study, which is always very popular among the ladies of our village. Then each afternoon around 2, children from far and wide would flock to the church for VBS. It’s always fun to hear their laughter, singing, and group Bible recitations float through the air while the team leads them and Alex and Frantz crank up the songs and games that make times like these great fun for the kids of the village. These seeds being planted will grow for many years to come.

Ministry and Evangelism at mobile clinic

On Wednesday, we changed up the pace a bit and had a mobile clinic at a local church in the village. The team worked in Carisa and Renee worked triage, Kim and Kent ministered to people in evangelism and one-on-one prayer, and Kaye, Amy, Victoria, and I worked pharmacy. Tony and Dr. Shubert were the providers for the clinic, and Vladimir, Alex, Marc, and Frantz all helped with translating. We saw 64 patients from the village, kissed many babies, gave out many suckers (piwili’s) to people who came to the clinic. Four people even prayed to accept Jesus at the clinic!! That’s what it’s all about, right?!!

While we were at clinic, Doug and Charles worked in the garden at the orphanage, getting it prepared for a great variety of crops.

Doug, Charles, Pierre, & Junior working on the orphanage garden

On Thursday, we went on a ministry walk through the village. We stopped by many houses in the village and prayed with people concerning their health and provision. We gave out vitamins to both adults and children throughout the village and of course, gave out many more piwili’s. We held a few babies and played with a bunch of kids that joined us on our walk. Sharing the love of Christ and building relationships with people in the village is such an important ministry. We love it when teams join us in this.

Sweet family in Galette Chambon

One particularly cool thing that happened on our walk was when we stopped by one of the voodoo temples in the village. The priest at this temple is the father of twins that Tony delivered about 7 or 8 months ago. One of the twins died after about 2 months, and we have been trying to check on the other one about once every 2-3 weeks. Back when the twins were born, Tony was able to share Christ with the priest and his other wife as well as pray for God to provide for their family. God did provide when the mother of the twins needed to receive blood after she developed a complication following her delivery. Tony prayed with the priest that God would provide the funds to get the blood she needed. After that, Tony was able to give him the exact amount he needed to help his wife recover because the team at the time gave him an envelope of left over money to use as God led him. Since that time, the priest’s other wife has become a Christian, and the priest has asked us to pray for his baby on several occasions including this week. We had stopped by to visit with them, but the priest wasn’t there. A lady that was there told us she would tell him we came by. We went on to the next house to play with the children and love on the three babies that live there and the lady from the priest’s house came to tell us the priest was back and wanted to see us. We returned to the voodoo temple where he was waiting for us, and he agreed to let us pray for his family and their baby who is in the hospital sick with stomach issues. Please join us in praying for this baby and the entire family as God works a miracle in their lives. One day we hope to tear down that ugly voodoo cross in front of his house and celebrate the victory of Christ in his life and his entire family.

On Friday we took a trip up to Thoman to see Hope Center II and take a hike down to the river. As soon as we told the village children that we were going to the river, they all grabbed their empty water jugs and joined us on our hike. We had no less than 25 children walking along with us, laughing, singing, and helping us keep our footing on the steep, rocky pathway that led to the river. They took us to a part of the river that was clean because many of the women from the village wash clothes in the river where it is wider and the water is dirty. When we arrived at the clean part, the landscape became lush with elephant ear plants, an onion field, and coconut and mango trees. The river separated into about 4 or 5 streams and we could hear giggles coming from under the elephant ears as children bathed in the streams. They all filled their jugs at an open spring, and then we prepared to head back up the mountain to Hope Center. The hike back up is pretty difficult, and it amazed us all that these children were carrying no less than 30 pounds of water on their heads back up the mountain, knowing they probably do this several times a day. Once we arrived back at Hope Center, we gave them the piwili’s that we had promised them, and prepared to head back down the mountain to Galette Chambon.

It was a good week at Hope Center this week. The days were filled with various ministry opportunities for people in the village, and then the evenings were spent ministering to one another as people shared their testimonies and we recapped events from the day. We are so thankful for every team that comes here to minister with us. If this one is a preview of coming attractions, we are confident we are in for an amazing year!

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