Hands & Feet for Haiti

Report from Dav Irnive

2010-06-12T09:48:00.001-04:00

Hello all,

Attached is the report of the most recent food and shelter material distribution, involving approx. 180,000 lbs of food and more than 2000 tarps. This last delivery was made to specific targeted areas of particular need and to schools operating on the island of LaGonave.

The impact has been enormous, the feedback very positive, the recipients deeply appreciative. Never before in my experience have relief supplies reached so far into the rural areas or been so specifically targeted to the real needs. Paul Donn, Caleb and the rest of the team have accomplished a monumental task, clearly one of the best relief distributions in recent history here. This gesture of compassion has greatly alleviated the suffering of people on LaGonave and in the epicenter region.

The NYNE District and their funding partners, the volunteer distribution team, the YWAM and Wesleyan missionaries, and our Haitian colleagues deserve our recognition and appreciation for sacrificial service in the best tradition of our Christian faith.

Please feel free to use this material to communicate with those who have participated in this team effort.

Blessings,
Dan Irvine
Caribe Atlantic Area Director
Global Partners/ Wesleyan Church

Global Partners – Wesleyan Mission in Haiti
Food program / Food help for canteen in different schools selectionned.
Phase II – The Gonave.

From     : Paul Donn JEAN, Responsible
To        : M. Caleb THOMPSON
Object : Report on the distribution of food to the schools for canteen.
Date of the transmission of the report: 22/05/2010

Food help / Report of the distribution on La Gonave area.
English version
      The distribution of the food assistance for the second step of the Wesleyan mission on the La Gonâve Island after the earthquake on January, 12, 2010 was begun on May, 12 / 2010 and was finished on May, 21 / 2010. After distribution, thirty two (32) schools have received food for canteen and fifteen (15) communal organisations have received food to distribute to the poor and hungry people, those most in need of assistance .
      Thanks to good organisation and distribution planning before starting with the distribution and the security precautions, the distribution preceeded in the best conditions without problems or disorder. The different directors or representatives of the different schools were very happy to receive food for canteen and are grateful to the different donors for the help.
      Its is important to underline that the remaining schools wish to find for their schools next time . People need help.
The mission to distribute food to those areas with a hungriest population is not easy. But, thanks to God, we have accomplished a successful distribution (Paul Donn JEAN and Caleb THOMPSON).

Caleb's Final Update: End of Food Relief

2010-06-01T22:35:00.000-04:00

On Friday, May 28th, I carried the last bag of food out of our depot and into distribution. Our mission is finished and by God's grace we succeeded - 350,000 lbs of food delivered to churches, schools, and towns all over La Gonave along with many other acts of ministry. We sent 2300 tarps to Port au Prince, medicines to the clinic in Petite Guave, 2750 Gallons of Diesel to WISH, tools for WISH, tools for YWAM St Marc, and many acts of individual kindness. I say none of this for us to boast, God forbid. I want to point to what God has done because many people chose to obey Him together.

I could spend a long time writing about all of the different places we've taken food to. I could write about all the different schools I've seen giving out our food, the children that clapped for you and all sang "thank you" in unison in Creole, the parents who want me to pass their thanks to kind strangers in America. I could write pages of detail about the need I saw, both numbers and accounts. I could tell you how much what we did was needed, how much the earthquake magnified an already grave need and the ways we met that need. However, let it suffice to say that God asked us to feed His children and we did.

And now I believe He says stop. The reasons you already know. We can't continue relief feeding for too long or we'll create dependency, we'll ruin the food economy, we'll take the will out of agriculture. A few weeks into the rainy season is a very good time, just as many fruits are beginning to ripen. Again, though, I am stopping because I believe this is God's time for us to stop.

Haiti is different now. Some people say we've entered the new normal. In Port au Prince today, as I get ready to leave the country, I saw that the tents no longer look life refugee hovels, they look like people making the best of things, making a life where they are. That's a very Haitian way of being - "degage" in Creole, make do. The bedsheet homes are all but gone. Now tents and tarps have rugs on the floor, Christmas lights hung inside, and goods for sale out front. Are things where they should be? No, tents are not houses and churches lie in ruins. But, there is an economy again, and there is feeling that the crisis has passed. What I saw in Port au Prince is true on La Gonave, the emergency is over.

And perhaps, now the real work begins? God knows who He will call. Our faithful friends, the Wesleyan Missionaries, whom I have labored beside, are beginning their great rebuilding of so many ruined churches. YWAM Montana, who's given so much in money and people, is looking to further study and work toward long term development on La Gonave. They'll probably even send a team in late June. Our friends in Calvary Chapel Spokane who have also given so much to help their brethren are considering how they can help in church rebuilding, to include sending a project manager, and possibly partnering with the same churches in the future. My prayer is that this is by no means all. Time is short and the laborers are few: let's pray for more. Let's pray for those who do labor and let's support them.

The Earthquake of January 12th was a terrible thing but out of it we have seen great beauty in God's people answering His call. If there is any one thing I have learned in this, it is that you CAN do something about it. God must open the doors and He must do the work but if a few people stand up together in Him, they CAN do something. I say this as a regular person and nothing more. I, we, have done nothing more than be obedient, but God has done something here worthy of praise. I want to give Him all glory for that.

Since this is the end of this mission, the very end, I also want to say one more thank you to all of my friends and team mates. We all did this together. For my part, I could never have done this without your prayers. Those who pray may be unknown on Earth but they are known heaven. I believe, in the end, that this entire mission is a result of people praying in accordance with God's will. This is His Kingdom. All Glory to Him.

HS.
Caleb

Caleb's Update 5/21/10

2010-05-23T00:54:00.002-04:00

To Everyone Who Has Been Praying,

I intend to write an update at the actual completion of our food distribution but in the mean time my mother reminds me that I had better let everyone know how we’re doing. The answer is that the major food distribution is successfully finished. We have only some of the outlying Wesleyan Schools remaining and those principals will come to my depot and retrieve their own food. This last push was not easy. I feel very confident, both logically and spiritually, to tell you that without your prayers, we would not have won.

If you remember, our plan was to go very fast, as close to all at once as possible, with the last four containers (180,000 lbs.) We did and it’s a good thing. The security concerns on my mind were valid but God protected us from all of them. It wasn’t easy, but He got us through it.

For me personally, I am very glad to be finished. Everyday there were significant problems to overcome, whether the police on the mainland halting shipment because they wanted a cut or angry men on the docks threatening the life of my coworkers because they weren’t letting them steal the food or the long nights in the rain trying to coordinate with trucks that didn’t come while keeping vigilant for men sneaking in on other boats to steal out of our ships. I am not complaining, I am proud God gave me this job and I am incredibly thankful that for all the potential for loss, we got our food right to the children we meant to.

Not all good things are easy and this last big push was not – I needed every prayer that was said. Now, let me say thank you, all of you, ever so much for your diligence in prayer. God heard.

There are still a few things I would ask people to pray about. Like I said, our work is not quite finished. First and most importantly, there is a big bill waiting for me from a bunch of sailors and truckers who need to be paid. I could never get a straight answer on the final number and if that sounds reckless of me I understand but this country is not as easy to work in as others and we had to get our work done. Please pray that the bill is manageable – prayer is my only recourse.

Also, please pray for our good friends in all of this, Jean Bernard and his twin Bernard. It is strongly on my heart and some of my wingmen who were down here from Montana that God has a lot more in store for these two island boys. (24 years old.) They have helped us to no end and in many dangers (very real.) There is a Discipleship Training School at Ywam Montana that we would like them to attend but they must be accepted and then somehow money must be found to pay their tuition and costs. They have a deep desire, I think God gave it, to learn more of God’s ways so they can help their own people. Specifically, they want to learn better how to work with American Christians and their organizations so they can facilitate relationships with Haitians on La Gonave. This is a most worthy goal and I think we must pray hard for them.

Last, I would ask for myself that God helps me finish well and gracefully here in the next two weeks. Let all glory be His.

HS.
Caleb

Update from Veronica

2010-05-20T10:00:00.000-04:00

Perhaps some of you know that Veronica led the YWAM's ministry to La Gonave. Below she wraps up their involvement to date on La Gonave.

If you haven't yet, check the facebook page (link at bottom) since it is the repository of photos and videos.

Haiti Update
May 16, 2010
After the devastating earthquake turned the world’s attention to Haiti, God brought the island of La Gonave to our focus. La Gonave was experiencing an enormous influx of refugees (750-1,000 per day) after the earthquake, but were drastically lacking food supplies due to the focus on Port-au-Prince. So, through prayer and discussion, a goal of raising $50,000 was set in order to purchase 2 containers worth of food and medical supplies to send to the island.

Here’s what’s been accomplished thus far:
• $43,000 was raised in under 2 weeks.
• Two containers were purchased at the end of February.
• Each container held 46,750 lbs of food (93,500 lbs total).
• Opportunities and finances opened up which sent two of our staff to Florida in March to oversee the loading of the containers, and then on to Haiti for 2 weeks to scout out future possibilities for YWAM Montana to pursue.
• In April, a third staff member spent 3 weeks in Haiti helping to prepare a system to distribute the contents of our containers, as well as the contents of two additional containers provided by the Wesleyan District of New York.
• God moved quickly to cover $3,200 in Haitian customs fees to process the containers.
• All 4 containers, holding a total of 185,000 lbs of food, have been unloaded and are en route from St. Marc to provide desperately needed supplies to the residents of La Gonave.
• Overall, we saw approximately $53,000 come in to provide both containers as well as scouting and distribution costs.
• Through it all, God has accomplished what seemed impossible.

We are currently in the process of moving forward with more long term development on La Gonave. A Foundations in Community Development team will spend two months this summer formally assessing the needs and priorities of the people to improve living conditions in their communities.

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this project to get critical relief supplies to the people of La Gonave. Whether you donated or supported through prayer, you have helped to save and change lives.

For continued updates as well as pictures & videos from La Gonave, please see the facebook page: Facebook

Caleb's Update, 13May2010

2010-05-13T21:22:00.003-04:00

Two Away. 13May2010

A quick update on food distribution – we’re at about the half way point meaning we have completely distributed about two of four containers. The pace the last few days has been absolutely break neck compared with our speed in February and March. However, thanks to God our plan is working, at least the parts that have survived contact with the enemy.

I have had to modify our strategy a little. The boats are proving a little slower than I’d hoped and the trucks on the island are a lot faster than before due to our larger, less frequent distribution points, the schools. Also, security in Anse Galets has been better than I expected so far. (That can change so please don’t stop praying.) Security on the far shore has been a little worse than I expected. (Don’t sweat that, if you remember part of the new plan is that we’re paying someone to guarantee the food until it reaches the island so he will replace any losses we might incur.) What all that boils down to is I’m going to do more trucking on the island and less boat runs around it.

We’ll still be going around to some of the coastal towns hopefully on Monday but the large network of trucks that our economist has arranged for are making pretty short work of our supply. I’ve been out for the last couple days on some of these runs. I see my role before distribution as strategic and administrative but during it my most important job is providing accountability to our system. I’m also constantly making sure various things arrive when they should and various people connect, but my foremost job is observation. I am in as many places as possible so that we can all know that the food went where it should and so that I can find and fix problems with logistics or security before they get very big. I’m happy to report, so far, that our food is going exactly where we want it to – especially into store rooms in schools from where it will be given out to lots of children and their families in the coming weeks.

On a personal note, the experience of this is very fast and often almost, but never quite, chaotic. I have a kind of constant sense that if I don’t watch carefully and make things right, they won’t be made right. I guess that’s called caring about my job and it makes it pretty easy to get up at 4:30 and not mind.

Contrary to that pace, however, there is a sudden pause this weekend and I’m going to take the opportunity to connect intelligently with our players to make sure we have a good week coming. I was planning to go to Port au Prince for a mad rush delivery of the remaining tarps, which are sorely needed or will be the next night it rains, but after praying about it I feel very convicted that I must not go. I’ll confess the series of transports I needed to get there tomorrow, around for distribution, and to St Marc on Monday early were a little on the sketchy side, but not too much worse than normal. Still, turning a deaf ear to God is about the most stupid thing I can do here so I’m listening to Him and staying here.

Please pray that I hear Him on all things for the coming week. Pray that every arrangement that needs to be made, will be. Pray for all of the people in our network, but especially for our economist consultant, Jean Paul Donn, and his assistant Fridy, who are so critical to our work. Finally, please pray for our success in this whole endeavor and that all the glory goes to God.

HS.
Caleb

Caleb’s Update. First Day of Distribution (almost.) 11 May 2010

2010-05-12T08:46:00.000-04:00

I’ll confess I don’t feel like writing tonight because I would rather go straight to bed. However, I think I owe those who pray for our work here an update so they can pray accurately. Maybe this can be a simple update – I’ll just explain what happened today.

I got up at 04:30 and was out the door for the ferry to the mainland at 05:15. I intended to just go across and meet some trucks to watch them load our food into the wooden ship we’ve hired. The ferry was really fast though and I was an hour early, enough time to get to Ywam St Marc and watch the trucks load to keep that process counted and accountable. I prayed about it and jumped on a cargo truck full of people bound for a town halfway to St Marc, “Mori,” which means death in Creole. There as I was trying to find my next transport I ran into a guy I know who doesn’t speak English but seems to like me. Three of us rode on his motorcycle to St Marc and I was in time to meet Ywam’s import guy, Ben Fontane, and watch the first truck load up. (We’re emptying the container that has buried 1700 of our tarps for people sleeping in the rain in Port-au-Prince.)

No problem loading, ready to leave. I asked God if He wanted me on that truck or if I should wait to keep number two accountable since there was plenty of time. I really felt like I needed to be on this one so I got in and it crept its wallowing self South, probably overloaded by twice. Just South of Saint Marc we hit a bump and broke some of the lug bolts on the rear dual tire. The most important thing was to get our prized cargo out of sight quickly and we did. We hid it in a walled gas station owned by my shipper. Then, we waited for more than three hours as the mechanic came, worked, and went for parts.

This delay brought us up to and through the time we were supposed to have the food in Anse Galets by boat. I called our economist but couldn’t get him to answer until the very end. At that point my shipper showed up in a fuel truck and said he had two more trucks on the way and the mechanic and parts so we’d just get all three to the public dock at Carias once the other two loaded at Ywam. So much for threading the needle. Still, I think it was good that I went back to Ywam because my count for some of those items was useful later. I think God wanted me in every part of the process today and was willing to allow delays for that to happen.

When got to the docks at Carrias with two of the trucks, after getting fuel for the ship for half an hour, we could only drive them halfway down the steep hill to toward the boats. The second half the way is clobbered with markets and debris. We paid men with wheel barrows to move almost 60,000 lbs of food onto the boat. As they carry their huge loads down the hill they almost run and they yell and scream all the way – it’s like a circus act accept nobody’s acting. This took hours.

During the process some bags broke. Because those bags were broken and I’m clearly not Haitian, some people assumed those bags should be theirs. At this point I was glad for three things. First, that my shipper made it very clear to everyone working that the food was his personal property. Second, that I have three months of culture practice. Third, that God is always with me. I said I couldn’t give people this food. I said this because if I gave out one crumb there would be a crowd of hundreds in minutes and I’m not exaggerating. The people I told this, mostly women, did not like that I said that and they yelled at me as such. There were many of them yelling at once and very loudly; again, it was circus time. Their faces were wildly angry but my intuition was to argue as though they were joking. This worked. I stayed calm and amused asking them how I could do this when many people elsewhere would be very angry with me. It was a hard act to hold for a few minutes and they even hit me with some cardboard. However, the scene suddenly broke and they all started laughing and called me a coconut. You read right.

This sort of thing continued all afternoon. Finally, after a double flat tire held it for more than an hour, the third truck arrived, we loaded it and were under way. Our distribution plan for Anse Galets and the surround was to start on the island around 12:00-1:00. It was 5:30P.M. and we were just leaving by a big 17th century sailboat with two puny outboards. It was dark by the half way point and the sea came up pretty fast. There was a nice Christian woman who prayed and sang and I think rebuked the wind and the waves, literally, if my Creole is right. We got to the dock here with no problems.

Our economist wisely said that unloading the ship of food in the dark would be too risky so he and my shipper worked out that the captain and crew would sleep on board tonight to guard our food. Tomorrow early we’ll start the distribution of it and hopefully at the same time do a repeat of today’s logistics on the far shore.

In the end, this was a fairly intense fourteen hour day but I don’t say that for sympathy. To be honest, I’m very blessed to be given this work for the Lord. Even if its hard, I can’t think of a challenge I would enjoy more.

Please pray for God to continue helping me/us with even the most minute detail. Please ask Him for all grace in this without which we’re already finished. Please specifically pray that no matter what delays come up, we can still go really fast. Finally, please ask God to bless my working relationship with our allies and their relationships with each other. This whole venture hinges on that.

Detailed Haiti update and prayer requests

2010-05-10T11:08:00.001-04:00

For almost 2 months 4 containers have been held up for reasons which were beyond our control; between shipping delays and the very lengthy Haitian customs process, this has been frustrating, to say the least. Several men were called, funded, and have traveled to Anse a Galet, Haiti, for the purpose of helping Caleb with the distribution of the contents of the 4 containers. Let me list them: Peter Thompson for 4 weeks from Calvary Church, Spokane, WA, Chris Campbell and JD Goding for 3 weeks from YWAM, Lakeside, MT and Johan Bester for 3 weeks from YWAM, Lakeside, MT. All of these men came and went from Haiti, having never seen these containers delivered.

In our human minds, the 180,000# of rice, beans, cooking oil, and canned fish has been long overdue. We may never know why but we must trust in God's perfect timing. In addition, 2300 tarps have been delayed: these tarps will be given to the homeless who have only bedsheets as a "roof" over the shelter they have created. Rainy season is May (heaviest month) to July. For the recipients of these tarps, the fact that the rainy season is several weeks late will have been a blessing. FYI, the information we have on the "rainy season" is that May statistically provides about 8 inches of rain which means 2 inches a week. Since this rain typically comes at night, you can assume it comes down hard. Now imagine the bedsheets.... Hurricane season is July to October; pray the Lord spare the country of hurricanes.

Caleb, who has worked with Haitians to devise a distribution plan, asks everyone to pray for these particular needs:
- for all things to work together in the times that have been allotted, with the understanding that the speed of the process is critically important.
- for key Haitian players to work together in concert.
- in particular, for Tuesday's transport of food into Anse a Galet with security in mind.
- for the safety of the Haitians who are assisting in this - by labor or transportation.
- for a particular Haitian economist who has been essential in coming up with this plan - his name is Jean Paul Donn.
- Caleb asked specifically for prayer that he himself get all the information he needs when he needs it: this has to do with logistics.
- for the safety of the food while it is in storage.
- for the unknown costs of this distribution process. In Haiti, it is not possible to get written quotes or even verbal ones. Caleb is concerned he will discover there is a transportation bill or unexpected cost he won't have the funds to pay.
- and of course, that the food will get into the hands of the most needy.
I personally am asking for your prayers for Caleb's safety.

The ultimate plan for the contents of these containers is:
Approx. 2 1/2 will go to schools all over the island of La Gonave for what is called "dry" feeding: children who are attending school will be given the raw food to take home to their families.
The other 1 1/2 will go to the poorest of the poor on La Gonave.
The 2300 tarps will be distributed on the mainland in the hardest hit, under-reached areas.

If it is God's will and all goes as planned, the distribution process will be completed by sometime next week; an update will go out.

What's next? Unfortunately, there is very little food money coming in now. It appears the mission to get food to the inhabitants of La Gonave will be changing to church partnering and community development. These concepts involve long term effort. Pray the Lord provide leaders and skilled workers for these tasks.

Update. Containers free.

2010-05-04T12:06:00.000-04:00

Many of you have been wondering what is happening with the last four containers of food - 180K lbs of it. They are finally through customs and inpections!

It has taken a long time to get it through the shipping, inspection and customs process. The absolutely poorest of the poor on La Gonave are targeted for this last big push. Two containers are going to the South and North Coasts of the island, one container is going deep inland to the central mountains, and the fourth is slated for school feeding only in the town of Anse a Galets.

Caleb has developed a distribution plan which integrates local commercial, civic and church volunteers. All of the key people have proved themselves to be pivotal supporters and contributors along the way.

It is time to pray for the distribution and while you are at it, for the next steps for Chris, Caleb, Veronica and myself as we regroup and consider our calling and the need.

From Caleb in the field:

Finally all the containers have cleared inspection. They're ready today so it's time to start the distribution. Please ask every person who prays to pray for the next three weeks of work - we're going to need God at every step.

Caleb

Funding Needed Part II

2010-04-22T10:13:00.001-04:00

Hi Everyone:

Here is an update on our need that I wrote you about, below:

Veronica spoke to Caleb on the phone yesterday and got the good news that $800 was donated to get the first container free. Johan was sharing our dilemma with a missionary in Port a Prince and she handed over $800! Thank the Lord for that!

And just this morning, we heard from the NE District of the Wesleyan church and some money has come in from the actuallyhelpinghaiti blog. That, coupled with an additional amount from District will give us almost enough for two more containers! Praise the Lord!

So our new total need to get the remaining 3 containers released is $800 - $1,000.

If the Lord is leading you to help get this food released, please donate as specified in my email below on how to do so. This needs to be done quickly so the food can be distributed: pray the Lord protects it from getting moldy and going bad (it's very hot and rainy there).

If more donations come in than are needed for container release, they will be used for the needs of La Gonave including transportation costs to distribute this food.

Thank you all!

Funding Needed

2010-04-20T12:46:00.003-04:00

Hi everyone:

As you know the four containers of 180,000# food, tarps (specially donated for use on the mainland) and a few tools for the W.I.S.H. program (again, specially donated) finally got shipped to St. Marc. The containers have sat there under lock and key while being processed by Haitian customs. Youth with a Mission (YWAM) staff in St. Marc, Haiti has graciously been helping with this processing and we just got word from them yesterday that each container will cost $800, for a total of $3,200. At present, we know of no money available to put towards these fees.

If anyone would like to help with these costs, we - or rather - the hungry poor and needy on La Gonave - would greatly appreciate the help in getting these containers freed up so the contents can be distributed.

If you are led to give, our daughter Veronica is the contact/go between with the YWAM base personnel in St. Marc so her organization is the best one to send donations to for this purpose as she will wire it to YWAM St. Marc and the personnel there will give it to Haitian customs.

You can make your donations payable to “YWAM” with ‘Help Haiti’ on the memo line and send to:

Accounting Office
501 Blacktail Rd.
Lakeside, MT 59922

or you could go to http://www.ywammontana.org/helphaiti where you have the opportunity to donate via credit card.

Caleb’s Update 14 April 2010

2010-04-17T09:50:00.002-04:00

I think I begin every update by apologizing for not writing sooner and giving my excuse why. This time the satellite we point our dish at for internet was shut down and we had to point at a new one. We aren’t even supposed to do this, a technician is because he’s got the necessary equipment and training. The nearest guy is in Miami so we did it ourselves by old fashioned trial and error. It’s a big sky. (Just kidding about searching the whole sky. The real reason it took so long is we gave up for days at a time.)

Now being back in touch let me give a brief synopsis of where we’re at. Since last writing Ywam Montana sent down another guy, Johan Bester, a South African, to help with the four containers of food. You guessed it, they will probably clear customs the day he leaves and it looks like I’ll be doing it by myself. However, the mean time has not been wasted.

Johan and I have spent a good deal of our energy gathering and processing recon for Ywam and others, who will hopefully transition into development work. Again, when I say recon I often mean developing or transferring relationships. Ywam has spent a lot of time on this and I think they will be rewarded if they do end up sending teams to work here.

We spent much of last week in Port au Prince because we needed to get a report to the World Food Program asking for help with school feeding here since donations for food have sharply declined. You don’t just go to Port au Prince, do your business, and come back. Somehow you always get stuck there for days running errands and touring needs. I’m not complaining, though, because I think if what we saw, all the destroyed churches and schools, gets into the right ears, God may do something good with our information.

We did get our report to “the right people” at the WFP. Don’t call them, they’ll call us. This morning, though, our job was to link up with a UN helicopter, drive the delegates to a meeting with Anse Galets leaders, and participate in the meeting ourselves. They were here to do a need survey. Coincidence? I don’t know. I’m not saying I want to be the liaison to the UN, I don’t, but I do hope they’d like to give us thousands of pounds of food for our hungry kids. And as you know, school feeding increases enrollment and in church schools especially, I think that’s a very good thing. It’s considered one of the only ways to distribute food without creating a dependency. That’s what we want, to feed the hungry without perpetuating their hunger.

Tomorrow we’re hoping to leave for Gran Vide on the South West coast of La Gonave, about 6-8 hours from here, and spend the next three days travelling the Western end. The only other time I was close to there, in the town of Lanternierre, I was really impressed by how little people have in almost every sense. I want to go back out and learn more – maybe make some more contacts for those who will later go and help or partner. This trip, however, is only to be if Johan gets better from his stomach pain. Whether we travel or not, please pray that he does and stays that way.

Actually, I would ask you to please pray for the health of all of the workers and missionaries here. It is true that Western hygiene and good diet help protect us but we need more than that. I don’t intend to be dramatic but this place is full of sickness and death, before and after the earthquake. I hear the death wails from the hospital so frequently I almost don’t notice them. Same with the stories, “oh so and so’s son died last night of an asthma attack.” “Oh him? Yes, his family was all killed.” “No, no, this was a different 3 year old who died of malnutrition.” I could write on and on, pages maybe, but my point is just that one gets used to this stuff it’s so common. And we who work here are only protected by the grace of God. It’s not that we deserve more protection than our brothers here, it’s that if we are to help them we have to be healthy and strong enough. God please give us that grace.

I hope I’m not ending on a low note but end I must. There’s so much to pray about, think about, so much we’ve all experienced down here that I could write until not one person was still reading. For those of you who know me, I hope to share much more in person than I will have written in my clumsy updates. I do want to say to all of you who pray for us, for me, that I consider you absolutely as team members and that you deserve much more than what I give in writing. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I covet your prayers and am grateful for your friendship.

HS.
Caleb

Update from Veronica

2010-04-05T22:32:00.001-04:00

The ship finally departed Florida with the 4 containers! (2 from YWAM Montana and 2 from a mix of Calvary Spokane and NY Wesleyan District funding.) The Monarch Empress left on saturday afternoon and is scheduled to arrive at the port in St. Marc tomorrow (tues.) afternoon. It was beginning to feel like the ship would never leave. However, I know our vision is limited and God may be doing something very necessary through this delay.

YWAM Montana had sent 2 guys down, Chris and JD, who you heard from a few times while they were in Haiti. They have since returned to Montana and will be sharing with our base all that they saw and learned. One of their main purposes in going to La Gonave was to scout out possible long term opportunities our YWAM Montana base could partner with. So, Chris, JD & myself will be discussing these options with the base leadership to see if we can move forward with more development oriented work.

We sent down another staff guy from our base, Johan, this past wednesday. He will be working with Caleb on La Gonave for 3 weeks, returning on April 21st. He is helping Caleb prepare a system to receive the 4 containers worth of food (185,000 lbs). This is a large task since we haven't received such a large amount all at once before. And, God willing, the containers will make it through customs quickly so that Johan will be able to help transport the food. Since Johan is there for 3 full weeks, he has a little more time to build relationships and test avenues for long term development.

I spoke with Caleb and Johan on the phone this morning and it sounds like they are both doing well, considering the circumstances. The internet is down at the Wesleyan Mission and it doesn't sound promising that it will be working again anytime soon. So, I may be reporting for them in the mean time. Sadly, no internet also means no current pictures. I will post some soon from Chris & JD's trip, though.

Caleb & Johan said they were taking a trip soon to visit the most remote communities on La Gonave on the opposite end of the island. Caleb hasn't been to this area yet and wants to scout the need, hoping to bring some food there from the 4 containers. He was saying that the need for food across the island hasn't changed (it's still desperate).

We need some serious prayer for the containers to make it through customs without any tariffs being put on each container (this could be thousands of dollars per container). I do not believe customs tariffs have been imposed officially, but there are threats of starting tariffs again soon. And, please pray that the containers make it through customs in record time so that Caleb will have Johan's help and so we can get food to those who need it faster. According to YWAM St. Marc (who has been processing our containers), recent shipments have been taking 2 to 3 weeks to get through customs. But, I know God can change this.

Thank you so much for all of your prayers; they are so needed.

For His Glory,
Veronica

Eli update

2010-04-02T18:05:00.015-04:00

This post was written by Eli Thede, fourteen-year-old son of missionaries Cory and Chris Thede. Eli has spent most of his life Haiti.

The earthquake that hit Haiti was caused by the movement of the geological plates. One plate goes under another and causes pressure that is released by an earthquake.

In Haiti the earthquake caused a lot of damage. When it struck buildings collapsed, and the walls of other buildings rocked so that they flung heavy bricks at anyone that was in the buildings.

Many people were doing normal day things one-second, and were in heaven, or hell the next. People that weren’t killed, but trapped were found and saved, or died of starvation and thirst. Others that were safe lost family, friends, limbs, homes, and dreams.

They had food shortages. A jail fell freeing 2,000 killers. For a month or two help will come, but then people will hear less about it, and then they will forget about it, and the proud country of Haiti will be broken and alone.

It will take years for the people to recover, and will this help the people? Some people have come to Christ and know about the hope, this is the good thing. People will be more for a God that will help them, I hope that we can help more people think that going to Jesus is the best way out, not demons, and spirits. We can help them, or we can make them feel bad about it all.

Eli

Update from Dan Irvine Part 2

2010-03-31T18:39:00.008-04:00

Even though neither food distribution nor disaster relief of any kind were part of our perceived “mission” and certainly not allocated in our ministry budgets, the event of January 12 created both challenges and opportunities that could not be ignored. Because of our significant history and presence on LaGonave, in Petit Goave and other areas we quickly realized that unless we and other partner organizations were willing to advocate for our communities any serious needs would be overlooked by the “drive by” approach of some multi-national or government agencies.

One very natural extension of our existing ministries was the decision to open an emergency field hospital in the city of Petit Goave. Because we have been doing medical ministry in Haiti for more than fifty years we were uniquely positioned in the chaotic first days after the earthquake to put medical people on the ground in some of the most devastated area and supply them long before most other organizations were able to mobilize. At the same time our existing hospital on LaGonave was inundated with earthquake victims brought to the island by family members. To support the medical enterprise, stretched to its limits, mission personnel both national and expatriate worked impossible hours for extended periods of time.

In spite of obvious need for a relief supply/ food distribution the truth was that we lacked the funds to purchase necessary supplies, the logistical experience to pull off such an endeavor, and the manpower to organize and supervise orderly distribution. It was at this point that God sent to us a team of individuals from the New York New England District of the Wesleyan church with whom our first “conversations” were held and from which developed a much larger network, including Calvary Chapel in Spokane Washington and several intersections with YWAM both here and in the states. You can read about this part of the story at: Churches Link Arms for Supply Shipment. Tonight I am looking backwards with gratitude and forward with open anticipation.

Looking Back
Even as we first began to recognize our dilemma, our incapacity to do relief distribution in the face of incredible need, God was already at work putting people and pieces together to supply the need. I will always be incredibly grateful to Chris Thompson and his son Caleb as the initial spark plugs, the New York New England District Superintendent Paul James made a courageous call to move quickly when all the details were far from clear. This great adventure would not have been possible without the physical presence of volunteers who took point to raise funds, purchase supplies, arrange shipping and then travel to Haiti to assist in distribution. Caleb Thompson and Andy Pratt arrived with the first load. Josh Nerren who came all the way from Spokane provided valuable support shortly after. Pete Thompson followed offering invaluable expertise as the distribution began to get a little more complicated. Terry Snow and others of YWAM Haiti contributed their experience and logistical support. Wesleyan Missionary/WISH directors Butch Alexander and his crew spent hundreds of hours transporting relief supplies over land and sea. Haitian businessman Chris Nezivar provided a great deal of transportation support, much of it paid for out of his own pocket. Haitian agricultural and project expert Paul Donn Jean crafted a masterful distribution plan for the civic and community organizations and Pastor Keno Osne spearheaded the church network . Missionaries Tricia Alexander, Justine Iskat, Matthew Tegen and Diane Busch provided housing, meals and logistical support to the distribution team while also entertaining one medical/surgical team after another. Our most recent food distribution volunteers were Chris and JD from YWAM Montana.

In our distribution to this point we have made strategic use of church networks but we have also intentionally created a network using civic and community organizations. To this point our distributions have been peaceful, orderly and very positively viewed by the communities. Unaccustomed to equitable distribution one lady in a remote mountain village observing the truck of food climbing the mountain turned to one of the Haitian distribution personnel and expressed her amazement and appreciation with the words of a Haitian proverb “water has finally run uphill.” One local official in the town of Point-a-Roquet stated that this was the first time that he was aware that a distribution through Anse-a-Galets ever arrived in this town on the other side of the island. All this was possible by the gracious provision and the obedient response of an amazing network of people and organizations.

Looking Forward
While it is difficult to project exactly what is going to take place in this still chaotic situation, two facts are clear. The need for food, hygiene products, clean water and shelter material are still critical in the earthquake devastated areas and in those places where large refugee populations are still being maintained. Distribution is becoming more complicated and may require some creative strategy.

• There are still remote areas that have not been reached with relief supplies.

• The mandated reopening of schools on April 5 creates another potential distribution option, ie feeding school children, wet or dry feeding.

• In certain areas where devastation was near total, Petit Goave, Leogane, Carrefour Feuille the dependence of the population on relief food is still very high and will remain for an extended period of time.

• In communities supporting refugee populations the need for relief food support will remain high at least until rain begins to fall on gardens (end of May).

I’m confident that God will continue providing resources, both material and human, to meet the still very present needs in of those communities where God has given us influence and responsibilities.

Update from Dan Irvine Part 1

2010-03-28T23:15:00.000-04:00

Given all the problems ….why do we do food distribution? Part 1 Lessons to be learned!

Distribution of relief supplies has always been an interesting prospect in Haiti. Because of Haiti’s history of political turmoil, extreme poverty and frequent natural disasters, distributions of vital supplies have been done on a major scale a number of times in the last 25 years. Some interesting lessons can be garnered from our experiences.

Food distribution is always fraught with logistical difficulties. Staples like rice and beans are bulky and heavy. To have any measurable impact these items need to be moved in significant quantities involving large vehicles and a lot of manual labor. Further complicating the logistical process is the need for tight security throughout the whole operation from plane or ship to the distribution center. Distribution done without proper planning or understanding of the cultural issues came be very dangerous to both the donors and intended recipients.

Media reports of mob violence at distribution centers tend to create the impression that the Haitian people are by nature unruly or greedy. The truth is much more complicated. Everyday vehicles loaded with food stuffs move without security of any kind, unmolested, through the streets of Port-au-Prince and other cities. Bags and boxes of the very goods that have created mob scenes at distribution points are carried openly without incident. But let any cargo marked with symbols that identify it as relief supplies appear on the street without appropriate precautions and the “fun” begins.

So what is the problem with relief supply distribution?! Fundamentally, the issue is one of ownership—to whom does this stuff belong? The amazing truth is that in a country that has so little sense of anyone being in charge, the Haitian people have a deep respect for personal property rights. Venders spread their wares on city sidewalks without fear, retail businesses of every sort are doing a booming business, money changers ply their trade in the streets with big handfuls of cash. Rarely is there violence, or strong armed robbery. Like any society there is a criminal element here but not seemingly out of proportion to the population.

Relief supplies are properly understood to be the gifts of other nations or of multi-national organizations to relieve the suffering of the people in crisis and as such are seen as belonging to the people. When the distribution is carried out properly, (when the food supplies are sufficient for the local population and the distribution plan well-crafted for the local situation) people will stand quietly for hours patiently waiting for their turn. Generally speaking, on those occasions where there has been a violent incident related to distribution it is because people waiting for their share perceive that the food will run out before they get their turn or that something is unfair about the manner of distribution (stealing food, partiality, politics).

Another observation important to this discussion is that the longer that relief operations go on the greater likelihood of problem developing. An entitlement mentality will almost inevitably develop within the affected population who then can rationalize aggressive or even violent behavior. As well, that smaller group which has devious intent in the first place may become bolder and better organized.

In Haiti, one immediate effect of the earthquake was the disruption of the normal food supply chain. A significant number of food staples eaten in Haiti are imported, the vast majority of them passing through the capital city of Port-au-Prince. When Port was largely destroyed these food shipments were interrupted. As a result the price of food staples more than doubled. North American type groceries were almost impossible to find for weeks afterwards as the majority of the supermarket retail stores were destroyed in the capital.

As most of you know who have followed the progression of events here, beginning immediately after the earthquake, LaGonave was inundated with wave after wave of refugees, mostly friends and family members of LaGonave families but a number of people who were simply looking for a better place than their shattered neighborhoods in the capital.

US and UN troops did helicopter fly- overs, apparently looking for the tent cities that were popping up all over P-au-P and other devastated areas. Finding none, some agencies declared that LaGonave had no refugees. The fact was that the refugees of LaGonave were absorbed into the community, not living under tarps or tents as in other parts of the country.

As a rule, LaGonave is always on the hungry side in February and March, even in the best of times, as the dry season ends the food crops have long since been harvested, sold and eaten. Fruit trees and banana plants slow their production waiting for the rains.

The additional refugee population, the increased food prices, and the seasonal factors soon made hunger the everyday companion of many of the citizens of LaGonave, as existing food stocks dwindled. As the people began to cry out more and more for food relief, we realized that the mission had to be involved in finding and delivering food stuff to this part of the country in spite of the obstacles. Without food distribution starvation would have inevitably followed quickly on the heels of the devastation.

- Dan Irvine

Recon of western La Gonave

2010-03-27T18:51:00.000-04:00

For one reason or other, in spite of all the food distributions I’ve ridden out on, I have never been able to get to the Western half of La Gonave. It may not seem too far away by map but it is by real life – you know it’s the road because there aren’t any trees in it. This has meant that all of our thoughts on that half of the island are based on second hand information and this always bothered me. This last week I stopped waiting for an opportunity and we forged one, especially on account of having our brothers, JD and Chris from Ywam Montana here to scout the island that their base has been helping so much to feed.

We talked to our good friend here, Jean Berna, who is fluent in English, a mechanic, knows everybody, and is a real Christian, and he said he wanted to take us. He says that others have helped him greatly, since his humble beginnings as a kid on the Saline, and that he wants to help us help La Gonave. So he borrowed Butch’s truck and we headed West along the North coast for Gros Mange where we would bring food to the local church for distribution and stay the night.

We spent the afternoon until dusk walking about the town interviewing the people and local leaders and discussing their needs and hopes. We would repeat this in every town we stopped in during our three day trip. I wish there were time to flesh out the details because it was a pretty rich experience but alas, a few anecdotes is all that will fit our constrains.

I will tell you that all most villages suffer from the same sets of problems. Most are in dire need of drinking water. Thankfully, we aren’t the only ones who know this and organizations like Compassion and Haiti Outreach have already drilled wells and will be installing purifiers to remove the salt, a common problem in the coastal towns. However, there is a great deal still to be done just to meet this most basic need.

Everyplace we visited, on this trip and on many others, is extremely economically depressed. I cannot say with any certainty what unemployment might be by percentage but it is obviously higher than 50%. Unemployment is only part of the problem. What work there is earns so pitifully little money, even relatively, that even those who have full time work are in real poverty, no matter how one defines that word. A telling example is as follows. Chris Cambell sought out this number in Pointe-a-Racquette, the second largest city on the island with a population in the city of 7000 which includes 4000 refugees from the earthquake. For that population, we learned that only three sources of monetary income are charcoal, fishing, and money gifts from NGO’s or relatives in the U.S. There is no way to determine the amount of money sent from the States but we Chris worked out with some community leaders that the total income from fishing was $200 (USD) per month and $15,000 per month from charcoal. Spread that number over 7000 people? $2.17 per person per month. Again, they tell us this is the town’s only source of income. That’s their economy. I saw their wharf, it was shallow and poor, and I believe them. All of the other places we visited were in a similar way.

This lack of cash translates, of course, into a lack of food. But food is grown some on the island, just nowhere near enough. None of the three of us has the training to provide a thorough analysis but common sense still reveals a good deal. People who subsistence farm here are hungry for large portions of the year and that’s without an influx of refugees. Everyone without exception who we spoke to reported this. Even a cursory visual inspection of any agricultural land speaks of terrible soil conditions, lack of irrigation, lack of weed control, and lack of any applied fertilization, even animal. (Animals mostly free range here which means their waste stays where it lies and the plant nutrients are wasted.) Without being qualified to offer a prescription, it is intuitively obvious to me that the food yielded from the island could be multiplied significantly with even the most basic tools and methods.

The needs reported or obvious to us on this trip, and the many others I’ve taken, are many and various. The primary and secondary schools that exist need food and funding. More schools are needed. The chance of a bright young person from any of these places attending university is very slim. Healthcare is all but non-existent in the smaller or more distant towns and the road to the hospital in Anse Galets is long and difficult. Infrastructure is often little more than a single salty well and some bad jeep trails for the smaller towns and not a whole lot better for the larger. The list goes on.

I’m happy to report that we aren’t the only ones looking, in fact there are some excellent organizations trying to tackle these problems in some of the communities. Scottish Lemonade, the ones funding the total rebuild of the Wesleyan Hospital, and their partner Compassion, together have also improved roads, dug wells, run temporary clinics, sent children to school, and plenty more. There are other groups and praise God for them. However, the need is still far, far bigger than the supply. Have something on your heart for La Gonave? There’s a need waiting for it.

There’s something else happy to report and that’s that this island is absolutely beautiful. Before this trip West I didn’t know the half of it. Chris, JD, and I went to some places that very few North Americans get to see. Little towns set in palm forests on the beach, mountain villages growing crops out of red soil with the ocean in distance. These are things I should be showing with photographs but, once again, my bandwidth is restricted. Still, you’ll have to take my word for it that apart from the poverty this is a place unspoiled.

I don’t mean only the landscape, either, people here are warm and friendly and could teach some of us real lessons in hospitality. In Pointe-a-Raquette, for instance, we stayed at the house of the Wesleyan pastor. This kind man and his wife put us in their beds in their house. We realized that they were about to sleep on the ground outside and tried to make a fuss about it. They claimed that they don’t stay inside since the earthquake and that could be true but it wasn’t the kind of house that falls on you so I wonder. I think I could pick up the roof if it did. They also insisted on serving us their best meals, fish for supper and conch, which I love, for breakfast. But they didn’t eat with us, they served us as we ate. I’m not saying this made me feel comfortable but it sure does speak to their kindness to strangers.

It may be cliché but it’s a strange contrast, the third world poverty with the back drop of beauty and warmth. Being here, especially on our trip the last few days, sometimes feels like being in a movie. I hope that in the end, we’re not here just for an adventure. I’d ask those who pray for us and for Haiti to please ask God to lift up people to come answer many of the prayers of the people on the island. Praise God for what He’s already allowed us to do in this relief feeding. I pray that He will use the relationships we’ve forged in the process for the long term good and growth of His church and this island.

HS
Caleb Thompson

Letter of Encouragement

2010-03-26T08:28:00.001-04:00

Folks -

Below is an email of encouragement and gratitude to Caleb from Mr. Majestra Dahame who is the second mayor of Anse-a-Galets, the first mayor does not live on the island anymore so Dahame is the defacto village head. Caleb says he is amazed and moved by the email, it comes from an important and decent Christian man and represents the thoughts of many. Sometimes we see the negative side of Haitian culture, but there are of course many good and kind people there.

My freind Caleb, i,am very happy to write yuo to day i would like to tell yuo yuor presence here makes all peple in this village happy because yuo bring hope for them that resaon i would like to ask yuo to thank all peple in united states ho have sent anything for us we will always be thankfull about yuo this is yuor freind Dahame.

Caleb's update March 20 2010

2010-03-25T10:57:00.002-04:00

Folks -

There is an answer to prayer in Caleb's update below. We have been praying that God keep the people calm and that He show us how to graciously deliver food under difficult circumstances.

Chris

We had a distribution for the Saline itself yesterday evening. Most of you have probably heard of the place by now, it's the tidal flat in Anse Galets where the poorest live because they don't have to pay land tax. Only the poorest live there because it floods several times a month. It's our backyard but I haven't actually been there when food has gone our. It was an amazing distribution.

It spite of the fact that the poorest of Anse Galets live there and that they have been our most vocal citizens at wharf unloading, it was perfectly peaceful and happy. The people receiving food waited patiently in a single file line for Pastor Keno to call their name and hand them their portion. All those present but not receiving food were not just calm but even agreeable. They said things like "God bless you" to Pastor Keno and I, even though they didn't get anything themselves. I wish I could send pictures but alas, we're on bandwidth rationing again.

I suspect I know a couple of the reasons why the distribution went so well. Of course, God's grace is the power behind all kingdom work. After that, though, Pastor Keno found a good local leader. This man made a list of the poorest people that was apparently fair and true enough that even other poor people had to agree. The last reason is not politically correct but its worth remembering. They did not give any food to males between 15 and 50. I've heard of the UN doing the same thing, even in spite of their PC mandate. I have to tell you that 99% of the anger, hustling, aggressive begging or other nonsense comes from that group. It's no surprise but putting this rule into action really made a difference.

The day before, March 19th, Chris, JD, and I did our first purchase of local food. WISH’s board wanted to put $5000 toward our relief feeding effort and with that we bought 8000lbs of food, exactly the amount we can haul in the Breezy Sea. (That's the lobster boat, AKA, JD's new toy. ) Everything went fine, maybe the smoothest day we’ve had yet moving food. There was hardly an extra person at the wharfs and no trouble at all making the transaction; I’m not surprised. This food now sits in Pastor Keno’s warehouse and is being distributed as I write. It won’t feed everyone but its certainly still a worthwhile gift, just ask anyone who’ll receive some – that could be 1000 families receiving 8 lbs of dry food. That IS something, its what we’d want if we were in their shoes, and it only cost $5000 to do. It doesn't take a that much money to really answer some prayers for people.

These last two days, buying food and getting it our have been the smoothest so far in doing our job down here. I in no way mean to boast here, it's the Lord that has taught us, but I think He is blessing our efforts and we have learned a lot.

HS,
Caleb

Haiti Update 23 March 10

2010-03-23T20:49:00.000-04:00

Monday, March 15th, Caleb and I were able to coordinate a joint trip to the YWAM base in St. Marc by phone. Our goal was to meet the new food distribution director, Ben, on the following day and through him to connect with the World Food Program director for the Northeast region of Haiti. Tom Mehrer, the former food distribution director for YWAM there, had enabled the successful consignment of our containers (no small task), connected Hands and Feet with secure storage for food containers in the YWAM compound and had made many introductions for us into the YWAM teams that served the local area. Tom had left his awesome legacy in this two month volunteer post to go back home in the US on the 12th. It was through through Tom's generous help that we had met the temporary housing director, Mike Gervasi, who committed to the building of 10 Hoop Houses for the Wesleyan Church ministries in which we cooperatively have served.

On morning of the 16th I rode up from Port au Prince with Judean driving the two ton Mitsubishi Canter and a pile of supplies to Kwalili where the boat was waiting with JD, Chris and Caleb. It was becoming hotter and hotter each day, and this day was clear skies which intensified the heat. About ten miles from Kwalili, with the worst of the mad max traffic behind us, the left front tire rapidly and audibly lost inflation. No warning, no kidding. And this tire was brand new, installed the day prior. We rolled to a stop at the gas station without ruining the tire, got out and watched it die completely. Thank you Lord. It took a six foot long breaker bar with me jumping up and down on it to break the nuts loose. By then it was about 10:30 and I was soaked in sweat. Judean somehow magically summoned a mechanic by phone who zipped in on his Houjen motorcycle and helped us finish jacking the truck up.

They both rode off south toward the nearest town with arms, legs and round rubber monument poking out at strange angles and I plopped down in the shade of an abandoned tractor trailer bed. I had no idea why the Lord chose to do this but it was becoming so normal that I figured He'd let me know shortly. You know, this is exactly the kind of preparatory moment the Lord has used so many times right before something important happened around us, but it still takes a few minutes of puzzlement for me to get along with the program. After calling Caleb to let him know I'd be late, I pulled out just enough Gourdes to buy an expensive strange juice drink inside the darkened 'store' at the station.

In about ten minutes a beat up Uhaul cube van squeaked to a stop at the gas station and a middle aged woman with a white shirt and jean skirt opened the hood. Her driver concernedly gazed and poked around some at the engine but was pretty clearly stalling for help, pretending to know something of automechanic work. OK Lord, I guess this is what you have in mind, right?

After asking if she wanted help, and finding out there wasn't anything really wrong other than a sqeaky brake drum, Susan Hill told me about her five years of service on La Gonave, in Picme on the south coast of the island. She knew of the Wesleyan mission and Pastor Dan, but had been pretty remote for many years. Incredible story really, since she had gone there not knowing how she could help but then investing so much of herself to teaching and training the locals in life applications to living out their faith in Jesus. She had been there in Picme when the Navy landed and brought MREs and lumber for the village around the end of January. About 20 homes had been demolished or damaged by the small tsunami after the earthquake, and the materials were for reconstruction of those dwellings.

I was not prepared for what she said next. The lumber was transported to an abandoned block home for storage while the food was offloaded. After agreeing to distribute the MRE's (the Navy couldn't provide secure distribution and needed to have a person accept the role), Susan had pastors and civic leaders from the poorest homes and hamlets nearby come and get boxes of MRE's while she handed out food to the poorest locals. Once the Navy presence had gone, the crowd surrounding the MRE's turned on Susan for not giving equally to all families, and for giving to people not from the village itself. Women she had been teaching small business skills to the day prior now pushed her to the ground and stood on her back, warning her to leave and never come back.

She was physically fine, but shaken by the whole turn of events. As she told me the story she didn't get choked up but was clearly just beginning to come to grips with what actually happened. She actually seemed as frustrated with what happened to the building materials - most of it was pilfered over the next few days by people within the village. Not one home, to her knowledge, was rebuilt with the materials and the injustice of that really bothered her.

Still kind of detached from the whole thing, she told me a few interesting things she's figured out over the years in Haiti. I guess she wanted to make sure I understood what we were getting into (although she acknowledged that our food distribution 'rules' were certainly going to keep us from experiencing the same problems she had).

Perhaps the most interesting point was a study she claimed to have read about community involvement following disasters: Following Mississippi flooding, communities in the North Central US typically saw 92% of all relief volunteers coming from their own communities. She said it was similar in countries such as Turkey. In Haiti following the floods in Leogane a couple of years ago (the town closest to the epicenter, ironically), about 4% of volunteer relief came from within Haiti. That is perhaps explainable but kind of eye opening. Earlier I made a mental note that in Port au Prince these days about every fifth vehicle has some kind of foreign aid, UN, MINUSTAH, International ministry, etc. sticker on it. This is a country almost smothered in hands extended to help.

We encouraged each other as we parted company. She was headed across the mountains to Cap Haitien and another ministry she's been involved with in the past. Kind of starting over for her I guess. It's not a really 'safe' journey, but she's got nothing anybody wants to steal. Just faith and hope.

Judean showed up a half hour later on the same bike with the same mechanic. I have no idea how they balanced that humongous tire for the trip but I was glad we didn't have to wait for them to walk back with it. It was about noon when the last lug nut was tightened after the jack was pulled, and yes we were all drenched in sweat.

Haiti Update 031710

2010-03-18T12:33:00.002-04:00

Man the time flies down here. And occasionally drags, especially when you're in the back of a rattling one ton truck bouncing around in diesel choked insanity traffic. Both Caleb and I have been alternating on again and off again with internet connectivity (now we aren't looking for excuses! these are reasons!) so our updates have been sorely behind schedule. OK, we're slackers. I admit it.

A week ago, our two best and bravest allies and closest friends in Anse a Galets, the Berna brothers, both came down with Typhoid. These two guys have never asked for anything from us but give their all every day to help with food distribution. Illness like this happens in Haiti all happens occasionally - locals live with the reality of disease and death from what we consider curable or preventable diseases. Praise the Lord that both of these guys are on the mend, but while you're reading this, pray for our brothers and their young families. I'm so glad they were able to get quick treatment at the Wesleyan hospital, the only one on the island. It's an fantastic team of local doctors and visiting teams of medical personnel who all love the Lord and the Haitian people - all backed up by Diane, Justine and Matt who make it all work behind the scenes.

Our role in procuring and distributing food has begun to shift. At one point in the infancy of this ministry, Caleb was involved in moving food physically and choosing the pathways for distribution as well as accompanying each delivery. Now we are on the cusp of purchasing food locally and depending more and more on trusted pastors and community leaders as it is disseminated. It is, in effect, a progression toward 'working our way out of a job'. Our efforts are aimed at shifting from relief aid in the form of food, to making longer term contributions that develop the church and the community. Some of this may involve the World Food Program and/or feeding kids who attend church and private schools, but we know that the church here is the keystone to any ministry to the people of La Gonave.

I left working alonside Caleb to pursue housing and long term food relief supply options on the mainland about a week ago. We have been a witness to, through the Lord's provision of materials and great relationships, 10 hoop homes being built and have developed key relationships for future housing and church building opportunities. I had no idea we would build anything at all at first. I still feel called to provide some relief for the horrid living conditions in so many places in Haiti, but the shape of that calling is continuing to form.

Massive temporary housing projects, although appealing by the sheer economies of scale, are just not within our reach for a variety of reasons. What has emerged as a pressing need is pole buildings for churches in which school is offered to the community and worship and teaching are conducted. Parents make their kids go to school both for opportunities to learn and because there is the promise of at least on meal during the day. Dan Irvine, the director for the Caribbean region of Wesleyan churches, has developed plans to create pole building packages and small team development that may become part of what I do here in the future. In the process of building church structures and developing more permanent links with local church bodies down here, we will have opportunity to build clusters of hoop houses as we find the land and leadership to facilitate partnerships in housing. Ultimately, we all want to see the local churches doing most of the work, with teams from the US providing materials, manpower and experience to get them done quickly and correctly. The ministry of Haiti to the people who come to minister here goes without emphasizing - it's more blessing to us than to the ones we serve.

We are praying always for the Lord to do the work and open our eyes to see His hand in all things. Caleb and I confer continuously and bounce our thoughts and ideas off each other. We are so blessed to have each other to encourage, exhort, and sharpen.

I'm looking forward to coming home this weekend. I fly back to the states today, but will spend a couple of days in the Palm Beach area working on shipping issues. Please pray that the evangelism tools that are waiting in the area make it into the containers. I'm looking forward to taking a couple of days rest - partly to decompress and adjust to normal life a bit, but also to work through all these open doors with Joan. She's sorely missed down here - even though there's the internet and email (sporradically? intermittently?), it's just not the same as having your best friend, advisor and ally by your side.

Pete update 16 MAR 10

2010-03-16T10:13:00.001-04:00

The YWAM medical clinic in St. Marc is a rehabitated former missionary hospital. Bordered by a road along the ocean about fifty yards to the west, and tucked into some of the poorest neighborhoods on the south end of the city, the clinic sees the full range of chronic illness and acute care. Two nurses and a doctor from the states commute from the YWAM base every day through town along the seaside road.

JD, Chris, Caleb and I walked from the YWAM base for the mile and a half journey down the main street of St. Marc in the late afternoon heat. The ocean popped into view after a block or so and the road eventually left the cookstands and shop openings behind. A handful of enthusiastic and half-dressed boys yelled 'blanc' and ran to us from a dirty courtyard where their older peers were playing barefoot soccer without them. The houses were like those on the Saline on La Gonave - tin, wood poles, some plywood or other sheet goods, a little bit of palm thatch. Those boys would not leave us alone. They followed us giggling and laughing for at least a half mile or so. It was just a wonderful contradiction to a really long day of travelling, fixing truck tires, and moving sacks of rice and beans around in tractor trailer beds.

JD and I took turns letting the boys hang off our arms and swinging them between us as we shuffled down the road. They were so skinny that I could have just let each of them hang there for five minutes. They wouldn't let us leave them behind or enter the courtyard of the clinic without a at least one hug. I have no idea why they thought we were so cool - a bunch of grimy, gritty, poorly dressed American guys. Some kids yell blanc and smile when you walk by, some just stare, but these boys thought we were the best thing since rice and beans. God's little reminder of peace and light - His future generations for hope in Haiti if He tarries.

We met and were given a quick tour by the clinic staff. Our timing was pretty bad (a hallmark of my gender and family tradition) but the staff were really gracious and promised us access to the whole clinic. They headed back to the YWAM base to get cleaned up for dinner. A quiet and serious Haitian volunteer showed us the rest of the clinic and answered questions for Caleb. If I remember right he was schooled in the US and returned after the quake. Another encouraging moment. The clinic, as it now serves the city, has several exam rooms, a reception area, two in-patient rooms, a cooking room, and two large classrooms, plus storage areas. Windows in the rooms are open rectangles in the concrete walls with a length of screen material covering the entire opening. There were maybe five or six chairs in the whole building. One man with TB sat in a wheelchair in one room while his wife and kids entertained him. A single mattress lay on the floor.

In the south courtyard of the clinic stood ten white hoop houses and small groups of women and kids. A few men milled around quietly. The setting sun reflecting off the palm branches, cooling breezes, and the sound of the surf all had a calming effect on things. It could have been a side street in San Diego except for the stark temporary homes and the courtyard wall topped with conch shells pointed at the sky. I guess it was laundry time in the refugee area. A few teenage girls and perhaps their mother watched us go by and responded with quiet 'bon soirs'.

In the middle of the camp, one young girl had a year old baby in her lap as she watched another lady scrub laundry in a washtub. This woman smiled but did not want her picture taken. I took a few pictures of the kids. JD and Chris talked with them and the woman and got her to smile. Caleb introduced me to a dignified man who had been watching us intently from the entry of an adjacent hoop home. I can't remember his name, but wish I could. He had sad eyes but held his head up. We made introductions and took turns trading questions.

He lost his wife and four kids in Port au Prince when his house collapsed and wound up here in St. Marc in the mass exodus. He had no home, no family, and no food when he arrived. The clinic feeds all these families, about a hundred and ten people in all, who have all lost everything they own or even more. I didn't feel right taking his picture without asking first. We aren't tourists, we're witnesses to real suffering. Sometimes that's easy to forget when the professional beggars try to hit you up at the airport. It's easy to remember when you see pain firsthand.

Caleb and I both told him that we would tell all our friends in North America about what happened to him so that we all would not forget Haiti and would keep praying. He didn't ask for anything from us, not even a phone number. He was truly grateful for the grace given him by YWAM to have a place to sleep and a meal each day to eat. What he did want was work.

He knows that God means this for good, that this did not happen as some random act by a distant or angry god. That is really humbling to hear firsthand. He lives now totally dependent on God to provide everything he needs. He only wants to participate in the process.

How can we reach others in Haiti with that message? - that God does mean this for good, that He wants us in a relationship with Him that tranforms us from trying to appease Him to 'living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God'. A relationship through Jesus Christ that brings a man from depending on mankind to save him to trusting in the Faithful One who delivers on His promises for everything he needs. A relationship with Him that permeates all our other relationships and causes us to seek to please Him more than anyone else.

Pete

Haiti Update 14Mar10

2010-03-15T09:44:00.000-04:00

It seems important to me to emphasize that the need for food has not diminished on La Gonave, even in some parts of the mainland. There is always food for sale in the markets, but so many people are both poor and out of work to boot and they are feeding more people in their homes. If they have a home - La Gonave is suffering for food, but parts large swaths of Delmas and Carfour Feuille are just rubble and twisted steel. Here's a thought provoker: the earthquake that some have said is the worst natural calamity in the past century is only a two month old event. Kind of puts it in perspective.

Caleb and I have been forced to be still and wait on the Lord a lot - did I say a lot? - lately. Honestly it's taxed us and kept us from communicating to you frequently. So much uncertainty is difficult to communicate without sounding completely aimless - and we aren't! There's been so much change happening around us, and the Lord has opened some amazing avenues for continued work here.

Pastor Ken Ortize warned me about this - we had better be ready to pursue the Lord in the stillness of those plans that were confounded, and let Him define the ministry, or nothing of Him is going to be left in it. Good advice. We of course, thought we had done that yesterday and the day before that, only to find it necessary again today. Ditto for tomorrow, I'm sure! We're getting more comfortable with Holy Ambiguity, but it's still pretty hard to discuss in a blog or facebook update.

There is one direction we are now sure of. To continue the ministry of relief food distribution the Lord has placed us in, we will need to purchase food at wholesale prices locally. This will help to resolve short term problems and is more sustainable, but there's a lot to it.

First, we were unable to get the most recent four containers of food and tarps delivered to St. Marc last week despite tons of prayer and our best efforts. We have a food 'gap' to fill that will last at least four weeks, and local purchases can be tailored to fill the needs and meet the availability of our existing ferrying and local distribution chains.

In the meantime, the Haitian government is making efforts to impose ridiculous import duties and policies. When these will be enforced is not fully known - most customs agents know that it's going to hurt them personally and the nation as a whole and are opposed. Local purchases bypass the unknown cost factors such as tarrifs and duty fees in the near term. We have found that cost comparisons can be monitored pretty accurately too. As of right now, we would save 15% overall on food bought locally versus food imported via additional containers.

Our goal has been to be as invisible as possible and as useful as possible in serving here. To maintain the current level of trucking, ferrying, and distributing food we have to keep a robust physical presence in all phases of food handling. Purchasing locally not only keeps our hands off the food more and reduces our need to be involved, but puts the responsibility of delivery to the distribution chain (pastors) on the supplier. To boot, it also puts money back into the economy in Haiti, generates profit, and creates a few jobs.

Some of the resources we have are limited. Our boating capacity, even with the lobster boat (which is fortunately repairable), has turned out to be less than what was desired. We are able to continue to ferry goods via the Wesleyana, a 30+ foot wooden fishing vessel, but it has a limited cargo capacity of about two tons. One container of food is about 23 tons. One truckload of goods is usually about 11.5 tons - just about enough food to make a one-time distribution effort worthwhile on the island.

This means at some point food has to be stored before it reaches the pastoral distribution chain. Local purchases will ultimately put the entire process of trucking, ferrying, and if necessary storing and securing food in the hands of others who have a vested interest in getting the food to the distribution chain with the least amount of storage and handling. It's our version of Just In Time Inventory.

Here's an interesting cultural tidbit you may find interesting. Culturally, when a Haitian has more than he needs of something his neighbor is entitled to ask for the extra for himself. And there's a certain moral high ground to the request. This is one reason why virtually all the people who fled Port Au Prince to La Gonave were provided shelter and have not been left out in the elements. It's also why some folks can't keep enough food for their families for a week when there's others living with them who have nothing to eat for that day. I have seen this first hand on the mainland also.

This expectation of sharing can occasionally make handling or temporarily storing large quantities of food difficult. People who know that free food is passing through their neighborhood may begin to believe that it's just as much their food as someone elses, even though they don't know who that someone else is or how hungry they are.

Knowing these things may make it easier for you to see why at times people will congregate and vocalize their need for the food with a certain amount of insistence. Purchasing and making delivery locally as much as possible without our direct involvement makes the food appear to already 'belong' to someone else - creating a moral barrier for those who might be more easily inclined to be forceful in demanding food and keeping us farther away from situations of having to defend the goods with hired security.

Anyway, that's a longer dissertation than I wanted it to be. Hopefully it is helpful for people who want to know some of the challenges that changing our purchasing methods should resolve. We definitely the Lord steering our circumstances, our thoughts and opportunities as we motor along behind Him. Please continue to pray for wisdom and funds as we seek longer term solutions for the needs of the Haitian people.

We thank God for all our encouragers and prayer partners in this ministry. It is so awesome to see the stream of comments on facebook, to hear about prayers from folks for Haiti and the team here. Thank you for your faithfulness.

Update from La Gonave base

2010-03-14T20:16:00.001-04:00

I hope you can find time to read and watch this:

Kids run barefoot behind the truck as it rattles up the road past tin-roofed shanties and drives toward the Wesleyan Mission Station. “That’s the Saline. The poorest of the poor live there,” a missionary explains to the team of nurses riding in the back of the white pickup. Plastic bottles, Styrofoam cartons, and discarded food line the ditches along the unpaved road where pigs and goats munch away. The nurses look on with motherly gazes as they wave to the shoeless, pant-less children.

http://gpcaribeatlantic.com/

update from Caleb, prayer requests 13MAR10

2010-03-13T15:40:00.003-05:00

Friends,

Sometimes it seems like ministry in Haiti is about waiting to minister in Haiti. It’s been like that for the last few days, anyway.

It’s old news that the 4 containers full of much needed food are delayed. In order to get food sooner, we are going to fill the need with local purchases as a stop-gap measure; this is a process we need to develop anyway in light of the coming customs duty. Instead of describing for you the slow, steady, forward movement we’ve made in getting a network built so that we can purchase locally with full accountability, I’d like to make a few prayer requests.

God loves the Haitian people: He has not taken them off our heart – the need is ever before me. God has always shown us the way, given us the tools. I see, even close on the horizon, new blessings coming. Chris and JD, the team from Ywam MT, are in Haiti now and they should arrive on the island this afternoon. Please pray for them, that God will give them His eyes here and show them how to help meet the needs. Pray that God continues to direct Ywam MT – that He shows them the full role He has for them in Haiti and but especially on La Gonave.

I would ask for prayer for our purchase of local food from St Marc. We’ve done our part, making sure we’re dealing with trusted partners, making sure the process is clear and accountable. Please pray that the money will come and that it will go smoothly to its destination, to become food for people who need it. No wasted time. Please pray that God will honor this work.

Also, please pray that God will continue to send into the field for this work every person He has called at this time for these immediate, trying needs of La Gonave. For the administration of our food distribution, we need only a few. What else does God want done here in Haiti, especially on La Gonave, and by whom? Let’s ask Him.

Finally, please pray that God direct us continually in His will. Please ask Him that He show us how long we are to provide food relief. Pray that when His time is right, He will show us how to transition from relief to development. That we do not take these decisions into our own hands but that by God’s guidance we feed our brother until we can teach him to fish.

For all of these things we are (I am) entirely dependent on the Lord.

And to Him be the glory.

HS.
Caleb Thompson

Haiti Update 09Mar10

2010-03-13T00:37:00.008-05:00

The trip planned for the 9th was diverted from Petit Goave to churches closer to Port au Prince by the shear realities of driving in Haiti. It takes too much time to get from A to B. Getting to C is just not an option on some days. Today was one of them.

Carl Gilles, Dan Irvine's right hand man, and I met up with Kim from YWAM Port au Prince in the morning to tour potential sites for construction and mutual team efforts by both YWAM and the Wesleyan church. We were early, but the meeting got off to a late start. By 1130 AM we were almost in Cite Soleil, one of the toughest parts of town. Five years ago it was the kidnapping capital of Haiti, but now it's relatively safe for most people to walk in the day. We met with a pastor at his church right off the road. He lives with his family in a couple of cheap tents out back of the old church structure. It's still standing, but all the other buildings used for education, cooking, and outhouses are all compromised and falling in on themselves. They meet now under a blue tarp. If they can get food, they can feed the kids who want to come to school there (all schools are private). Unfortunately, they can't keep food onsite because of the lack of a compound wall at night - it completely fell down during the quake. They need a wall first, food second, and a temporary church structure third. Not exactly how we would think it should be. I paced off the available space for a pole building and asked questions about underground utilities. Duh. There aren't any. I knew that already.

We made our way to the church where YWAM had erected the 7 hoop houses the day prior. All the personal belongings of the families were in the tents (a few mattresses, some clothes here and there, a few cooking utensils) but almost everyone was gone to town. I didn't figure out why, but the two women who stayed behind were smiling when we walked toward them. They didn't smile the day we set up the houses. Today they said Bon Soir as we left. Just another ten blocks away we visited a church holding classes in an open courtyard under an immense blue tarp. Loud fun music played as hundred or so kids were filing in, all dressed pretty neatly. Instant kid magnet, I took a couple of pictures to cover my escape. The classroom building was a pile of rubble on the west side. Steps leading up to a jumble of broken concrete. People seemed happy to see us coming and going. As we waited to get unparked (blocked by another truck), a woman washed her 6 year old boy's feet and sandals in the running gray water along the side of the street.

We managed to return Kim to the YWAM office for a meeting at 4 PM then we drove up rutted dirt tracks through Delmas into Petionville - the PaP middle class neighborhood. Kiskaya church is big, maybe five or six hundred seats, and has a pleasant campus kind of feel. Carl attended a workshop on crisis counseling hosted by an international mental health organization and a U.S. based counseling ministry through Baptist University of Texas. The meeting was conducted in Creole, so I sat outside and took notes and prayed. A few people approached to talk. There were counselors meeting with individuals to help them through the torment of the quake and the loss. One interpreter worked with each. I'm not sure who was more cheerful after each session, the person talking of their experience or the interpreter. It seems like the national load of pain is carried by everyone, and when one is lifted they are all lifted. I met Erica from Texas who had been camping in the courtyard and counseling here for two weeks. This is her last year before graduation. She's served on the mission field in the middle east for several years but saw the need for counseling in Iraq - she herself needed to work through the pain and following good care decided that biblical counseling was her calling. There's teams of a dozen or so cycling through the campus, sleeping in tents, seeing dozens of people and pastors each day.

That's when I met Innocent Charles. That's his first and last name. He asked me if I knew what that name meant. He interrupted me to tell me what the name Peter meant. I didn't buy the dodge. Innocent by the blood of the Lamb alone, I told him. He wouldn't look me in the eye when I spoke to him, but only when he spoke to me. He had been waiting since 9 AM to see a counselor. He lost two family members, but won't say which ones, in the quake. I asked him if he had trouble sleeping now. I guess two hours of sleep classifies as trouble. His home is rubble and he has no job. He does have family in Cite Soleil, but that's a bad part of town. He talked to me about prophecy - did I know that Chile and Japan had earthquakes recently? So what happens at the end of the world, I asked? He was optimistic that we who love Jesus all go to heaven, but that's as far as the eschatology train went. I listened to some other thoughts he had on encouragement from scripture during trials, which we both agreed we needed to hold on to in these last days. I grabbed a white guy who walked by hoping that it would be the one he was scheduled to see hours ago... and .... IT WAS! Thanks Lord. Innocent got his moment of relief.

A group of about thirty adolescent kids gathered in the side field to hold a bible study. They sat on folding chairs in a big circle. Afterwards they broke up in to a soccer game and half-court basketball match. Two or three cows were staked in the trees separating the court from the open field. It was kind of peaceful watching kids be kids. A threesome of Erica the counselor, her interpreter, and a grieving woman sat forefront of the games from my view. It was like a ray of sanity as the sun turned pinkish orange in the trees.

Carl and I left in the dark. He was thoroughly encouraged and uplifted. Just being able to talk openly with other pastors about his earthquake experiences - to ask questions of other pastors in the same way - really helped him understand better how to teach the pastors in his care how they can reach out in their flocks to heal and comfort. On the road, the city night life was booming. People socialized by the roadside stands for food and beverages and shoes and clothes and cell phones. Two special police in tiger stripe uniforms and black body armor and weapons directed traffic at a roundabout. Carl talked with me about the criminal element in Haiti, the Haitian mind and culture, and the temptations of arrogance and elitism in mission work. I think we ended up talking about why we are so thankful for our wives when we pulled into the guest house. We both encourage each other.

So after leftover chicken cassarole (which I'm really thankful for too) and emails I got a good cold shower (again, thankful) and headed off to mosquito net sleep.

Haiti Update 9Mar10

2010-03-09T23:08:00.001-05:00

Hi Everyone:

We are very thankful for all the prayers that the Lord has answered. Sometimes He doesn't answer them exactly as we expect, but instead we discover He has closed one and sent us through a new door. But as we seek His direction and His will in this mission, we have to be open to His leading.

Which brings me to the next couple of prayer requests. Crazy as it seems, the Monarch ship left FL yesterday without any of our 4 containers!!!! Not only does this delay the food and tarps getting to the people for many days, this also left 2 very frustrated YWAM men in FL wondering what next? Their task had been to get the food on board the ship, then fly to PAP, get to St. Marc and begin the distribution process of the 4 containers. Knowing as we do that food is scarce, everyone is very anxious to get this food to the people of La Gonave.

Nevertheless, after much prayer and discussion between themselves, the YWAM administration and Veronica, the two men will persevere and go to Haiti, completely open to what God has planned for them. It may be that only AFTER they have done with their part in the mission and back in their homes in Montana that they will be able to see what God had in mind. This has been the story of this re-supply effort: everyone that has gone down to Haiti finds that what they had in mind was not what happened. Yet God is blessing everyone's efforts and inroads are being made, paths for the future of food distribution are being carved out, plans for housing are being investigated and hopefully hammered out, relationships are being forged and through all this our Haitian brothers and sisters are seeing that God loves them as evidenced by the efforts of their US brothers and sisters. So to God be the Glory!

The other prayer request is quite serious. There has been talk of the return of Haitian customs which means tariffs on the goods that are being shipped there. If this happens, we again need to seek guidance from our Lord: it would be a problem too big for us and yet, nothing is too big for Him. Please pray for direction and please pray that when these 4 containers do, finally, arrive in St. Marc, that we are not forced to pay a tariff. We are talking in the magnitude of thousands of dollars so this is a critical issue. Pray the Lord helps us find a way.

Praise God.
"Let all those that seek and require You rejoice and be glad in You; let such as love Your salvation say continually, the Lord be magnified!" Ps 40:16

Haiti Update 08MAR10

2010-03-08T20:40:00.002-05:00

A crazy traffic day in Port au Prince, we just now got in from the field. The day started at 4:45. Caleb drove Myself, Tom and the YWAM team to the public dock where we caught the ferry from La Gonave to Carrias on the mainland. We maxed out the Nissan pickup driven by Judan and rode to the Wesleyan guesthouse in PaP - oh, and I bought some cell phone minutes from a street vendor. It was a sunny morning and I prayed for a while between conversations. The poor YWAM guys were stuck sitting on the luggage in the cage in back but we were all thankful to get out and stretch after the hour and a half ride.

Carl had coffee waiting, which hit the spot. We worked out a reasonable plan to build locally today and then in Petit Goave tomorrow. There were numerous pastors waiting for us to start building. It all seemed so rosy. So we took off and retraced our path to intercept the rest of the YWAM construction crew who were supposed to wait near the US embassy with the big truck full of tools and materials. It should be so simple, but it's not! This is Haiti.

By about 10:45 we were connected and headed out in trail to locate the building site on the south edge of town. Things I saw today: more hogs in the garbage, a road grader and three way traffic on a two lane street, a storm drainage crossing with a 28' truck, five or six dump trucks being repaired in the middle of the road (dirt), a Brazilian UN peacekeeper sweating at the entrance to the "EKO DEPOT" Home Depot store. There wasn't enough time to go all the way to Petit Goave if we wanted to because traffic was impossible. Just when we were a few blocks away we had to take a u-turn. The big truck's tail end just clipped a decrepid dump truck on the cattle grill, flipping it down. This turned into Howdy Doody crazy time in about thirty seconds. Hollering and gesturing, posturing for a better deal. There was no damage to either vehicle, but the driver had a chance to make a couple of bucks. It's just the way things go here. Please Lord, let us continue with what we were doing, please calm this guy down, please give us enough money to make him happy. I handed Carl what Haitian Gourdes I had in pocket and he waded into the fray and got us out for about $35. And everyone was shaking hands and saying Bon Jour afterward. Thanks Lord.

Just about the time we found the site, YWAM in St. Marc called to ask why we building these structures here instead of storing them for future use - our little sweater began to unravel further. So we hung around the fallen church building on a dirt back alley as Mike, the housing leader talked with several different people on the phone, trying to piece together the miscommunication. All the while about fifteen families rushed about tearing down their temporary bedsheet homes and striking the tent poles. On a flattened cardboard box I made a quick site map with approximate locations for the hoop structures and ran it by the construction team as they unloaded tools. It was already about 11:30 by this time. They wanted to start pounding stakes. The people were wondering if they could have maybe one or two more but Mike was getting the message that this event was not approved even though it had been approved... Going to Petit Goave was definitely out of the picture.

Carl, Mike and I finally got together to pray about it as we waited for a phone call from St. Marc. Someone was going to be unhappy, and we didn't know who. Mike, to his great credit finally just committed to setting five or six of the hoop stuctures up. There was no way for the team to build anywhere else before their departure on Wednsday and these people needed the structures just as badly as anyone else living under a bedsheet - it's all the same body of Christ we serve. After a few minutes of directing construction efforts and taking pictures, Mike, Carl and I felt our way around the back streets to find the YWAM PaP office. That's where we met Mr. Peterson, the director, and a couple of Americans affiliated with YWAM from Colorado Springs who were visiting to facilitate support. Carl went to speak with Mr. Peterson who technically owned the structures, Mike broke off to chat with Matt Saxton, and I spent some time talking and praying with Nick Schreifels. The end of the separate meeting resulted in some neat agreements to help fill each others gaps in ministry. Awesome!

We fought traffic, goats, broken trucks and random bad driving back to the site where the guys were about 80% complete on 7 structures! I guess they used a shoe horn to get the last one in. We got to work in our own ways and things were wrapping up by about 4 PM. It seemed like the more we hung around the more people wanted to know when we were coming back with 'the rest' of the housing. We just had to keep telling them that this is all we could do, that it was not ours to give more. They were happy, just wanted more. This seems to be the general situation all the time. We did our part and then some and so noone was unhappy. The construction team had broken a sledgehammer and the gas powered jackhammer in the process and were slightly cranky that this was all they were going to do for the day. It reminded me of young guys in the military - they have to gripe about something once in a while or all the fun is taken out of the thing. I took more pictures and pounded in a couple of stakes rather anemically, then tried to help pack things up.

Another forty five minutes in diesel choked traffic, swirling in UN vehicles and 'Tap-Tap' jeepnies crammed with people. Not much conversation by that time. I was SO glad to step into the guest house, wash my hands and face and to smell pasta and tomato sauce. A really simple meal makes so much difference at the end of the day. And it was only 4:30.

A dozen families in a small wesleyan church in town now live in something more like a permanent tent than the bedsheet shanties they had before. Praise the Lord.

Our tarps arrived

2010-03-08T10:49:00.000-05:00

Folks, our 2300 tarps made it to Trujillo's warehouse in time and some are packed already.

That is an answer to prayer because they did not leave a warehouse in NY until Wednesday afternoon.

It's video night, take 2

2010-03-07T23:28:00.002-05:00

Hey, Caleb and I made the last 8 seconds of a YWAM video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0-bnxQ3nnA Obviously we must have been busy discussing the merits of fudge swirl versus mint chocolate chip ice cream and clueless to our stardom. We unloaded another 24 tons into those trailers moments after the video was cut. It was loaves and fishes night at YWAM. Exactly what they handed out was replaced by new food not anticipated.

We had a restful day after trying to leave the island twice today. The lobster boat motor worked OK but the transmission failed when we got out a mile or so. We limped back in and got the fast boat going after a bunch of fooling around with tractors and boat hulks in the way. The seas by that time kicked up to 6+ foot swells and we got everyone soaked and then headed back in to the dock. So we all got cleaned up and had a worship time, ate lunch and took a nap.

I'm headed to PaP tomorrow, attempt #3, on the ferry with Tom Mehrer, two staffers and 5 of the PA construction YWAM team to see if we can set up some Hoop Houses in Petit Goave. They had a 75 unit community to set up in PaP that fell through and there are no other projects ready at this time in St. Marc. So there are 73 units in a truck waiting to be built and a crew that is chomping at the bit to build them. Praise God! Pray for things to be ready for us to build in PG, pray for discernment in the Lord's leading us.

Caleb is going to stay here and oversee distro of our small remaining stockpile with Jean Paul Donn. He will also conduct meetings with Pastor Keno and a group of other pastors who all want to make a committee to take distribution to the next level. Also, these same guys somehow got 77 tons of MRE's in PaP and are trying to bring it to La Gonave in this week. They somehow got a bigger boat, but we are planning on helping them with the Wesleyana (wooden sailing vessel with outboards). I think the lobster boat may be repairable, so please pray for that. This is a HUGE shipment to handle and distribute and we are asking for prayer that it will reach the poorest of the poor. Still lots of people who go without meals for days.

A video you may like to watch

2010-03-07T19:58:00.002-05:00

Lori sent this along. You may recall that it was Lori who had a serious medical problem while on a mission, we all prayed for her.

Please take a look:

"Here is a video my pastor showed in church today. It is pretty powerful. It is only 3 minutes long and details the Call to Prayer on Feb 12 in Port Au Prince. It's awesome to see so many Haitians in one place worshiping the Lord. It also gives the statistic that a confirmed 101 voodoo priests got saved during the 3 day prayer and fasting. AWESOME!"

http://marcestes.com/?s=haiti

It's video night

2010-03-07T09:08:00.000-05:00

From Lori. BTW, the quonset type dwellings look to be very satisfactory, YWAM has been working with the owner, I believe Esbenshade Greenhouses from PA, and likes them a lot for cost and ease of setup. They are better than tents, and certainly superior to tarps.

A 40 foot conex can hold 300 shelters and they assemble quickly. Cost is about $300. Check the website, it is interesting:

http://www.esbenshades.com/Haiti/index.asp

Tom Mehrer from YWAM St. Marc came over with his entire construction crew and set up three of them for the Wesleyan Hospital in Anse-a-Galets. Our inpatients now have shelter from the rain and a safe place to recover. Pete seems really interested in them as inexpensive housing for Petit Goave, and will no doubt be discussing these as an option with Dan Irvine.

When you watch the video, you will in the last few seconds see Pete and Caleb in the near background.

Another video:

I just received an update from Terry Snow with the latest YWAM Haiti video. It shows food and clothing distribution. At the very end there is a short clip of Caleb and Pete talking in the background. It's just so great to see the two-way relationship between the Wesleyan Mission and YWAM! This one is about 5 1/2 min.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0-bnxQ3nnA

Lori

Caleb - Distribution in Petite Anse:

2010-03-07T07:36:00.001-05:00

It seems to me like I haven’t been writing updates quite often enough which probably means I have barely ever written one. Time flies by and this little world down here is very captivating – always another problem to solve, always more people to get to know. It draws you in but it also makes it hard to remember to write. That said…

This morning at 6:00AM I , Caleb, got in Pastor Keno’s car and drove to the dock with him. The breeze was stiff and cool enough to put sweat shirts on the Haitian pastors and sailors. Pastor Keno showed me the sail boat we would take, rustic enough for any other century except for the 30HP Yamaha. He asked if I still wanted to go. “Of course, Pastor, I like this boat.”

We bobbed our way Eastward along the coast for about thirty minutes, Pastor Keno, his five junior pastors or musicians, myself, and two crew. The wharf of Petite Anse is a wind battered jag of rocks jutting into the sea. We kind of nudged the bow into it and climbed across onto the rocks. Pastor “Otley” was there to meet us, many other people took note of us and sort of loitered happily around the village as we walked toward the church.

In the church about twenty five people sat, dressed mostly in white, singing hymns in Creole. I sat in the back with Pastor Keno. Suddenly, after maybe ten minutes, everyone was done singing and praying and walked slowly out of the church, two by two. This march was joined by Pastor Keno’s men, who now began playing joyful songs on their trumpets, tuba, and drums. As we walked back toward the sea hundreds more people followed, joined, or flanked us, many singing. This slow, joyful procession made it’s way out onto the rocky wharf we landed on. Pastor Keno pulled me up toward the front so I could see what was happening. Pastor “Otley” and an elder waded out into the wind and waves up to their waste, held hands and prayed together. Another elder led the people dressed in white single file into the water to the pastor and first elder. I could not understand what they were saying but we can guess, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Much singing, cheering, and even dancing by the crowd accompanied the somber ceremony in the water. I did not count how many people actually went forward, maybe twenty or thirty, but I know each one mattered in heaven and I could see that each one mattered to the crowd there, too.

The procession and music wound its way back, just as it had come but twenty yards before the church, Pastor Keno told his Musicians to stop. The crowd stopped too. He told me it was time to distribute the food we, that is, all of you, had brought. First, we would go into the church and tell the people why this food had come. They asked me to speak, which I am not good at, as many of you know by now. I did my best to tell them that this food was here because many churches in America are praying for Haiti. That those churches care about their Haitian brothers – we are brothers – and that we hope God will bless them. They all seemed to like the way Pastor Keno translated what I said, there were lots of “amens.” Whether he said what I said, only he and God know. He’s a good pastor and I think he would have the sense to edit.

We went back into the courtyard and I wish I could say that these beautiful people formed a beautiful single file line. I cannot. The distribution point was on a porch with three sides and the elders did not keep control of any side for very long. There were smiles, people not in line laughed and joked, nobody hurt anybody else. Still, to my American eye, it was nuts. Somehow they had already decided who could stand in “line” so they didn’t turn any of the women away. Instead, they all pushed their way through each other toward the four or five workers who frantically put rice, beans and oil into the random containers that the women brought. I do not understand how the workers knew who got what but they seemed to, albeit with lots of shouting and carrying on. None of this made me sad, though, it’s not even stressful to me now, having been on more than a few of these.

What did make me sad was stepping back and seeing the size of the crowd, and knowing we had only fifteen bags total to give. If I could multiply loaves and fishes I would have liked many times that. I wish I could say everyone got something but I saw, when the bags ran out, that there were plenty of people still in line. (Point of fact, according to Pastor “Otley” the town formerly had 900 people, most of whom had little or no work, but since the earthquake Petite Anse now has 1200 people. There is no real business there other than fishing and charcoal production.) Does this mean we shouldn’t bother? That we cannot do enough, so why even try? Absolutely not, we are doing what we can do, you, me, and the local church. It is God who takes care of our needs. We do what He asks of us, loving our neighbor by ministering to his need, and God uses that to answer some of the prayers here. Other prayers, He will answer in different ways. It is not ours to worry, only to obey His commands. In my opinion, when we give to our brothers in their hunger, we are loving one another.

When we were all done, done giving out our modest portions, the pastors invited me into a fine house by Petite Anse standards. On the porch Pastor “Otley” poured water out of a bowl onto my hands. They wanted to give me a special meal as an honored guest. I fumbled a bit explaining through Pastor Keno that I was honored and would love a small taste but I felt badly eating a special meal while they were all hungry. They insisted each time I did and I knew I needed to eat for courtesy sake. We all ate together, Pastor Keno, his men, Pastor “Otley,” and I. The meal was rice, beans, conch in a sauce, and they offered me a cold coca cola; how they got it cold I don’t know. I was able to leave the rice and beans for them without any impoliteness so I took only the amount of conch Pastor Keno insisted I take. It was excellent, so was the cold coke, so was the company. My creole is just barely good enough that I can make an occasional joke. An example, which was funny to them and may not be to you, was that they asked what part of the world spoke the best English. I answered New York. The question and answer were repeated several times for clarity. When this was done I told them I was from New York. I know, that doesn’t seem funny to hear, but in that room with all of our language tension, it was really funny to everyone. We finished the meal and offered many thanks to all involved.

There were a lot of goodbyes on the dock which I took very obviously to mean, “don’t forget about us.” I know that we’re trying to help a lot of people and we can only give a little to each and we can’t save everyone. Still, that logic, sound as it is, never quite answers the emotion of the moment when you are there and making friends with those people.

I’m back at base now, planning to get on with some other distributions, but I thought people might like to hear a little what it’s like.

Haiti Update 05MAR10

2010-03-06T00:01:00.001-05:00

Just a quick note to follow up on yesterdays post - many people were concerned about our safety. Thank you for lifting us up in prayer and spending yourselves on our behalf. We felt, and still feel very secure in our environment here for lots of reasons that we consider regularly.

Today we retrieved the last couple of tons of peas, oats, sugar and corn meal from the Wesleyana at the dock around 11:30. There were about 30 locals hanging around, including our tractor drivers and helping hands from the mission. At least half of the onlookers were women this time, which is a change from yesterday when most of the onlookers were men looking for work and food for pay. The atmosphere was light, kids laughed and pointed. One kid lost his foam clog in the slurp of the nasty smelling mangrove water. Some other kids got scolded for leaning on a fishing boat. The workers were done in a couple of minutes.

The GUTS Church (don't know what that acronym means - apparently a compilation of churches back in the US) finally got approval to unload their roll-on-roll-off cargo ship at the same time as ours. Our estimation is about 230,000 lbs of goods left by truck and motorcycle. The public wharf, only a few hundred yards away from us, was flooded with about 200 people inside and outside the gate. Almost all the food and building materials had been unloaded and the ship prepared to disembark. The security force that helped us yesterday was present behind the gate, but the crowd was curious and peaceful. Lots of kids, women in the crowd. One kid on the wall dropped an empty milk jug and I picked it up for him. He thought it was hilarious. One new english speaking acquaintance from in town found us and talked for a few minutes. This is the same guy who had been trying to assert control of the worker roster yesterday and had acted offended when we asked him to leave the compound. It was like nothing had happened. He was really happy that even more food came to the island today. Go figure.

What made tension in the situation yesterday was the insistence of the men demanding work and our commitment to prevent any frustration that would keep us from continuing to bring food to the island. One primary reason why we cannot, simply just can't ever, hand out food ourselves is the frustration it can produce in a Haitian man who is struggling to feed his family if he thinks someone else is getting something and he isn't. And these people are accustomed to asserting themselves into a work agreement that is culturally binding although legally unfruitful. They respect resolve and need understanding and compassion. Tall order for a human being in a foreign country.

These people largely respect us and trust us, but food is food when the first social taboo is broken by a crowd. And you can't move the food around in that kind of atmosphere because it can disappear in the chaos. Things turn on a dime.

So, the end of the issue is that we weren't in danger, the food ministry was a little, and it definitely raised our own stress level. I think that was precisely what the Lord had in mind yesterday. It's still His work and we're just along to get a glimpse of how He wants to do it through us.

Haiti update 04MAR10

2010-03-04T22:28:00.000-05:00

Yeah, we had a good day. Totally in the Lord's hands - right where we want to be. We did spend a good of time in prayer and praise this morning. Last night was the first time I've heard the vodun drums and chants. From dusk until about 11 PM it's either a church service or nightclub music you hear. The dogs light off once in a while too.

We didn't go on the boats today, just got ready to receive the last boatloads of CONEX 3 for pastor Keno and Jean Paul Donn. There were the biggest crowds thus far, which was kind of unnerving at times. I spent a lot of time praying on my feet. There were about 60 or so people the first time on the dock - and more trickling in. Overall they weren't hostile, but just edgy with many demanding work for food - and getting assertive about it. Some of that is cultural. Caleb did a good job consistantly explaining that we have our own helpers and don't need more, but some guys were clearly irritated and said as much in nice, clean, sharp four letter words. A couple of guys, one who we are getting to know, began angling to either provoke things or establish leadership of the crowd. No visible weapons, but a few shoulder bags that looked suspicious.

Pastor Keno finally called out a brute squad (local security thugs - refer to The Princess Bride) before for the second and third (last) trip from the dock to the compound. One of the WISH employees called the police but were told they were 'busy'. Read: 'to busy to get thumped by a mob'. You see another big boat from another church showed up on Tuesday, the day of the boat fire, and the reluctance of the port authority to release that load caused two loud and angry demonstrations, one of which ended at the police station in town (only one gun present at each). I think the cops found other things to do. Anyway, the crowds didn't hang around in the same numbers once bubba showed up: 35 the second trip and 25 the third trip. In the end, there was never any violence or chanting mobs. Kids still smiled and yelled 'blanc' when we drove by, hoping for a smile back.

Our nice thugs with huge biceps, black t-shirts and mirrored sunglasses cost us ten bags of rice - a lot of money down here. Unfortunately, we had to hurt some feelings to keep the wanna-be workers off the compound for the unloading and storage evolution. It's critical that only a few and totally trustworthy guys work with us to stack the stuff into our living quarters (there's nowhere else to put it yet). There's a lot of temptation sitting here. And we simply cannot give out any food by ourselves to individuals or the whole mission is compromised by endless accusations and demands. We have about 5 tons of beans, flour, corn meal, cooking oil and sugar in our living room right now. When we get some more rice locally Jean Paul Donn will disribute it via the local civil organization network.

This place is still beyond depressed economically. A sad point to this effect is the orange tinged hair of the kids living in the Saline and remote areas and the malnutrition cases that regularly come through the hospital. One really sad situation is the three year old boy who Christian, our french nurse housemate, became attached to when he was admitted on Tuesday. The poor kid was so malnurished and anemic that he barely had a pulse. But he didn't respond to treatment and died this morning. Christian and I prayed together - it was really hard for him. A stupid reason for one little boy to die.

But we are pressing on. One bit of good news discovered today is that the price of rice on the island has fallen considerably since last week. Perhaps trade into PaP is finally catching up with demand and/or our little trickle into the local economy has made some effect. We'll never know for sure. But this means more people can afford to eat rice anyway. Beans still cost double here compared to what it costs us to send it. Another cool bit of news is the digital and solar powered audio bibles that are enroute via our YWAM guys coming down next week. Plus the m&m's they'll bring.

Our desire is to gracefully get out of the food business as soon as the Lord lets us. There are several obvious routes to take. We have examined the UN-WFP route and wonder of the wisdom of that. It takes handouts and legitimizes them by requiring all people who want food to provide identification (to prevent fraud, aid in planning). It promotes the handout economy and culture which really stinks. Our preferred next step to helping the economy and minimizing our footprint here is to make direct purchase of rice delivered to the distributors on the island via a trustworthy partner - kind of the way ahead to becoming invisible. Our present obstacles to this are the details of finance transactions and regulations.

Thanks for your prayers folks. We never get tired of saying that. It's everything.

PT

Haiti Update 03MAR10

2010-03-04T00:40:00.002-05:00

Kind of busy couple of days swept through.

You might have heard about the boat fire. If you didn't, go to the blog - Caleb got a pretty good blow by blow posted. All except for the part about Navy Commander blah blah blah. I don't know anything about boats. But don't tell him that.

Once stranded we prayed about our choices. We both felt really crummy. Lots of smoke and dust inhalation. No way to help the guys get the next batch of food across the channel. It sure seemed like a good idea for us to head up to St. Marc to see the YWAM guys and find some information about long term food and short term housing. But we didn't have a ride, so we prayed and asked the Lord to provide the wheels if we were to go. In five minutes our fuel and trucking partner in business, Chris Nezivar, showed up to check on his trucking crew. He was headed to St. Marc and told us to hop in. As it turned out, we stopped at his gas station for a few minutes. Caleb got a Coke and felt better. I ate a little and got better slowly. We talked with some Argentine soldiers about the UN food program. Pretty soon Chris started up our next ride - a fuel truck - and we bounced down the road and talked about Haiti, business, and Boston traffic as we literally dodged overloaded buses.

YWAM's front gate was packed with people. There was a line of a few hundred snaking around into the street. We drove past the distribution line and Chris dropped us off at the side gate with our gear. It felt like it was at least a hundred degrees. Tom Mehrer, the assistant director for the past 7 weeks, was super helpful in getting us plugged into a place to sleep and a way to help out. We helped distribute food to pastors who came from all over with trucks. In the process we found a great prospect for temporary housing - http://www.esbenshades.com/Haiti/index.asp - and finally discovered how Tom got free food from the UN-WFP to distribute through YWAM. This was a gold mine in terms of knowledge for us and his help saved us days of research. Just when the pastors were leaving and we began wandering to our borrowed tents, Tom gathered us and ten other young YWAM guys to tell us that two more trucks were coming to replenish the trailers that we had just emptied. Two trucks of 12 tons that is. Each pulled up one after the other as fast as we could unload them and stack the rice and beans. Talk about dragging yourself home.

We got showered, praise God, and had a decent meal of rice, bean sauce, chicken and chopped fresh carrot. I think we stayed awake that night for all of 10 minutes but woke up around midnight to the stupid dogs that seem to cover Haiti. It was a full moon and they just wouldn't quit. I think they shut the chorus down around 3 AM and the roosters kicked in. The ground was hard but I had a pair of shorts for a pillow so it worked out OK. At least we didn't get eaten by mosquitos. When we got moving around 6 AM, they actually had coffee to drink at the dining area. Worship started at 7 and when we were wrapping up Chris's truckers were there watching and ready to get to work. Another 12 tons of rice, yellow peas, and corn meal. A loud rumbling earthquake rolled through around 8:30, but it didn't move much. We rode with them to Kwalili where the boats were supposed to be waiting for us. Along the way we saw a black and tan goat, lying down on the dented roof of a black mazda pickup without a bed or wheels. The truck rested in the dirt spanning a drainage canal along the side of the road.

Butch was completely covered in motor oil when we hopped onto the Breezy Sea. The motor, it turns out, isn't totally ruined. Just a bunch of fire damaged hoses and wiring, but the engine actually runs. Must have been a broken return fuel line that sprayed on the turbocharger or something. That was a praiseworthy moment - we had been praying for that since it caught fire. It took a long time to load the wooden sloop Wesleyana and the Boston whaler WISH Fish because of their configurations. We also made multiple trips to town to buy parts (getting any mechanical parts here is a nightmare) and food for the guys. I drove this time, and didn't kill anyone so all the hired hands thought I was cool. Plus, we bought lunch. Double cool.

Back at the ranch, with a mattress, clean laundry and gatorade from mix, life is much better. Even email! Tomorrow we're considering splitting up to monitor distribution and help Butch finish repairs on the Breezy Sea. Not sure. We'll pray tonight and decide tomorrow.

PT
Thanks for praying for us. Keep the people here in prayer - so many without shelter on the mainland, so many here who are just barely getting enough to eat.
Pete Thompson

What Happened on the Breezy Sea

2010-03-03T22:48:00.003-05:00

Folks, this is Caleb's update. Long story short, we are grateful for God's protection for all on board. The engine is now running ok, praise God, and just melted items such as wiring needs to be replaced. Yesterday we thought it was a thrown rod, broken piston, or something causing significant internal damage to the motor. Thank you for your prayers.

Yesterday was a tough day but it started like the rest. PT and I got up at about six to pray quickly, make coffee, grab a stale biscuit and meet Butch. The plan was for the two of us to run the lobster boat without Butch for the first time. Every pound of food we bring to the island comes by small boat, either the lobster boat Breezy Sea or the sailboat with outboards, the Wesleyana. The latter is run by an all Haitian crew but the Breezy Sea is required by local law and preferred by base leadership to be in the command of a North American. So, PT and I had done some training and were off on our first run alone.

I took the helm for the way over, figuring PT could have it on the return when it was loaded and required more skill. Pete Thompson, aka “PT”, is my uncle and wingman down here since Josh and Andy are gone. He and his church have contributed enormously to this ministry. (They funded the second container alone, among other things.) PT is also a former Navy Commander so running a lobster boat is well inside his ability.

The sea on the way over was the worst I have driven in myself, maybe five foot swells consistently with six or seven footers occasionally. One seeks to drive into waves or to follow them, of course, but the difficulty yesterday morning was that the length of the waves ran parallel our course. This forced me to drive thirty degrees off course, making a long trip with a lot of steering much longer. The crew complained often that we were so far off course but PT reassured me that I was quite correct to drive a big triangle to avoid taking the waves broadside. At last, within a bit under a mile from shore the waves calmed enough for us to change course and drive following them, roughly toward our destination. No more wash over the front deck and spray onto the windshield, no more way up on the crest and crash! down into the trough; almost there and glad for it.

Suddenly, without warning, the noise of the engine surged in our ears. We had been at a constant 2300 rpm’s, constant temperature, constant oil pressure. In a heartbeat the engine roared to maybe 3000 with load clanging and a great plume of black smoke. Before my mind realized what was happening I cut the throttle and a second later cut power. Turning around, it’s frozen in my mind, there were knee high flames roaring out of the engine compartment into our cabin. This was a fire of intensity, burning fuel with plenty of air, not the soft crackle of kindling or campfire.

Immediately in front of me were two fire extinguishers laying on a pile of tarps and boxes. I yelled to PT, “Fire!” and tossed him one of them. The cabin was already filled with thick black smoke. I jumped out the port door to the rear, PT the starboard. Now 5 seconds have passed. We both struggled for another second to get the stupid pins pulled, then wheeled back in simultaneously and fired at the base of the flames where they came out of the deck. White, vile soot, billows of smoke.

“Where’s that woman?!” I was referring to a passenger. PT yelled back that she was at the stern. He yelled again into the smoke if anyone was in the cabin below the bow. The noise of flames sounded back, but everyone was out and the crew was staying out of our way. Now maybe 10 seconds had passed. I asked out loud for the Lord to help us and ran back in. It was probably pointless to shoot at the deck where the flames were coming out of the gaps around the hatch but I did one more time. I ran out to grab a breath then crawled back in to try to open the hatch. No good, choked and had to leave. PT shot some more, I think. I asked God for help again, “God, please, give us a hand here!” (Not the most eloquent prayer, I suppose.)

And here’s where God really showed His presence. I crawled back in. PT had thrown the tarp and garbage out of the way. Good move because now I could see a one inch hole in the deck right above the fire and the engine. I laid on my stomach and shot my entire extinguisher into it. I learned later that PT did the same thing. We’re not sure who shot there first but we are sure from examination later that the hole in the deck was in the perfect place over the spraying fuel and source of the fire. No more flames, anywhere.

I can’t say at this point how many minutes had passed, probably only a couple but it doesn’t feel like it in my memory. I asked Bernard, one of the Haitians and a good man, to grab some buckets of water in case of a flare up. Our extinguishers were all but spent, only PT thought to save any at all. (I guess I should only get how many bullets people want me to shoot.) I did not communicate my thought very well and they opened the engine hatch and poured the buckets straight in. In hindsight they were right to do so, a little corrosion is a small price to pay for the last few embers out.

The smoke started to clear a little so I held my breath and grabbed our packs out of the cabin. God saved us. The fire was put out. PT called us all into a circle, hands on shoulders. I was so smoked and sweated up that I couldn’t stand as the boat rolled and drifted, only the people in the circle next to me made it so I could stand. What we prayed there was a real prayer. I don’t remember exactly what PT started with or if I prayed out loud myself but we meant it. Thank you, Lord, for saving us and our boat. Praise God for His deliverance. Praise our God who hears us. (Even when we pray things like, “God, give us a hand.”) Praise God for making every second count. Thank you Lord that you never let anything happen to us that isn’t in your control. We see your hand in this Lord. We see how you are with us.

Pretty soon after, the Wesleyana came to tow us the last half mile to the wharf on the mainland. I don’t know, but I imagine that they saw our smoke. For me, at this point, the smoke and “purple K” as PT calls the extinguisher fog, was making me pretty sick. I’d breathed in a good bunch of lungfulls by accident in the fight. PT said the same for him. Honestly, I felt like wet pasta for about an hour, just kind of hanging on the sail boom as we plodded toward docking. A few hours and a coca-cola fixed me up, though, so no harm done. PT was better after a couple three hours later, as well. We even went to spend the night in St Marc so that we could throw 36 tons of rice with Ywam.

The afterword on the boat, as we know it so far, is that the boat is not too badly damaged by fire and engine is not destroyed. It looks as if tomorrow we, being us but especially Butch, will just need to replace some wiring and tubing. At the same time, we could see just how close that fire really came to destroying the boat and forcing us to swim. It was the return fuel line that had been broken somehow and sprayed fuel onto the super heated exhaust pipe. If the supply line had only a few more degrees, it too would have bled into the fire and from there we would have had no recourse as if fed the fire bigger and bigger. Once again, see God’s awesome mercy.

I hope, in writing this, even if I have conveyed the excitement of the moment, I have made the only point I wanted to make. That point is how trustworthy our Lord is, that we can cry out to Him and He will save us. He has shown this to us yet again. I praise Him for that.

HS.
Caleb Thompson

From Kevin Austin

2010-03-03T14:14:00.001-05:00

Dear Lord. We know that You know all things. We are so grateful for your protection during the incident on the boat. And now we beg You to reach out to the needs of the Haitian population. Use this catastrophic event to again prove Your sovereignty and compassion. Show them Your great love and reveal to them Your plans to help the food to get to the needy. We know You have a plan and way... reveal it to those making decisions. Give them Your strength and wisdom and patience and understanding. Help them know how to go forward. Provide the needed materials and resources. God, You are the great God and the great King above all gods. We are so thankful that we can turn to You in this time of need and rest assured that You will bring glory and honor to You as You always have.

Amen

Prayer Request

2010-03-03T13:55:00.002-05:00

Psalm 35

vs 1 Contend O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those we fight against me!
vs 10 Lord, who is like You, You Who deliver the poor and the afflicted from him who is too strong for him, yes, the poor and the needy from him who snatches away his goods?

In light of the crippling damage to the boat, the Breezy Sea, pray to the Lord for help - that He contend against any adversary because the boat is needed to bring food to the needy on La Gonave.

Please pray that God provide a new engine for the Breezy Sea.

Problem and praise

2010-03-02T20:12:00.001-05:00

I had been away from the office (my dining room table) for a few hours. As I opened the door I heard the phone ringing, I rushed in and grabbed it.

It was Caleb with both good and bad news. He assured me he was fine despite anything I might have heard. That will usually alert any parent, I'm sure many of you have experienced that before.

He said that he, Pete, and Haitian crew had left for St. Marc to get food in the lobster boat. The seas were rough but the passage was acceptable. About a half-mile from the mainland, while running at 2300 RPMs, the motor exploded into alarming sound. He cut the throttle, and then the electrical power. The engine compartment burst into flames, not small ones, but a roaring, substantial and life threatening one. Instant fire.

Caleb said they yelled out for God to help them, grabbed the two fire extinguishers and tried to attack the blaze. The diesel engine is under the deck and access is difficult, but there are some holes or ports where they could direct the nozzles. Caleb said the last extinguisher was down to a gasp before it came under control. If it hadn't died down they had no choice to abandon ship. A half mile doesn't look far, but in rough seas that is a push. Also, some of the Haitians may not be swimmers.

No one injured. Please share with me gratitude to God for His protection. There could have been severe burns or loss of life. The loss of cargo transport is a severe one, since the old Wesleyan is the only boat left and it cripples the mission to an unknown degree. The lobster boat seems to be structurally fine, with smoke damage and charring and as such can be brought back to service. She will be out of service for some time and high horsepower diesel marine engines are not inexpensive. We need to ask God to provide a good motor, a better one than we had. This boat has lots of miles ahead in moving food to the people of La Gonave.

Haiti Update 01MAR10

2010-03-01T18:10:00.002-05:00

We got up at 6:30, kind of just in time to begin our intended trip to pick up the next batch of food at Kwalili, accross the channel to the north. Of course this was cancelled before 7 because of, well, Haiti. Trucks weren't assigned as promised. We ended up spending ourselves in a quiet time with each other, the Bible and the Lord on the back patio. It was getting warm but the sky was partially clear and the sun was shining. The tiny lizards were up and about and scooted from covering to covering. Pretty soon we were hosting a few locals, WISH employees, for coffee and conversation in pidgin Creole.

As soon as the men went back to work, we tried to adjust for the lack of mission for the day. As we were processing emails with Chris, a few new medical folks walked into the Gwokay escorted by Justine. Jeff, Janie and Cat all flew in from the medical mission in Leogane on the first MAF flight. They were there to team up with a psychologist and there to do specialized care for children. They dropped their bags and went out the door for a tour of the hospital.

We heard a crowd assembling by the front gate across from the hospital as the three came back to the Gwokay. One of the victims of last night's motorcycle accident had died of his brain injuries. The other one would be flown out tomorrow. The ferry and the lobster boat are not ideal places for someone with acute leg injuries. People always come to the hospital to wail and cry and show concern for the family when someone dies. Sometimes they sing instead. And it was then that these two RN's and an MD came rushing back through the door having just been informed of the death of a close colleague and friend of theirs at their base camp at Leogane.

In their distress they made frantic phone calls, planned travel and tried to talk clinically about their colleague, Matt, and his health problems and symptoms. The clinically part didn't last long. He was 33, had two kids and a loving wife, was an amazing EMT and Trauma nurse. He loved Jesus and his family and was loved much in return. Big smile. Actually wrote the national EMT protocol and structure for Indonesia on one of his mission trips. He had been unwell, under stress, and apparently died in his sleep. The wailing from outside the gate started to swell.

In the end, their grief started to come up in them too and they stopped trying to diagnose Matt's death and make plans. It was just plain quiet except for the wailing. I asked them if they wanted to pray, not sure of their relationship to God, and we gathered with Justine, Matt, and Caleb in a circle of chairs in the living area. I don't think there was anyone who wasn't moved to tears and touched by the peace of God.

After a while Diane Bush, the hospital Physicians' Assistant and temporary director, delicately interrupted with the plan to take the team to Port au Prince by the lobster boat in a half hour. All the planes were already assigned for the day at MAF. The crowd outside the gate had already begun to uncoil and the wailing moved down the street. Caleb and I took the opportunity to carry the team bags to the Toyota truck. At some point we both just found ourselves riding with them in the back to the dock. And then we put the bags on the boat and got in with them. It just kind of happened.

Butch was happy about that - we could get our check ride as it were and free him up tomorrow while we hauled food from the mainland. Once free from the mangroves and anchor ropes of the dock corridor, we were thrumming along and scattering the squadrons of flying fish. I took the wheel (OK, helm) from Butch so he could talk with the group. Caleb got fresh air on top of the cab with the line handlers.

We rode in the back of the new Toyota Hilux pickup from Kwalili into Port au Prince. New tent cities popped up on either side where last week weren't any. People wander here and there looking for a better deal. Lots of bedsheets and cardboard in a few clusters, nice white tents in others. Always the blue tarps. I could feel the sunburn starting - of course in our spontaneity we didn't bring our full 'kit' along. I forgot about the sun the closer we got to the city. The mad max drivers were just as crazy as before but rush hour had not started yet.

Hugs preceded a quick turnaround at the medical team guesthouse near the airport. They were so thankful. Caleb and Butch each scored a Coke from a bottle. Janie, a 5 year veteran of foreign medical missions, made sure to praise God for us. It was getting late, so we zipped by the Wesleyan guesthouse to pick up items for delivery to La Gonave. Seven tents, three stackable plastic containers, and the box full of the Gospel of John in Creole. And my eyeglasses which someone, I don't know who, left on the back of the toilet.

An awesome pink and orange sunset preceded us across the channel. We waited as the guys also loaded the 7 hospital oxygen tanks onto the boat and they clanked a little with the rocking of the boat. A container ship played nautical chicken with us halfway across. It won. We were late even though the current was with us.

Darkness in Haiti is awfully dark. We take public lighting for granted in the U.S. Maybe we should send the light pollution purists to La Gonave so they can attempt to fumble a 30 foot diesel lobsterboat around in a shallow harbor with a spotlight in the pitch black. I am impressed with Butch's driving ability even more - he's the first braille boat handler ever.

Pastor Keno walked to the door only moments after Justine brought out leftovers from dinner. He left a half hour later with 250 lovingly prepared tools to teach new believers.

It is easy to say, but I am humbled by the way the Lord has been at work in and around us here. It's not predictable but He has been so clearly blessing so many people through us. I think delivering food is a clever distraction from Him. Thanks for your prayers.

Haiti Update 28FEB10

2010-03-01T02:18:00.005-05:00

The Gwokay (pronounce grow-kay) is our long guesthouse where Caleb and I spend our time in emailing, strategy sessions, eating, and sleeping. It's basic, kind of like a summer camp house with a kitchen and bunk rooms with toilets for each bunk room. Christian, our wonderful french RN housemate, is frequently across the street at the hospital making rounds and taking care of new patients. The Haitian Doctors who work there continuously are saints to him. "They are humble and they care for the whole person." I think they also are walking examples of Jesus for him. "these people, especially the children, have such deep psychological need... but I see God is the only one who heals these people." Christian started going to church again down here.

Yesterday, the 27th, Caleb and I got started early AM with dinner leftovers and a long quiet time in the Bible and in prayer together. It was really great. Our shop talk usually drifts into personal experiences and wisdom issues that we can each relate to. We started looking at the looming decisions about scheduling of manpower and distribution of the containers coming this way. We have five more scheduled to arrive here in mid March. Christian dropped in once or twice for coffee and to talk. The weather was heavy and still all day. Absolutely quiet.

We are both praying our way into what I should tackle while I'm here - there's no end to the possibilities. For now I'm doing what's in front of me - picking up the communicator and planning jobs and running with them. I'm meeting as many people as possible on the island and mainland. This week I'm going to try to establish relationships with the UN-WFP representatives as well has housing representatives down here in Haiti.

Caleb and I got back from a tour of the docks around 3 PM. The Wesleyan Dock is on the edge of the poorest part of town, the Saline. Talk about reeking sewage. We both made a mutual pact to cut off whatever appendage gets cut while in that water. We walked past the rotting fishing boats in the muck and down the road to the concrete public dock.

This is where the Navy stopped with their amphib boat for the first time on 25 January. It drew crowds then. The ferry just let out at the public dock and about fifty or so people with boxes of food, luggage, live animals all made their way on the back of a horde of motorcycle taxis up the knotted dirt road to the town. Most people responded to our greetings. A dirty kid from the Saline offered to sell us some gas from a used quart oil container. Non Merci - J'Regret. You never know when a Blanc might say yes.

We met a man who spoke english very well. It's hard not to be jaded at first, because so many people have an angle to get something from the Blanc man here. We listened to him, Greg was his name. He spoke several languages. He has four people living in his house from Port au Prince. His wife and five kids also live there. He knows these people only by aquaintance at the University - they are not family to him. His wife works at the hospital and he tries to give taxi rides but too many motorcycles already perform this service.

We asked Greg what he thought of the food distribution that was going on. He thought it was going OK. But then he added a striking statement. Please bring it to the other parts of the island where people are really hungry. This guy is feeding and housing four other people, has not eaten in a day, has no income, may not eat again tomorrow, and he cares about people he doesn't know more than he cares for himself. I am told that this is common here on the island.

All the way back from the docks the kids grinned at us and some stopped to attempt english. We ventured over to the hospital, looking into the new military tents that housed about 40 patients and their families. They still treat 150 patients a day on average. But then the rain started around 4 PM or so. Christian stopped by in his scrubs. After a couple of hours of emails and planning and a pot of afternoon coffee, Caleb and I were wound up pretty tight. There are real difficult issues to deal with in distribution coming up soon. And it was raining on those poor individuals along the so-called road between PaP and Petit Goave in their tents made of bedsheets right then. I mean it really was raining hard too.

Talk about a tension headache. I plopped down next to Christian on the front step and we just looked at the rain. "This rain, it is death". Can't say it better. Christian has lived in Benin and Nigeria in the past, in some very remote clinics, often serving as a surgeon and doctor because there was no other help. "For me there will just be life before the earthquake and life after the earthquake. It has changed everything for me." It took me over an hour to get to sleep. Partly because of Mr. Flashlight, but partly because of the tension. Prayer got me through.

Today was slow for lots of reasons. Church, starting at 7:30AM didn't go the full 3 hours, but the rest of the morning flew by as we had a late breakfast and checked emails and had quiet times. I caught an afternoon nap - again it took at least an hour to get to sleep - and felt better afterwards. Not much rain today. Lots to be thankful for.

Pastor Keno, the head pastor of all the Wesleyan churches on the island (about 15 or so), met with us this evening at around 5 to ask about plans for more food and possibilities to provide other help to his churches. Justine helped with interpretation in the rough spots. He was encouraged that we are listening to the needs of the church. He also knows we can't meet all the needs - it made him laugh at one point. Where do we stop? That's when I asked him about the new believers.

I'm so glad we printed out those Gospel of John booklets in Creole - He snapped them up with joy. There's a need for about 1,200 bibles in creole and/or french. It's possible he was understating the need so as not to burden us too much, so that is something we are waiting for and excited to work on. Tomorrow or Tuesday we'll meet up to measure the church courtyard so we can size up tents for the bible classes no longer held indoors.

Christian came by for dinner, again in his scrubs. There had been a terrible din of yelling from the hospital earlier and we asked what had happened. A terrible motorcycle accident up the street had two men in serious condition. They need to go to a real hospital on the mainland and tomorrow we may end up transporting them on the lobster boat if there is no other way. I guess we'll find out.

Thank you for praying for us and these people. They are touched when they hear that their brothers and sisters in North America are broken hearted for them and pray for them. Food is one thing, but love and care is completely different.

Pete Thompson

LL newsletter - Haiti mission

2010-02-28T18:08:00.000-05:00

Peg Mauer took some effort to wade through all the posts to create a journal.

I was threatening to do that, but others correctly judged that as empty and told me to stop.

I'm grateful Peg did this to make a coherent mission record.

http://home.comcast.net/~clan.wilcox/shares/2010-02_03-hilltop-herald.pdf

Update from Haiti 27FEB10

2010-02-28T01:16:00.000-05:00

This is an update of yesterday the 26th, just getting to Anse a Galets and getting situated .

I was kinda late getting up at the guest house - six thirty or so. Everyone else was awake and making breakfast. We had fresh mango slices and coffee, a smattering of breakfast cereal and toast. For those with money, you can still buy food here on the mainland. Mango is for poor folks - ten cents a piece in some places. I'm kind of a non-eater in the morning but mango is hard to pass up.

Joel led a short devotional and praise session after the dishes were put away. "Unfailing Love". We praise you God of earth and sky, how beautiful, beautiful Your unfailing love, unfailing love... That is something that is incredible about the people who have lived through this horrible ordeal and lost everything - including family. The stories told in church worship services by ALL of those who have suffered loss ends with the same thing. They all see and know that although they wouldn't want anyone else to go through their pain and sorrow they would not trade it for anything in the world. Because of it they are so convinced of the Lord's love and care for them in the midst of it all. They have been drawn near to Him, they need Him.

I had been going over and over Deuteronomy 8:2-3 for a couple of days. Stuck. Moses' admonition of Israel - they need the Lord God. He led them in the wilderness so they would be tested, so they would know what was in their hearts, so they would hunger and eat bread only He alone could have provided, so they would know that man doesn't live by bread alone but by the very truthfulness and faithfulness of God in His words to us. He alone provides what we need.

Aha. Maybe I can move on to Deuteronomy 8:4 now. The Contrere started up as we finished prayers together. By the time we got into traffic around 8 AM, the UN camp near the airport was disgorging a steady stream of white vehicles into the dirt road mix. This time the diesel fumes were pretty acrid and it covered up the other smells. Teams of blue t-shirted men raked and shoveled garbage and dead leaves into piles by the side of the road - part of the UN small works for cash program. Shovel ready it is, but it makes a big difference in appearances down here.

The MAF guys at the airport didn't know what to do with us - Matt, Justine and me. We were supposed to all fit into one plane, but somehow the list had grown with some Docs going to Jeremie as well. Plus their luggage and 12 sets of crutches. Our pilot Mike was about to send us back home but decided to just make two trips instead. Caleb is right about this place. You have to have a plan A, B, and C every single day here or you'll just pop a breaker all the time.

We taxied out and watched two army dudes huff and puff their way through a remedial PT run around the pallets of goods by the taxiway. A blue and white 747 sat blocking the main ramp, holding short of the runway so we could take off - Mike was quick on getting the plane out of there. From the air Port au Prince looks like post-Katrina New Orleans. Blue tarps in clumps and blisters on a brown and rust background. It was so nice to get cool air blowing around for a change.

We turned overhead the mission compound and hospital on the descent to land. I wondered if the runway would be clear of people. Mike said that the week prior he had almost hid a guy on a motorcycle there - missed him by 3 feet. The runway is not just rough, but has some rises in it that Mike skillfully absorbed instead of bouncing airborne from. No motorcyles, just a cow and two kids on the side.

I'm glad Caleb was there to greet us - there's just something about dropping in one people you don't know very well. He's probably jealous that he didn't get to fly anywhere in Haiti. Boats and trucks, that's all he gets. Once clear of customs... I mean once we threw our bags in the truck - we and headed out for the hospital and dorm.

There were still lots of people walking in the dirt road here, but it was definitely cleaner streets. The town watering stations collected kids with white buckets and plastic jugs. More chickens, more goats, more dogs. Less pigs. Maybe one or two smiles. Only once did I see anyone eating anything. Their faces said they know we're here for something to do with food or medicine. Hopefully food. In the town the roads get more trash but no big collections of rotten stuff or open wet sewers.

Caleb and I spent most of the day in deep conversation about the people, the needs and plans for distribution, the purposes for me in this place, prayer together on all of it and emails with Chris about all those very things. Eventually introductions were made to Diane and Helen with the Hospital, Christian the French RN who is a veteran of work in Benin and Nigeria, and Butch who brought us and some board members from the WISH team to see the orphanage. Lots of introductions were made, including the introduction of plain M&M's to the kids through the Madmoiselle.

The stillness of the mugginess was noticeable. We all commented on it at dinner. The birds were singing, but it was like rain had to be only moments away. But it never came. The town nightclubs (rooms with loud music) kept it up until about 10 or so. I worked on emails after Caleb hit the rack. We could spend hours and hours talking about all kinds of things the Lord's doing. I finally got set up for bed in the red LED lights of my headlamp. The old night watchman would hit the switch on his maglite for fun randomly and the bright flash off the ceiling tiles kept me from drifting off. I decided not to count how many times because deep down I like the idea of a night watchman.

PT

Reflections from a doctor

2010-02-27T19:00:00.001-05:00

This is a reflection from one of the doctors who came in to do relief work. His perspective is fresh and interesting.
Call Me Stupid But…

http://gpcaribeatlantic.com/

Update from Haiti 26FEB10

2010-02-27T00:08:00.000-05:00

Folks,

Please pardon my delay in getting this out - the last few days have been full. At the risk of telling making a long story longer, I'll catch you up by detailing some of what happened yesterday.

At 7AM I departed Ft. Pierce, FL by DC-3 flown by Missionary Flights International. Clearly stamped on a plate behind the copilot was the Douglas Aircraft date of acceptance by the U.S. Navy - May 13, 1944 - less than a month before the allied invasion of France in WW II. It was a flying piece of history - how totally cool to think on the mettle of those men who sat in those same seats.

We flew into Cap Haitien first, a city of about 200,000, where most of the passengers departed for their various ministry areas. The ramp was crowded, a solitary pair of US Army soldiers hung around their vehicle in the distance with M-16's hanging loose. A newer twin engined turboprop with bent propellers sat in the grass by the ramp. We few remaining passengers got our passports stamped in about ten minutes walked back out to the plane to finish the last 30 minute portion of the ride to Port Au Prince.

It was bumpy. After the pilots got airborne they skimmed the scrubby green mountains, dropping the left wing to allow us to see up close the mountaintop citadel of Christophe Colombe, one of the two native Haitian generals who ruled following their 1804 independence from France. One of the other passengers, already queasy, couldn't hold it in any longer. Like I said, it was a bumpy ride. Truthfully we were all happy to move to another means of transportation. So much for appreciation of aviation and Haitian history .

Haiti does have a smell that is unique, and not necessarily all bad or bad all the time. It seems to me to be combinations of a campfire that's been doused with water, broken concrete, burnt garbage, fresh vegetation and fruit, diesel fumes, salt air, and occasionally open sewer. Each aroma rises above the others depending on where you are, but usually it's all mingled and adhered to you with the humid, sticky heat.

Pastor Dan was waiting for his flight back to the states and grabbed me right out of the arrival doors. Even in the last minutes of departing for a few weeks of family time after this surge of immense work, Dan was already thinking about and asking questions on how we can meet the future needs of the churches he oversees all over Haiti. Phoenix, the designated driver, with Joel who is an intern from New Brunswick, were quick to bring me to the 'Contrere', the caged work truck that brought me and the gear to the guest house of Pastor Dan and his assistant Carl Gilles. Traffic in PaP is crazy. No, insane. Lets just leave it at that. The scenery is just like Josh described it earlier. Only for me it is like a movie set with the worlds biggest cast of extras, and it just keeps on coming. You almost can't believe it's real.

Deep in the city but behind walls and a rolling gate (just like everyone else in Haiti who has a home of modest middle class standards) we were welcomed to some canned soup and fresh baked bread. Not what you would expect. But shortly after making aquaintance with Matt and Justine, veterans with Joel of the earthquake and it's aftermath, Carl asked if I wanted to see the clinic at Petit Goave - it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Phoenix and I headed out around 2 PM to make the two and a half hour run to Petit Goave. It was an opportunity to see the hardest hit parts of Haiti and ask questions of a Hatian who understood the history behind all the situations.

Traffic was so bad in the city that at several points Phoenix folded the mirrors back to edge through a gaps in stopped traffic. Some images to think on: tents made of sheets and wood poles in the traffic median, diesel fumes and horns, goats and cows staked or just loose on the side of the road, scrawny dogs sniffing through piles of garbage and big dark gray pigs rooting in open sewers, banana and mango trees, the endless trail of broken concrete and rubble piles and half crumpled buildings. Carl and I worked around our mutual language barrier and discussed things I saw for the first time. The radio was playing old Eagles, Chicago, and other 80's tunes. People, almost all carefully dressed, a few just sitting and watching traffic, were everywhere next to or in the road. Small motorcycles and dirtbikes with two or three people zipped around packed lorries and dump trucks with bald tires as they all made random lane changes. Every ten miles or so we saw another UN compound or contingent.

By the time we got to Petit Goave, it was almost dark and the rain began to fall. They were already stacking stuff up for the clinic's closure. We hurriedly dropped off gear, answered questions from the American staff, packed medical supplies and luggage, and took off with our passenger Dr. Kari for home again. The torrent started immediately and made the faultline cracks and edges in the asphalted portions of the road almost impossible to see. The wipers kept up until we climbed the hills and passed the few rockslide areas - then one of them flew off the wiper arm. We stopped and I fiddled with it in the pouring warm rain. Fortunately the traffic was really light at that point, and it all came together in the headlights of the passing cars. At least the driver's wiper blade worked.

We got back at 8 PM, just in time to unload, grab some leftovers, check and answer emails and set up the mattress and mosquito net next to one of the exit doors as the generator was shut down and the lights were dimmed. No tremors have been felt for a few days, but it's still considered unsafe to sleep upstairs in the city, even in houses that appear safe and intact like this one. I was wiped out but couldn't sleep, so I prayed. We had to get to the airport the next day for a flight to La Gonave. And that's where I'm writing from.

Tomorrow night, I'll have pictures to send.

PT

La Gonave food container order

2010-02-26T13:04:00.002-05:00

We ordered the 5 containers this morning, 230,750 pounds of food. We have previously shipped about 130,000 pounds. Does this even seem possible? Those are big numbers to me.

I was reflecting on how easy it is to spend $90,000 in 30 seconds of making an email order. Then I was thinking about how easy it is for God -- who owns the cattle on thousands of hills -- to open His hand in mercy to the hungry people of La Gonave. God's mercy was done through the willing participation of those who love Him and their neighbor.

La Gonave Re-supply Update 2/25/10

2010-02-26T07:17:00.002-05:00

My brother Pete Thompson landed in PAP today and will be heading to La Gonave soon. He had a brief meeting with Dan Irvine who is traveling back to the states for a few weeks.

Pete was willing to do a difficult job in FL on his way down. We had a significant problem with non-delivery of fuel by a shipper and Pete was able to meet them personally and negotiate a credit to be applied to future shipments. I think this would have been difficult for me to conduct by telephone. God has opened every door and solved every problem, I am grateful for His help here in sending the right man there at the perfect time.

Josh is back home after several week's duty on base; I think you'll agree that we'll miss his updates and his service. Calvary Chapel where Josh is from has been a blessing and partner in this mission; they have supported this mission and the people of La Gonave in prayer, in labor, and financially.

YWAM Montana, my daughter Veronica's team, has been successful in raising funding for food and supplies; they have sent a substantial sum to district and will also be sending two missionaries for a three week duty in Anse. It is necessary to rotate a couple men every few weeks so they can help Butch with food distribution. Butch is carrying a heavy load, and the food we send requires fit and led young men with strong management skills. There remains some danger to staff, and as you may know Dan has requested a temporary hold on mission teams until matters become more calm.

It has been a privilege for me to see how the Bride of Christ is being revealed in love and service.

Do you recall when DS James took a big and necessary step to purchase one container? We had to learn the shipping business. Then Calvary Chapel Spokane stepped out in Faith and funded another container plus fuel for base? Then miraculously funding appeared for a third container (in St. Marc now)?

How about this: we are ordering food and shipping for five -- repeat FIVE -- containers for packing next week. This will include about 1000 tarps for people in petit Goave. How Great is our God!

Folks, we now need more funding: purchasing 5 containers of food and tarps has drained us to nothing. The need is urgent. Caleb and Josh have reported it and Dan has indicated that we need to feed about 10% of the population on a steady basis. Food inflation approaches 200% in the market place, leaving many unable to buy food.

Many of you, my friends and family, have given so selflessly; God bless you for your prayers and Christ-like giving. For those who have not yet given (and particularly for Christians), I would ask that you consider that love is a verb; it must be expressed in action. People understand that you love them if you do something to show them that.

Because of the love that many Christians -true Christians - have shown we will be sending 5 containers to La Gonave. That is precisely 230,750 pounds of food plus shelter for 1000 families! How is that for God at work blessing our brothers in Haiti?

Update from La Gonave 24Feb10

2010-02-24T20:52:00.001-05:00

Folks, updates have been scarce lately. It's not lack of news but rather a difficult schedule here, sorry. We are underway with another shipment of food conex's, tarps, equipment, and medicine. There is considerable information from La Gonave, I will attempt to post it tomorrow.

Cam Engert from District wrote a good wrap-up of where we have been and where we are now. Take a look in the right sidebar for a link there, but give Mike Wilcox a few minutes to get it up. Click on that and take a deep breath, you will see God's hand on this mission all the way. Keep praying.

In the meantime, here are some links to videos Andy and Caleb made recently, Andy carried back some CD disks with photos and video. The boys traveled around Anse-a-Galets speaking with citizens to determine the severity of need and how we could best fill it. The videos were recorded on a small camera, they are shaky and grainy but honest. The volume control is poor owing to the quality of the equipment, so please turn up the volume on your computer.

Update from Caleb 24Feb10

2010-02-24T10:31:00.003-05:00

Ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
Psalm 29:1-2

For the last week I (Caleb) have been following the distribution process and we've about distributed the first two containers. There are still a couple truck loads to go out tomorrow but having seen the first 90% go out so well, I'm content to tell you that we did it. The food we've all been talking about for a month is in houses and bellies across La Gonave. I know this, I was there.

Pastor Dan's distribution plan has been simple and good. We split the food in half between the District Superintendent of the Wesleyan Church on La Gonave, Pastor Keno, and an economist named Jean Paul Donn. A man whom Pastor Dan trusts and respects. The intention was, of course, that the Church would take care of ALL churches, and that Mr. Paul Donn would create a plan to reach the secular population in greatest need. He did this by using small existing civic organizations, pretend the Rotary Club of Anse Galets for example.

There was some overlap, it is true, but mostly that in some of the smaller villages, the local church was the best/only organization to give through. I am not concerned at all about this small overlap, <5% probably, because the need in those areas is so much greater than the supply. That is, unfortunately, just as we expected. Ninety thousand pounds of food is a meaningful amount, to be sure, but we need to keep at it. There are more hungry people - grateful, hopeful, but still hungry. This should not discourage us it should spur us on. God's gift through us put a lot of food in a lot of kids bellies and if you saw any one of them, you'd be very glad to know you had a hand in it. We can and should do more, but we have already, by God's hand alone, done a lot toward giving hope to the church and easing the agony of the hungriest. Also, our larger, silent gift to the people of La Gonave will hopefully be to lower their food prices back to where they can afford at least some food on their own. Prices right now are 150-200% of pre-quake prices and that means people who were barely making it aren't. Our flood of free food should put the price down a bit, how much remains to be seen. On a personal note, it's been quite an adventure tracking this distribution around the island. Going for a truck ride here is like going for a bull ride back home. Here you know it's the road because it doesn't have trees standing in it. Rocks, river beds, small cliffs, they can stay. The country is more remote than it might seem on the map, too - real National Geographic stuff a lot of the time. Today I actually rode the famous "Jesus boat" (a very rickety sail boat with two outboards) half way around the island to the South hitting a bunch of isolated fishing villages with woven coconut mat houses. Unfortunately we stayed in the boat and a select village boat would come meet us so I never got to go in the villages. Of course, maybe this was fortunate because sometimes there were a lot of people on the beach waiting for our supply. All told, a pretty cool experience for a very cool reason. I'll end by repeating what I started with. God provided the funding, led and directed the effort. We put this 90,000 lbs into the hands of some people who really, really needed it. Let's not stop there.

HS. Caleb Thompson

Update from Josh 22FEB10

2010-02-22T09:49:00.004-05:00

Chris's comments: Josh wrote this after he delivered the sermon at a local Wesleyan church. Josh is addressing the spiritual state of the church. A significant part of his mission was to make an assessment of this area, and to find a means to bring the gospel to La Gonave. Sounds like what they need most are tents and rebuilding.

Pete's comments: This is a church fully alive. We may be ready to help, but how we can actually help appears to be changing with time. Our best opportunity to serve Jesus' church there is to come alongside and ask them what they need to feed their sheep and serve their communities, like Josh is doing. Right now it's shelter.

Going to the church service today only solidified my feelings. Again, it's hard for me to accept because so much of my motivation for coming down here was to bring the gospel to a people I assumed were largely unreached. This is not an unreached area. These people are physically poor, but spiritually rich. As Caleb wrote in his update, we had to admit today that perhaps we should be learning some things from the church in Haiti, not the other way around. What can we teach them?

Church growth and outreach? - they were so full there weren't enough seats for the all the people.

Attracting new people? - there were tons of first time visitors that they made a point to welcome.

Worship? - they sang louder than I've ever heard in an American church. They spent the better part of an hour total in worship this morning. They seemed to be worshiping with their whole heart, many lifting their hands and closing their eyes, kneeling, etc. Even the band, using crude instruments did a great job.

Prayer? - they spent a good part of their 3 hour service praying. Discipleship? most of the congregation got to the church at 6:00am to start an hour of Sunday school before worship started, then they had each class of adults stand up and recite the memory verse of the day. Leadership development? I've never seen so many lay-leaders in a church. Each part of the service was led by different capable people. Each of them giving respect and submission to the other leaders. Bibles? Most of them had one with them, and were comfortable and competent finding scriptures as I taught.

Programs? They have a youth group run by volunteers, child care, a K-12 school, even mentioned cooking classes for the young people during the announcements.

Fellowship? Didn't seem to be lacking

Giving? In their poverty they were tithing this morning.

Community Involvement? They are running the distribution of food for the entire island.

Working together with other churches? Pastor Keno met with church leaders from all over the island (All Haitians) to do the food distribution, including Catholics, Episcopal, Wesleyan, Baptist, and Nazarene churches.

Church Planting? They have planted other churches on the island including the one we drove an hour and a half up the mountain road in a 4 wheel drive vehicle to get to. The pastor rides a motorcycle 3 times a week to do services.

More churches? There was another evangelical church 1/2 block from Pastor Keno's also completely full and worshiping the Lord. There are church buildings scattered all over the place. You can hear worship services going on in different places all throughout the week at different times.

Having a Christ-like attitude? There were two guys who shared in the church today who were in Port-au-Prince during the earthquake. One was trapped under the concrete for a day and a half. He had to move a dead body next to him out of his way to comfortably lay down and sleep. His wife was in the room as well and was killed. The entire time he said he was praising God and thanking him not only for sparing him, but for taking him through that trial and experience which he was glad for. He knew that God still had a plan for his life, that's why God spared him. He just praised the Lord and thanked Him for taking Him through that experience.

And I've only been observing the church for a few days on a few occasions.

I asked Pastor Keno the other day how the American church could help the church in Haiti. I mentioned Bibles, or short term teams to do ministry. He smiled at me, then took me to the dirt field the school kids meet in with no shelter from the sun. He said, Bibles are good, and we can always use more Bibles, but we can no longer use our main school building to do classes so we have to do them outside until we can repair our buildings. If you could send some kind of large tent for us to do classes in, that would really help.

Am I saying there's no ministry to do here? No way. I'm just saying that if we're looking for an unreached people group to bring the gospel to, Haiti is not the place. The church is healthy, vibrant, and growing daily. I think the best way to see a ministry partnership with Haiti is to see it like Gospel For Asia which of course isn't as exciting for us Americans. In India, it isn't practical to send white guys to do the ministry for so many reasons. So we've realized it is so much more effective to send money to support indigenous missionaries and pastors. Is this the best answer for Haiti? I think it might be. Maybe Pete will come up with a different conclusion after spending some time down here. These are just my thoughts and observations.

In some ways, I was selfishly a bit sad that there wasn't some great spiritual need for me to come down and save the day by putting together ministry teams to bring the gospel to these people, but why would we be sad? I am so blessed and encouraged and relieved that so many people know Jesus down here and there is such a strong moving of God in this place.

Just because God didn't/doesn't need us to do the work shouldn't make us sad. We should rejoice that He has been and is still doing the work Himself. Of course we are blessed to be able to show our love and support in a tangible way like Jesus told us to do.

I don't doubt for a second that we did the right thing. These people needed food. We had the ability to provide it, and there's still a need for us to coordinate the food, medical supplies, shelter, and other things. We are perfectly playing the role that God prepared for us to do. I was also honored to have a chance to speak to the church this morning and to make it clear to them that we brought the food because we love Jesus and we want and are praying for them to know and love Jesus too. Maybe that is the first time some of the visitors have heard the gospel, but I overall didn't feel as much like a teacher today as I did a student.

Blessings,
-Josh Nerren

2010-02-21T19:48:00.000-05:00

This is following church on Sunday. Josh was honored by being asked to deliver the sermon through an interpreter.

I'm just back from the Wesleyan Church service in Anse and there are a few important things I'd like to report. First, these people love the Lord. To be honest, I think in some significant ways we could learn from them, not the other way around.

I should pass on their collective thanks to all of the people in the U.S. who are praying for them and who have helped to send this food. I stood up in front and did my best to tell them through an interpreter that many, many people in the Church in America are very concerned for the Church in Haiti and are praying for them. Josh actually gave the sermon and expressed this far better, along with the fact that our heart is for sending food as God's love is poured out through us but even more that Christ's love be known through His death and resurrection. Josh is a pretty good speaker, by the way.

At the end of the service the District Superintendent for La Gonave, who is in charge of the church side of distribution, which is one half of the food, told everyone that there would be a distribution following service. He also told the people that there must be no discrimination and that the people must conduct themselves wisely. I was very impressed at how kind and orderly this distribution was. Every time food is given out I'm blessed but it's bittersweet. They need more than we have given them. I asked several people about the food and their needs, like I usually do, and they told me what they had received was enough for just a couple days. They are grateful but hope we'll send more.

For the last several days Josh and I have been trying to inject ourselves into the distribution process to try to help debug it for Pastor Dan and Butch, but also to hopefully learn more about the needs here. In brief, what we have learned about the needs of broader Anse Galets is that they are the same as the Church above. We've only been in the mountains once but so far the story is similar, people are glad for what they are receiving but need more than we have. The one difference in the mountains is that the economy really is subsistence - they eat what they grow. This means that those poor folks can't just get more food when they have extra refugees staying with them. We'll try to get out there and learn some more though, so take these as our first thoughts.

In the times in between we're keeping up on the logistics of the next shipment, mostly by staying in touch with our friends at Ywam St Marc. God has helped us build a lot of relationships down here. It may or may not be self evident but the mission field really is a web of relationships - God's servants all with their own jobs to do lending to each other according to need.

I'll say in closing that we could never do what we're doing if it weren't for the many people God has given to help us along the way. It's awesome how God always sends the people to fit the need just at the right time. This is all a team effort, we just never get to see the whole roster.

Update from Josh 21Feb10

2010-02-21T09:43:00.000-05:00

Good news. The major food distribution began today. We started off by joining the local pastor in charge of distribution to the churches for a meeting of 24 area pastors from the island. Pastor Keno (the guy in charge) talked to the other pastors about the logistics of the distribution and we had an opportunity to speak to the pastors and encourage them that many people in the U.S. helped to send the food and are praying for the churches and the people on the island and in other parts of Haiti. The pastors came from all sorts of backgrounds and denominations and were very thankful for the help they were receiving. They ended the meeting with a hymn.

After the meeting, the pastor divided the rice and beans he had been given amongst the 24 pastors and they all took their portions back to their churches to do distribution amongst their congregation. Once the pastors left, Pastor Keno invited members of the community from the streets who had been gathering to see the food to come into the church and receive one scoop of rice per person. People scrambled to find something to put the rice in – an old garbage bag or plastic bag in the piles of trash in the street, a purse or backpack, some couldn’t find anything and opted to use their shirt to transport the rice home.

The people were anxious and there was a small amount of pushing and yelling, but for the most part they were patient and waited their turn, often letting the small children go in front of them. Hundreds of pounds of rice were carefully divided up amongst the people who came. Watching these people get so excited about a few cups of rice has a way of making those who have plenty appreciate so much more what God has blessed us with.

Thanks to all who have given and have prayed for the food distribution. Praise God that He has seen it through to this point and that the people are coming to the churches to be fed and that God has given the churches the privilege of being the conduit of these blessings to the people. May God show the people of Haiti that He is their ultimate provider. More distribution will be happening tomorrow, and the next day, and so on for as long as God provides. Please continue to pray.

New pictures of the people and of the distribution are posted on FaceBook and video of the distribution will be available on YouTube shortly:http://www.youtube.com/user/HandsAndFeetForHaiti

Videos of the mission by Josh - must see

2010-02-20T11:12:00.000-05:00

A number of videos from Haiti sent by Josh. I just discovered them, and they are excellent and you won't want to miss seeing these.

If you scroll down you will find more in the left hand sidebar.

http://www.youtube.com/handsandfeetforhaiti

Photos of food distribution

2010-02-20T05:47:00.000-05:00

Be sure to check out facebook because some new photos are just 'in'; Josh has done a terrific job of creating a photographic record of this mission.

Remember - you don't have to have a 'facebook' account (I don't!) to go to the facebook link on the "Hands and Feet For Haiti" blog. Just click on the first link under "Links for Involved Parties" on the right.

Here a a couple pictures of today's food distribution: people are bringing anything they can find to carry the rice home; some examples are: plastic shopping bags with holes they've repaired, old buckets and a purse!

Below you will see a woman using a baby blanket and an elderly woman using an old bag she found outside on the ground.

Josh labeled the photo of the group (below) as " Crowd trying to be patient" and the men loading a wheel barrow as "Pastors loading a wheelbarrow to take rice to their church to distribute to their congregation."

Praise the Lord the food is finally getting out!

Food Distribution Begins

2010-02-20T05:40:00.000-05:00

This is posted on the GP website along with a video. Excerpt below:

Today is the first day of distribution for the 80 thousand pounds of food that arrived in St.Marc last week. The logistics of moving the food through the country to various distribution points have not been easy, but today all the planning has finally started to pay off.

2010-02-19T12:47:00.002-05:00

Hi Folks.

For those that don't know, I'm departing Tuesday the 23rd for FL then on to Haiti for a month. If there's any container work to do, I'll take care of it while I'm there. I plan on catching Josh on his return to FL and bringing him to the airport (Maybe buy him a meal with something other than rice for a side dish).

Funding wise, we are poised to send another couple of containers of food and/or shelters. The third container arrived in St. Marc yesterday and sailed through the paperwork process (pun intended). Still has to be inspected, still need prayer that we don't get "taxed" in some way by the government officials. Youth With a Mission (YWAM) in Montana is about 30% to their goal of 2 containers of food and has two young fellers ready to travel to La Gonave.

Chris and I both are praying about a lasting rotation of folks for service on the island and in Petit Goave. It appears that it would be a small footprint of largely non-medical types who can do hard work and think on their feet (maybe sleep on their feet?). These people will need to commit to three weeks to allow for adequate travel, adjustment, and turnover time. We're still praying into this - lots of unknowns - and Dan and his team need to agree with it.

Medical staff can be brought in as a group or could possibly join up with a team that's there already - a separate deal altogether. Petit Goave is hard pressed for help. If you're interested in medical support, you can go to Dan's Blog and click on the schedule and also reference the medical supplies lists. Another resource is the medicalmissions.org website where interested people can sign up for service in the medical field all over Haiti. Transport is a problem at times, but the Lord paves the way as usual and we are here to facilitate things.

But here's the best part. Below is the latest on the Caribe Atlantic site (Pastor Dan Irvine's blog http://gpcaribeatlantic.com/). NOTE THE LAST SENTENCE. This is way cool. Can't wait to find out exactly how we can help the church down there.

God bless you guys.

"The first Sunday after the earthquake, I walked into church, expecting to take my usual seat about halfway to the front of the sanctuary. Instead, I found that the only seats left were a few toward the very back. As the service continued, more people crowded in. By the time the pastor came up to preach there was standing room only. This was a far cry from the week before when about a third of the benches were empty.

There was a different feel amongst the congregation as well. The casual talking of teenagers mid-service was silenced and the occasional Amens and mmm huhs of agreement louder and more frequent. Grown men bent forward as the pastor preached and middle-aged women wiped tears away during the special music.

The prayer which started with the repetition of the phrase “Ou se Bondye. Ou se Bondye. Ou se Bondye,” (You are God. You are God. You are God.), continued long past the usual ten minutes. And the service ended with a string of testimonials. People who had been trapped under rubble or had lost family members came to the front and told stories of their new decision to turn back to God.

This testimonial time has become a normal part of the service since the earthquake as each week more people give their lives to Christ. I heard one story about a little boy who had been in a school building when the earthquake hit. A falling rock hit him in the back and pushed him outside. The school collapsed behind him, killing all of his classmates. He knows it was God who kept him safe.

And the stories and the people keep coming. Four weeks after the quake, and churches are still full. Just last week during the nationwide prayer time, I could not find a seat in the church. The pastors there, at the Wesleyan Church in town, had moved all the benches outside to make more space for church attendees to sit on the floor, and still they ran out of space. They even arranged the benches outside to create three sections of seating for those who came too late to get in the doors.

They may continue to need extra seating in the coming weeks as more people come to Christ. Since the earthquake, they have seen 120 converts at the Wesleyan church alone. Churches all over town are seeing a similar trend. In the week since the prayer time, we’ve seen evidence of this trend ourselves in the number of people who have come asking for bibles."

Update 02/18/2010

2010-02-19T08:28:00.000-05:00

First food delivered on the island today - rough weather doesn't bode well for the future...

Another crazy day in Haiti. One thing we have learned since being here is that no day goes as planned.

This morning I woke up early and left La Gonave on the “Breezy Sea” (the Wesleyan lobster boat) headed for Kwalili (the Wesleyan wharf on the mainland near St. Marc). While I was heading across the rough morning seas, some of the guys at YWAM were working hard transferring a load of food from our CONEX container to the truck that would take it to the wharf. Thank you YWAM!

At the same time, Caleb was stuffed atop a few mattresses and a load of medical supplies in the back of another truck coming from Petit Guave where he stayed last night to Kwalili (about a 5 hour drive). We docked the boat, and since the truck from YWAM was not there we went to town to buy meals for the Haitian workers.

When we got back to the dock, the food truck showed up and the Haitian W.I.S.H workers went to starting transferring the food to the boats (there was also a Haitian hired sailboat there). Just when we got started with the food transfer it started to downpour. The workers kicked it in to high gear to get the food to the boat as fast as possible so we could cover it before the beans, rice, pasta, and oats got soaked with rain. We quickly covered the loads and then waited for Caleb.

When he arrived, the truck was also carrying two other missionaries to go to La Gonave. We headed back toward La Gonave with the thought we would return to Kwalili later for the truckload of medical supplies and to pick up a team of surgeons coming to the island to work at the hospital. The storm that brought the rain also made some serious waves (like 10’ rollers). There were quite a few times between waves when the water on both sides was higher than the boat. It made our voyage slower and quite a bit more interesting (most of us were having fun, comparing it to an amusement ride).

A few of the Haitians who were used to the boat even got sick. Butch made the call that he would not return to Kwalili today, especially not without a load (the weight helps stabilize the boat). The two boatloads of food we brought today went to a pastor on the island that is in charge of distributing the food we give him to the various churches on the island.

There will be another food distribution arm responsible for getting food to other areas of the island where the churches will not reach. I’m excited to report that while we coming over on the Breezy Sea and then taking care of some business at the base, the food distribution began with 9 churches received food today. 5 Wesleyan churches and 4 other evangelical churches. Here’s a list of the food distributed today:

2,680 pounds of rice
650 pounds of beans
275 pounds of rolled oats
57 boxes of macaroni

This is just the small tip of the iceberg, but it’s a start. Tomorrow the pastor in charge of the church distribution (Pastor Keno) will be meeting with pastors from 24 churches on the island to talk about logistics and distribution and then he will be distributing food to each of them who have means to take the food back to their churches. Caleb and I hope to join him in the distribution, but we may have to go back to Kwalili to help with another load.

We spent some time with Pastor Keno today and he told us the church is growing on the island. In one church, 120 people have received Christ since the earthquake. Another church used to have 300 people in attendance and has grown to 500 since the quake. God can truly use anything for good. He told us to let the American people who helped to send this food that he and the people on the island were “truly thankful from our head…” (while motioning to his heart) “…for all the help you are giving to us, and we pray that God will bless everyone who has helped us”

One more thought: I was told that it’s very uncommon for it to rain in Haiti in February. At first I was very thankful for the rain this morning since it made the day much cooler and the cloud cover blocked the sun that scorched my skin yesterday, but as we made our way back to La Gonave I remembered the thousands of “tents” I’ve seen down here made of sheets. I think it’s safe to assume the people living in those homes were not thankful for the rain today. Now their normally dusty dirt floors would be mucky mud and with the mud comes mosquitoes, disease, cold wet nights, and other problems. The suffering of these people has not stopped; the circumstances and challenges have just changed. Please continue to pray for them.

-Josh Nerren

Food delivered!! Prayer answered, all are safe!

2010-02-17T20:51:00.000-05:00

I am happy to report that I am finally writing from the island of La Gonave. This morning we loaded about 15,000 pounds of food from our container at the YWAM base in St. Marc onto a big truck, rode the truck to the Wesleyan dock about 30 minutes away, loaded the food onto two boats, crossed the ocean (about a 1.5 hour ride) between the mainland and the island, unloaded the food onto a trailer pulled by a John Deere tractor, and drove it to the Wesleyan guest house in Anse A Galets where it was unloaded into the guest house for temporary storage.

Tomorrow we will attempt to make the trip twice. In the mean time the Wesleyan mission director has hired an economist and they are working out the details of the distribution plan which will begin shortly. Caleb and I had to split up for the night. He stayed on the mainland to accompany the truck back to the YWAM base to load it with some of the supplies in the container which are more needed in Port-au-Prince and Petit Guave. He will stay the night in Port-au-Prince and be at the docks to meet the boat in the morning. Other than a pretty good sunburn on my normally white skin, everything went great today.

Caleb and I were so happy to see that the Wesleyan missionary who hired our truck this morning also hired two more Haitians to help. We lost about 5 pounds each sweating in the container, but it was nice to have 3 other guys helping. Then when we got to the docks we were met by about 20 Haitians who work for W.I.S.H and came on the boat with Butch. As you can imagine, our work load was made light and the loading and unloading went extremely fast. Praise God!

There are a lot of hungry people on the island who are having a hard time buying food. We are very excited to see all this hard work and planning coming to fruition. I will send more updates and post more pictures as things progress.

Blessings
-Josh Nerren

Climate on the Saline Feb 17, 2010

2010-02-17T09:13:00.001-05:00

This is posted on the GP website along with a narrated slideshow. Excerpt below:

As part of their trip to help distribute aid, Caleb and Andy visited the saline. They took a translator, going door to door to get a feel for the struggles of its inhabitant’s daily lives. What they found was an increasing strain on the emotional health and on the resources of an already impoverished and hungry people. The people that live in the saline represent the poorest of the poor. Most of which have seen days since their last good meal.

Haiti - Update 02/16/2010 PM

2010-02-16T15:53:00.000-05:00

We'll be taking the first load of food to the island Wednesday morning. By the time the inspection was done this morning, the wind had gotten pretty strong on the ocean so the missionary was nervous about trying to rush over, load, and rush back on the rough seas before dark. Also, the driver who will be taking our container to the dock for loading had already taken another job for the day.

The good news is, everything is thus far lined up for first thing in the morning so we might even be able to take two loads over tomorrow. Caleb and I got to try our hand at slinging rice bags in the scorching heat inside a metal shipping container today. We needed to collect six pallets to put on the floor of the boat in case we take on any water. It wouldn't be good to soak the bottom layer of rice bags in salt water on the way over. The only pallets available here were underneath pallet loads of 50 pound rice bags, so we moved six pallet loads full to get the wooden pallets out. It didn't take too long, but I was exhausted. Good practice I suppose.

The YWAM base has been overwhelmed with teams coming in from around the world. People from Canada, Australia, The UK, Singapore, Finland, Brazil, Belgium, The U.S., and others. Met some UN agents this morning from the U.S., Africa, and Columbia. We might have a harder time finding a place to sleep tonight since the dorm is full and we were never supposed to stay here, but we're told there's an empty tent somewhere.

Please continue to pray for God's will in His timing.

Thanks -Josh Nerren

God is never early, and He's never late

2010-02-16T11:40:00.003-05:00

We have been waiting with grave concern, and in constant prayer, for the food to be released.

Here is Josh:

So this morning we got up early. Caleb and I spent some time discussing the obstacles we have faced especially in the waiting for the containers to be cleared. We both agree that it seems God even used the time of waiting to accomplish many things. We would not have gotten the chance to spend so much time examining the bigger picture needs down here, nor met all the contacts we have that might prove to be long-term partners.

Many people have also made comments to me about the impact the photos and videos we've been sending back have made in their lives. We would not have had the chance to do any of that if our containers had been cleared last week. So we recognized God's sovereignty and control of all that is happening. We then spent some time in prayer.

The inspector was supposed to come to the YWAM base to inspect the containers which are here but hadn't been released yet. The guy was supposed to come at 9am. At about 10am, we had had enough. About 6 of us went down to the customs office to stand in front of the guy all day if we had to. As many of you know the containers have been waiting to be cleared for nearly a week.

We arrived at the customs office to find it closed. No one was there. I prayed again, standing at the locked door that if anything was hindering this process God would remove the obstacles. Just then, the YWAM guy got a call on his phone. It was the inspector. He said he would meet us at the base in 10 minutes. We hurried back, and what do you know, after numerous no-shows he finally came.

We fed him some breakfast. It took him about 2 minutes per container to quickly look inside and say OK. Both CONEX #1 and #2 have been cleared! Praise God! The customs officer told Caleb we can start taking stuff out of either box any time, and he cleared the fuel as well.

God is never early, and He's never late.

We have a call into the guys on the island and hope they will send the boat today so we can get a load over there before dark. That said, we'll be following the Lord's lead even if it means going slower than we want to.

Thanks to all who have been praying. That's one more hurdle that we've finally gotten over. There are likely many more that we'll have to jump over. We know and are so blessed that so many people are praying for this mission.

Blessings -Josh Nerren (Tuesday February 16th, 11:00am in St. Marc, Haiti)

2010-02-16T10:31:00.001-05:00

Read below an excerpt from some of the news coverage this mission is getting. This one from the Adirondack Daily Enterprise:

After a mammoth earthquake laid waste to Haiti last month, many people donated money to the relief efforts to help the people there.

Some, however, were not satisfied to leave it at that.

Long Lakers Caleb Thompson and Andy Pratt were two such do-gooders. After the earthquake, Thompson and Pratt decided to head to Haiti to help.
...

But Caleb Thompson remains humble about the work he and his friend are doing.

"We are not trained missionaries, we are regular people who live a normal life in upstate NY," Thomspon wrote. "We were when we started and will be when we're done. God opened some big doors for us and our friends, and the most I can say for us is that we walked through them."

Full story available here:
http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/511327.html?nav=5008

La Gonave Haiti update 15FEB10

2010-02-16T07:16:00.002-05:00

Well, I wish I had been able to pass any news in the past few days but the situation just didn't change. We're on the verge of movement. This weekend contained the culmination of 3 significant delays:

- waiting on governement release authority for the first two containers - minus duty fees, thank you Lord
- allowing time for Josh, Caleb, Andy and Pastor Dan Irvine to develop the overarching plan for food distribution and needs assessments
- the Haitian gov't official 3 day period of fasting and praying that ended today

It was clearly time for us to sit tight, pray and wait on God. He's got it all covered.

Now the logistics wheels are starting to move again. The first 2 food containers are not yet inspected and released by the government agent yet, but Josh is waiting patiently and we are hopeful that they should be released tomorrow. The third container and 2,000 gal of diesel should be there in a day or two - Chris will provide the confirmation tomorrow.

Looks like the next push is for shelter - most likely in the form of tarps and tents. Long term housing is important, but it's obvious that we can't put a dent into the need without getting significant numbers of shelters distributed promptly. Chris is working hard on that. We have 2 new significant donations of late and more donors jumping onboard - Praise God. The next container, or two, or three will ready to be bundled very soon. I think YWAM Montana may have folks ready to go with them, but we won't know for a day or two.

Caleb will be in Haiti until about March 9th, Josh will have to return around the 24th of this month. Andy has begun his return trip to NY via Missionary Flights International. Between bouts of honey-do lists and work, Chris is still coordinating overall logistics from the armored enclave of Long Lake NY.

Be sure to check the video and blog updates on the Hands and Feet blog, Facebook, YouTube, and the Wesleyan Caribe Atlantic site - all cross linked across multiple domains thanks to the work of the unsung techno heroes helping us get the word out.

If you think of it, please include a couple of new friends to your email distribution of Hands and Feet. Thank you for continuing to pray for us and what God is doing in the people of Haiti.

PT

Churches link arms for supply shipment

2010-02-15T21:30:00.003-05:00

I hope all of you go to the mission's website occasionally (link below). That is news from the front lines, sometimes joyous and sometimes brutally real.

There is a long chain of people supporting the people of Haiti -- all servants and acting in different capacities -- and you who read, support, and pray are part of it.

Thank you so much for all you do. Thank God for his outpouring of mercy to the people of Haiti.

If you scroll down the page a bit you'll see that Dan has posted Caleb's article.

http://gpcaribeatlantic.com/

Weekend wrap up

2010-02-14T16:14:00.001-05:00

To everyone following the progress of the re-supply effort, I want to provide you with the following:

1. Caleb's 2/11/10 report of their tour of Anse a Galet.

On February 11th, Caleb and Andy spent a day touring parts of La Gonave, taking video interviews and observing conditions in Anse a Galets ("Anse") and its suburbs. Their purpose was to get an accurate feel for people’s need. The videos will be hand-carried back to Long Lake by Andy.

Caleb wrote: "We got a morning tour of the "Saline" which is the poorest section of Anse. We were escorted by a "W.I.S.H." worker who spoke pretty good English. He took us to a dozen households where we video-interviewed the residents. The story was pretty consistent. All had not eaten today, most for the last couple days. I hesitate to use the word starvation but people are without a doubt hungry. (A few of the children manifest physical symptoms like swollen bellies.) All say that life is much harder since the quake. Work is scarcer. Food is more expensive. Maybe 30% of households there had guests from the mainland. All claim that they cannot afford any treatment at the hospital. Almost every one said they would not sleep indoors again until it was safe, but they couldn’t articulate how that point would be determined. Fishermen refuse to fish for fear of a tsunami. I think people are genuinely emotionally upset, not just the trauma of the quake but also how little they have to feed their families with now. Hopefully the videos will do this justice but I certainly sensed it in person. Loss compounded by need.

In the afternoon we were given a similar tour of the suburbs of Anse by the economist Dan has hired to write a distribution plan. We stopped in each of a bunch of districts to interview residents. With not a lot of variation people said similar to above. It varied by the wealth of the district, I think: people are pretty consistently hungry but not yet starving. A few said they had a little work, the majority said they had none and so no way to buy food.

Every household we saw had between 5-15 mouths to feed and at only one did we see any food anywhere. These people let us into their tiny homes (largely empty since they are living outside) which are devoid of places to hide anything, and no food was visible anywhere. They could be exaggerating about when their last meal was, but it’s very clear they have no food reserves and no money to buy food daily. All I saw for food (other than the one meal) in over 3 hours of visiting families was a kid peeling an orange and another eating a small bag of popcorn. One woman with 11 kids in her house had a small pot on a fire, which could have just been water. All anyone talked about was food and medical care, and at least two adult women came to tears talking about the needs of their children.
Please pray that God guides us again tomorrow and that he shows us what we need to see, hear, and report."

2. Certain poignant photos and videos that can be found on the Hands and Feet for Haiti Facebook page. There are many photographs you might care to see:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hands-Feet-For-Haiti/269636253137?v=info#!/pages/Hands-Feet-For-Haiti/269636253137?v=photos

Memorable photo from Josh Nerren as he, Caleb, and Andy view the destruction and living conditions on the road from PAP to Petit Goave. THESE PICTURES HIT AT GUT LEVEL. Josh says these signs litter the highway. "please stop here we need some help"

Update from Josh 14Feb10

2010-02-14T08:07:00.000-05:00

Since the churches in Haiti have declared 3 days of fasting and prayer we're kind of stuck. Nothing is open, and we can't get our food out yet. Spent some more time driving in Port-au-Prince yesterday and did some small scale food distribution to a Wesleyan church taking them some excess food that we had at the guest house. They were grateful for what we gave. We got to the church right as they were wrapping up their service. The building they were meeting in consisted of a few block pillars with a small covered area finished.

I've posted lots of new photos and videos of the destruction on Facebook and YouTube. After a while one pile of rubble starts to look like every other one. We were asking ourselves yesterday how the people must feel about walking by all of the destroyed buildings. How they seemed not to even care about the buildings as they walked on by. We reasoned they must just get used to it. I suppose they have to in some ways. People are even seen sitting under the eves or doorways of buildings that are half holding on - ready to come down at any moment. I think they must just get used to it.

I realized I was even getting used to it at some level. I started out taking a picture of every pile and after a while found myself not lifting the camera thinking, "nah, there's nothing new about that pile, just looks like the last one, no one's going to want to see a picture of that one", and then immediately remembering that these aren't piles of concrete. They were people's homes, and in many cases the final resting place of hundreds of thousands of human beings - image-bearers of God.

This morning we'll attend church here in Port-au-Prince. Tomorrow Caleb and I should be getting to La Gonave and working on a food distribution plan. Andy has been at it for over three weeks and is making plans to head home today or tomorrow if he can get a flight out. Please continue to pray for us, and for the people of Haiti.

Update from Josh 2-13-2010

2010-02-13T07:50:00.001-05:00

Hey guys,

Just wanted to take a minute to give you an update. Got into Port-Au-Prince yesterday via airplane. Spent some time with the area director for the Wesleyan churches Dan Irvine and his wife Joy yesterday. Also met and talked with a young missionary couple from further north in Haiti - Chris and Kathleen who are staying in PAP to help run the guest house.

Spent the night outside under a mosquito net last night. The mission house is a great house that withstood the first earthquake with no visible damage, but there have been 40 aftershocks and some seismologists have been predicting another large earthquake somewhere near the last one, so most people are not sleeping inside houses with concrete roofs.

This morning we drove back to the Port-Au-Prince airport to pick up Caleb and Andy who flew in a small airplane from La Gonave this morning. Dan wanted us to get a bigger picture of the need here, not just on the island. Today he wanted us to accompany two doctors who also just flew in to work in the Wesleyan mission hospital in Petit Goave which they have set up since the quake.

The 2 hour ride there was intense. We drove through the epicenter of the quake and got to see the small towns and villages along the road that were hardest hit. I was so focused on getting pictures and videos that I barely let the stuff sink in for the first hour. After a while my heart caught up with mind and shut off the cameras and just stared at the hundreds of houses I saw destroyed and the thousands of people walking around and going about their life (not much of one by our standards).

Then we finally arrived at the hospital which was more like a campground with doctors. It was pretty slow today I was told. There was still a line of people waiting to be seen by a doctor. When we got out we were met by a fire-fighter crew from Portland, OR. They went to work unloading our truck which was not only carrying us in the back but also a pallet load of bottled water for the hospital. I went back into film mode and starting shooting video of patients and doctors.

Time doesn't exist down here. You don't look at your watch. 2 hours went by in about 5 minutes. Not a lot of major medical stuff going on today, but there was a 9 year old boy with wounds on his chest and back. Apparently some older boy was beating him. He was bleeding through his shirt. I never did see the wounds. The boy was a trooper but was nervous about my camera so I left him alone.

An elderly woman in her late 60's had a wound on her hand. At first glance it just looked like a good patch of skin that was damaged and had been treated and cleaned pretty well, but then I noticed she couldn't bend her wrist. When the doctor tried she cringed and then the doctor turned her hand over and pushed on her palm. It wasn't soft like a palm should be but was rock hard like she had major bone damage and swelling inside. The doctor figured she had multiple breaks due to a crushing wound in her wrist. Turns out she was trapped under her house for half an hour while her son dug her out and freed her wrist from the rubble.

There were various other patients, but I noticed a newborn baby and wanted to get some video. The baby was very cute. I asked the woman holding the baby if it would be okay and she motioned that the mother was inside the makeshift house and we should ask her. The mom was on the cot inside. She was 14, and had just given birth a few hours earlier. The doctors give new mothers a few hours to rest, and then send them on their way so they can have the bed for the next person. At first I didn't think she wanted me to videotape the baby but then another sick patient translated for me. I had been asking what the baby's name was, and a young boy who must have been the mother's brother was trying to tell me something. The translator said the boy was telling me that the baby does not have a name and that I should give him a name. Okay, so that was the moment I just about lost it. I said I did not know any good Creole names and I left after taking some footage of the beautiful newborn without a name who would grow up with a worse than poor 14 year old mom (if she even kept him).

The mood changed on the ride home. Caleb and Andy and I had been talking a lot on the way there, but now I sat in the cab to get some better video and I looked back periodically. They too seemed to be staring off as if even focusing on what we saw was just too much to take for very long. On the positive side, the evangelical churches in Haiti declared a national day of prayer and fasting today. There was a "church" meeting about every 10 blocks in city and many along the rural road. Most of the buildings consisted of four brick walls with tarps or sheets for a roof and there were so many people at each church that they were crowded outside around the entrance. They were singing and shouting so loud we could hear them over the sound of traffic and they had no microphones. Dan says that one positive thing about the quake is that the churches are swelling. Many people are turning to God for comfort and hope.

We're back at the house now. Took a cold shower (that's the only kind you get here) to wash off the mix of sweat, sunscreen, bug spray, dust, and whatever else I picked up today, and am about to eat a nice dinner prepared by Joy. A far cry from the food of the people I saw in one of the tent cities today who were rummaging through the foulest smelling bags of rotted vegetables and fruits I had ever smelled. You know the smell that hits you when you go to the dump? That was lunch for them today. Piles of rotting lettuce.

What does a person do with all this? I knew the need was great here, I just had no idea of the hopelessness of it. It's been a month and other than the roads being somewhat cleared of debris, I didn't see a single piece of equipment in 4 hours of driving actually cleaning up after the damage. Who's going to tear all those houses down? Who's going to rebuild them? Even the house we're staying in was worth 250,000 before the quake. Now they cannot sell it to anyone. No one will buy a house made of concrete. Even those with money have lost everything and what will sustain them in a year? 5 years? It's too much to think about.

Thank you all so much for praying for me. God is taking good care of us, and I know He's brought us here for a reason. I hope He uses us to bless others, but perhaps He had another reason - something to show us to teach us something. Please continue to pray for wisdom and strength. I'm getting a taste of the reason so many aid workers can't stick around long. I think seeing this day in and day out does things to your mind. I'll post pictures later. Internet here is too slow to post video.

Blessings -Josh Nerren

Update La Gonave resupply 13Feb10

2010-02-13T06:52:00.000-05:00

I am waiting for news from the guys and will organize new information for posting tomorrow.

I thought you might care to see our strong partner in this effort, YWAM. Our own Veronica Thompson is leading this team effort. Isn't it interesting to see how God assembles people for His work...

As our district funding slows, God has brought others in to keep the food flowing. There is much need in La Gonave and it must be relieved, it will be relieved. Please keep praying, you have seen the miracles right along.

YWAM has been of significant assistance to us resolving container paperwork problems in St. Marc, they are a tremendous help and if you don't know about them and their mission you should do some reading on it and support them in prayer and financially. Poke around their website...

http://www.ywammontana.org/

La Gonave mission update 2/11/10

2010-02-11T19:06:00.003-05:00

Good news. Josh Nerren has successfully landed in Port au Prince, and was actually picked up by our folks in the zoo that is the airport. It was a little tricky since our people have never met Josh, me either by the way, so nobody knew what he looked like. There was no phone contact, only emails to arrange a place to meet. I had to finally go earn some money today after a few weeks of duty here -- just when I got my wife used to eating sawdust she almost died on me (sorry, old timer joke) -- so I could not be around to help, but everybody got a meeting figured out by email.

Josh is safe with Dan, Joy, and our guys in PAP. He, Caleb, and Andy will have the opportunity to hear Dan's plans for food distribution and rebuilding. I understand this will be interesting and look forward to hearing it by email. It will certainly affect for the positive the timing and substance of future deliveries.

Caleb and Andy have been conducting interviews and traveling to assess the need. We here need a concrete sense of need, and the timing of our shipments to best address it. They are also working with the hospital to learn what is needed there.

The guys made some videos you might like to see. The orphanage and school in Anse-a-Galets, and the ship in St. Marc. The first video of the ship at the port of Saint Marc is ever so dramatically narrated by our Andy Pratt. The young lady seen translating in the second two videos is Justine Iskat.

Message from Dan Irvine 11Feb10

2010-02-11T10:55:00.001-05:00

http://gpcaribeatlantic.com/

As many of you know the large container ship sent by the New England Wesleyan District arrived in Haiti this past weekend. Once it arrived, we began the paperwork process needed to release the boat. While people in St. Marc work out these details, two of the masterminds behind the boat project Caleb Thompson and Andy Pratt have been in La Gonave preparing for distribution.

These two guys, as you might imagine, have been anything but lazy. They spent the whole day connecting with a local school, the Wesleyan Hospital, an orphanage, and several community leaders. They managed to have a meeting with Jean Paul Donn, an economic consultant for the Wesleyan mission and the author of the distribution plan for Anses-a-Galets and Point a Raquettes. Immediately following this, they caught up with the second mayor in town, Dahame Laguerre, to ask about the needs of this community.

Over the next few days, while waiting for the green light to unload the boat, Caleb and Andy will continue to collect information about the town. In their down times, which will be few and far between, they will also be helping out with projects and daily operations of the Wesleyan Mission.

We are very thankful to have these two enthusiastic guys around, and grateful for those of you who took part of getting them and 80,000lbs of food and fuel to our town.

Word from our guys 2/10/10

2010-02-10T15:02:00.004-05:00

They are in Anse and are being trained to run the lobster boat, so apparently they will become the long supply line back to Anse-a-Galets. Butch has significant work load on other matters.. The boat will use about 12 gallons of fuel to make the 3 hour or so round trip (not including loading and unloading the boat). I am guessing they will never want to carry a rice sack again after this mission.

No word on the paperwork for the containers, but I spoke with YWAM last night and they said they were on it but to keep praying. They said "it's only over when the containers are going down the road".

Josh Nerren will fly tomorrow via MFI to Port au Prince to be picked up by anyone available. The ship carrying conex #3 is delayed again, and now Josh will need to be paying for room and board. The conex is safe behind fence and guards until it is loaded on the ship, and the guys say the ships crew is professional and trustworthy. Our guys will meet the container in St. Marc to secure it. We don't see any significant security concerns. Josh is anxious to go into service in Anse, so having him idling for another week makes little sense to us. Please pray that all goes well with flight arrangements and for safe travel, and that he can effectively share the gospel with the La Gonavians.

Here is an email from the guys.

We would like to thank everyone back in the U.S. for their amazing support, both spiritually and financially.  Every time the mission encounters a wall, prayer and God's grace knock it down.  Every time we wonder if there will be enough money for X or Y, we find out that more is coming in.  Caleb and I have never worried about having the backing to accomplish the mission, and we have thousands of hands and hearts back home to thank for that.
Our three day ocean voyage went well, with us making some good connections with other relief workers on the boat, and learning a lot from our discussions with them.  Additionally, we made friends with the ships officers and crew, who asked us to contact them personally by email if we needed a ride back to Florida.  We had a much needed period of forced-relaxation and were able to spend time preparing ourselves mentally and spiritually for our mission in Haiti.
There is a great deal of uncertainty as to when the containers will be released, duty-free, from the customs yard.  Terry Snow from YWAM St. Marc has gone out of his way to help us in this process, he is well versed in dealing with Haitian port officials and through his selfless assistance will likely save us from paying a $4500 customs fee per container.  It is likely that the process to effect this will take three days, but we are praying that they are available sooner.  The people of La Gonave are in desperate need, and need our prayer to break through the red-tape imposed by their government.
Caleb and I are comfortably set up at the Wesleyan base in Anse Galets and are not in personal need of anything.  While the security situation here is not perfect, there is no cause for immediate concern for our well being, and the base will survive until the food arrives, whether it comes tomorrow or next week.  Until the food is released, we will both make ourselves available to the mission here in whatever capacity we can be most useful.  As soon as the food is released, we will direct our full efforts to transporting and distributing it.  Please continue to pray that God guides us in every action.
God Bless,
Andy and Caleb

Updated Situation for Haiti and La Gonave 10FEB10

2010-02-10T12:42:00.003-05:00

Folks,

As with any major disaster, the initial shock and attention it produces wanes quickly. And just like in every disaster in the third world, the initial outpouring of aid and support begins to fade as well. The mainstream media have begun to accurately highlight the gaps and seams of the authorities' efforts to meet the need. And we all to some degree are becoming jaded by the whole thing - even those who are staunch supporters of UN efforts. But the suffering is real, and it continues and will not relent without compassion that brings a lasting conviction to act.

Please continue to pray for the people in Haiti. Conditions as desperate as before, particularly for the people on La Gonave. They receive little attention due to the island's isolation from food warehouses and relatively small population. We will continue to make pleas for substantial food distribution to the WFP and other organizations, but expect little response - the crisis on the mainland garners their attention and focus.

We are seeing a decrease in funding for food containers but a sustained need into the next couple of months. If you haven't donated to this effort, please give it your consideration. Pass this on to your pastor or elders, let your neighbors and coworkers know, and encourage them to visit the Hands and Feet for Haiti Blog and Facebook site.

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hands-Feet-For-Haiti/269636253137?ref=mf

Blog - http://actuallyhelpinghaiti.blogspot.com

The Lord has given us a 100% accountable and effective way to provide food and medical aid to these people, and it is tax deductible even on your 2009 tax return.

Below I've provided a quick synopsis of conditions in Haiti today.

In Anse a Galets on the Island of La Gonave:

• Marines conducted a second, lengthy assessment on the 8th

• No news regarding food distribution or medical aid by UN or US Military

• Gaps in medical staff chronic, hampered by airlift limitations into Haiti

• No shelter exists for the ~30K refugees on the island, refugees arrive by hundreds daily

• Water continues to flow through municipal system, generators functioning

• In Anse a Galets alone there are approximately 60,000 people without food

• MAF providing some food and medical supplies (1K lbs 4x week - <8% of daily need)

• Bahamas Methodist Habitat has delivered 1.4K lbs medical supplies since 25 Jan

• Our shipment of 88K lbs food to be released by St. Marc customs tomorrow, 11 Feb

• Second shipment of 45K lbs food to depart Palm Beach ~12 Feb, arrive ~ 15 Feb

• Airlift of Medical supplies through Bahamas Habitat planned 2x week (800 lbs)

From the UN (OCHA) daily report:

• 1.1M fed with 2 week supply of rice in PAP area last two weeks "surge"

• Over 880K have recieved 5 day supply of rice since 12 Jan

• Water distribution to 300 centers, up to 5 ltr per day, only on mainland

• Food distribution to small population centers ineffective due to hoarding, misrepresentation

• Displaced population is migrating further, some to agricultural areas on mainland

• 22K shelters and 32K tarps have been distributed so far on the mainland

• US forces have medically treated over 4,300 Haitians since 12 Jan, most of them acute cases

• Major Outbreaks of tetanus, hemmoragic fever have not occurred as yet

Here is a link to the UN daily report (it's long and detailed):

http://oneresponse.info/Disasters/Haiti/Coordination/publicdocuments/OCHA_Situation_Report_No_19_-_Haiti_Earthquake_-_8_February_2010.pdf

La Gonave resupply prayers answered in St. Marc 9Feb10 1502EST

2010-02-09T16:48:00.003-05:00

Van Gogh could not have painted a worse picture than what we faced this morning. Despite every effort to resolve problems we were owners of fuel that would not be released, and we owned food containers destined for the customs yard owing to improper consignment. Haitian customs people would issue a ruling, and I was certain it would not be in our favor. Their tariffs are known to be severe.

The port agent, in whose hand lay the power to help or hinder us, chose the latter course and was not physically available to speak with.

At 1 PM Caleb called and said it was all resolved. The agent had a change of heart, and the ship's captain was similarly moved, to release the fuel drums to our friend Terry Snow at YWAM who is well known in the area. The containers will still go to the customs yard, but Terry has assured us that he will have the paperwork completed in a few days and they will be released to us. This will be customs free.

For those of you who prayed with me for better communication (Peg M.!), we now have crystal clear and inexpensive conversations by cell phone! Yes, they seem to be working for the moment. The boys have access to email every night, so as my dad always said, "now we're cooking with gas".

I know that thousands of you prayed, even during the night, that our supplies can get to La Gonave. Prayer answered, and God did that by changing men's hearts. The paperwork was never repaired, the agent simply decided to forego that.

I am concerned, of course, by the delay in getting goods to the island. Still, we have seen every step of this journey that God's timing is precise and that He is in control. I know the supplies will get there when they are ordained to arrive, and that there are other purposes that may not concern us.

I urge you to continue in prayer for the next step, which is getting the food across the bay and to the people. Please pray that the Haitian people are calm, and that we are able to deliver the food safely to numerous pastors for distribution. Please pray also that the Haitians understand that a loving God came to their aid, and that they come to accept the salvation freely offered them through Jesus Christ. Please pray for our next container, still delayed in Florida, and that Josh can get the shipper to properly enter the consignment information. Also that Josh can get on a plane to Haiti rather than wait a week in Florida. There is work from him at base.

Update from the base at Anse-a-Galets

2010-02-09T09:54:00.000-05:00

Good news to start the day with:
HTTP://gpcaribeatlantic.com

Finding Caleb and Andy in St. Marc 8Feb10 at 2155EST

2010-02-08T21:55:00.001-05:00

Folks, it has been a difficult day but I am confident that God will be victorious. I received text messages from Caleb all morning and answered them. At one point just before noon, I had contact with Matt who told me they were in St. Marc and wanted Caleb to walk over to meet them at the Immigration building. I sent that to Caleb but did not hear a single text for many hours. I assumed they had met, were busy at work, and all was well. Wrong! I received a text in the afternoon from Caleb that wondered why he had no communication from me since last night (about 10 missed text messages from me)!. That's what I'm talking about!

Note to all who travel: satellite phones are far from reliable and expensive to boot. Another note: cell phones are working well, at least in St. Marc.

Caleb was able to borrow a cell phone from someone -- free minutes courtesy of AT&T for this month in Haiti -- and we spoke at length about all the matters at hand. Much focus on how to expedite paperwork on the shipment Josh is accompanying tomorrow or the next day so that we anticipate and avoid future problems.

The matters at hand with both fuel and food involve detailed paperwork and customs: they must display the contents of the containers, who the shipment is consigned to, and what is listed on the BIll of Lading and the ship's manifest. All these matters amount to a combination of accounting and legal right/obligation. We will be short on details until tomorrow when the real work begins. But an example of our problem is that the ship master says that our fuel is not manifested to belong to us; we have the proof of payment, but the entire manifest document must be rewritten to reflect this proof. The shipper claims we are good to go, but the ship manifest says otherwise. It's not our responsibility, but it is our problem. Essentially it is the shipper's responsibility, but we are involved.

Joyce Irvine has been kindly monitoring email with the base, and in light of the difficult schedules for staff -- and no phones -- it has been a blessing to have someone watch our back. If you have the time, you may read through the communication below that sums up some of the activity and uncertainty of the day. Many of us have been praying for good communication and God has always caused that when it was most needed. By the way, Matt has done great! I hope I can meet him someday; he has been the lifeline to this mission though I bet he does not know that yet.

The base is short-staffed and busy with work both physical and spiritual. You who have been there and follow this know that. Anyone fit and possessing necessary skills might prayerfully consider going to assist; from reports it is now only for dedicated, skilled and committed people.

Please keep the specific matter of getting our supplies released expeditiously in prayer. Please don't decide we're probably fine; we are not necessarily so at all. Cam wrote a good letter today and I would particularly encourage you to read the last paragraph. God has not done the miraculous works today to let this fail tomorrow. Romans 8:31.

Chris

PS. From Matt's email (below): did you catch that? (pun intended) -- Caleb and Andy may be running the lobster boat to ferry goods! I find that interesting because in my youth my dad had a lobster boat and Caleb grew up hearing stories about it.

Begin forwarded message:

From: Matthew Tegen

Hi,

Im not sure when the last chance that you got to talk to Caleb was but I just wanted to let you know that he was able to get a haitian phone and we have been in contact with him off and on all afternoon and evening. Right now it looks like the plan is just to off load everything including the fuel barrels. Then they can sit in the yard as long as they need to while we work out the last of the paper work over the next several days. We are going to pick up Caleb and Andy tommorrow morning at 9am at the entrance to the warf and bring them back to the island with us. I think the plan is to get them a custom to running the boat because having someone to operate our boat on a daily basis is the biggest need right now. Especially with all the food that will need to be ferried across. Things are looking good with all the paper work. We did end up in Terry Snows office today and it looks like it will be about half a week before all the papers are finished. But we have a wear house and a guy in St.Marc so once everything is released it will be easly for us to store and move stuff around. Thanks again so much for all your help and making this thing really happen.

Matt
On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 4:56 PM, CT wrote:
Thank you, Joy. I spoke with Caleb and he and Andy are ready.

Caleb has borrowed a fuel transfer pump from a construction firm on board. It will be plenty adequate to move fuel to a truck.

The fuel barrels were about the first on the boat, so many containers need to be moved before it is accessible to your truck. Your folks need to know that regarding timing and plans.

BTW, Caleb has spoken personally with Terry Snow who is willing to help us and seems to have political capital at higher governmental levels. I mention that as a possible reource should we have problems with customs or paperwork.

Chris Thompson

PS caleb's satphone texting is working again, but it appears unreliable.

On Feb 8, 2010, at 3:34 PM, Dan irvine wrote:

Hi
Matthew is down the road several miles from St Marc. He won’t have e-mail until later this afternoon. The SAT phone is w/ Dan at the moment. I will have him call Caleb when he returns.

The plan is to pick Caleb & Andy up in front of the immigration building by 9 tomorrow morning.

Joy

On February 08, 2010 at 2:31 PM, CT wrote:

Matt -

Don't know if you get this in time to be useful.

I texted the guys that you were there at immigration. Turns out the sat phone has received NO texts since last night.

I called Caleb @ 2:15 PM, told him you were there. He is borrowing a cellphone to contact you... if that works.

I guess they are at the dock but may be sending out a scout to find you.

I suggest you call caleb satphone if you need contact. TXT no good at the moment.

Advise me also what your plans are. Ship not to be unloaded till tomorrow.

The boys have a transfer pump for fuel to your truck. Drums stay on board.

Chris Thompson

Update 8Feb10 via E-Mail from Cam Engert

2010-02-08T16:25:00.000-05:00

Friends of ENY-NE District,

There’s good news and bad news on this front. Your prayers are needed—both praise and intercession.

The first ship arrived in the port of St. Marc yesterday (Sunday) at 8am, but the passengers and containers were not allowed off the ship. In fact, it is probable that the containers are still on the ship as I’m writing this email. It seems that where there was no Customs before, suddenly there is, and although there are supposedly signs all over Haiti that humanitarian aid will not be taxed or impeded in any way, that’s not always the case. As with so many places where corruption abounds, money speaks. We’ve been hearing stories from others who are trying to get into Haiti with containers and other aid, that ‘for a certain fee’, the agents will ensure the containers are released.

That is the fear of the Haiti Team right now (which now includes Caleb Thompson and Andy Pratt) and they have made an urgent request for our prayers. The latest word is that the containers will have to remain on the ship for three days. If/when released, the goods will be transported by the Haiti Team to a warehouse that missionary, Dan Irvine, has obtained. They will attempt to keep the whole process very low key, so as not to attract unwanted attention. Please pray for success and safety in this regard.

The other ‘glitch’ has to do with the way the fuel was shipped. The original agreement was that the captain would release the fuel from his own tanks, which was to be easily pumped into tankers that were being arranged for by the Haiti Team. Upon arrival, it was discovered that the fuel had been shipped in drums, which need to be emptied and returned to the shipping company ASAP. Now the Haiti Team has to come up with a different plan for getting fuel from the drums into their holding tanks. Pray that they can do so.

Meanwhile, back here in the states, the second ship, carrying our third container and Pastor Josh from Calvary Chapel, Spokane, WA, is preparing to leave port. It was slated to leave today but we have no word yet whether it has.

These are tense moments for all of us who have invested in this project. Will extortion rule the day? Will our containers get hijacked? Will our money be wasted? Will this turn into a sad story of good intentions gone wrong? If you believe that, you would also have to believe that what has happened thus far has all been a coincidence and an accident. I think we all know that’s just not true. So let’s trust the same God who instigated this whole affair and provided extravagantly in so many ways to bring it to completion. Amen? Amen!

Cam Engert
Office Administrator
Eastern New York/New England District

Update La Gonave resupply 2/8/10

2010-02-08T13:12:00.002-05:00

As you know, we have had a tense and uncertain problem with bought fuel drums not appearing on the ship manifest. That is work in progress, I contacted the shipper and I will give them a few hours and follow up on it. The shipper has our proof of payment but must get the paperwork on the ship changed in a proper manner.

The other problem is getting the base personnel to meet our guys. At about noon I learned that Matt and others were in St. Marc and hoping to meet Caleb and Andy at the immigrations office. There were communications problems between base and our guys, but I texted Caleb and hopefully they will meet soon. That is great news and an answer to prayer.

The problem with getting containers released remains ahead. I do not fully understand it, but it is complex and has our guys concerned. Please understand that I receive only occasional snippets of text from the guys via sat phone, since they are hoarding their pre-paid minutes since they must last for 5 weeks. The best I can determine is that it involves ships paperwork. Perhaps either Dan or Terry Snow can get this solved, they are both veterans of Haiti.

I would ask that for continued prayer that this food and medicine be expedited to Anse-a-Galets.

Update 8Feb10 1150EST

2010-02-08T11:55:00.000-05:00

Well, now the customs guys won't let the boxes out of the yard for 3 days. Argh. Keep praying.

Security update St. Marc 04 Feb 10 - 0830

2010-02-08T11:40:00.001-05:00

For those of you who are getting this update for the first time, let me know if you don't want to receive any more of them - we're not trying to spam, just sharing the progress on thw work to reach the people on the island of La Gonave in Haiti. Please visit our blog and facebook site (links below my signature line) and let me know if you have any questions. I apologize for not including all of you earlier, just found all those email addresses buried in a folder within the address book.

This morning, 8 Feb -

Still need to pray for smooth release of goods. Trucks are standing by in St. Marc, port is secure by Haiti standards, still trying to resolve paperwork issues (don't have specifics at this time). The owners of the shipping company are involved now and are getting things done. We are taking notes here so as to prevent next time. Caleb and Andy are with the ship and are in communication with Terry Snow at the YWAM base and with us by satphone. The Wesleyan hospital folks are helping to resolve the paperwork issues as the trucks are idling. The 1000 gal of diesel we purchased and shipped is in drums, as opposed to in the ship's tanks, so there are transfer problems to work through.

Josh is standing by in Palm Beach, using his remaining free time to nail down a satphone and a supplier of chloroquine and IV bags. Monarch Shipping doesn't have a good picture of ship departure date or time at this point but this CONEX #3 with 44,000 lbs of food could ship out as early as today. Lots of issues that Monarch can't control, including customs and Coast Guard inspections. If there's a significant delay he can drive up to Ft. Pierce, where the sorting and palleting of our airlift goods takes place.

We are waiting for funds to fill the Wesleyan Church District account so we can pre-order another container. At this point, I'm preparing to leave for Palm Beach sometime next week. I'll either help build another shipment and ride the boat or hook up with the Bahamas Methodist Habitat planes flying out to Nassau, Inagua, and then the island. So far, we have been able to get almost a thousand pounds of FREE medical supplies to the Hospital that way. There are still about 35,000 refugees in Anse a Galets alone and that population is still growing. None have food.

Please continue to pray for security for Caleb, Andy and Josh, and secure and God glorifying food distribution through the churches on La Gonave. Additionally, please pray for funding for another container or two. It looks like the forecast remains hunger with a chance of violence.

Urgent Prayer 7Feb10 1943

2010-02-07T21:14:00.004-05:00

Below is something Terry Snow of YWAM sent back on 1/17. I think it says a lot:

"When I am weak He is strong! If we help others within our ability we have done an awesome thing, but when we help others beyond our ability that is acts of faith that causes men to glorify GOD!"

Please pray, seriously pray, and pass along the request to others that our conex's pass to our mission hands safely tomorrow. FWD this for prayer if you like, it is a real and unanticipated mess.

There are some problems with paperwork and customs. I have sent all documentation redundantly to our several organizations in the area. Matt came through in an answer to my prayer -- he just happened to be at the computer -- and has printed all I sent and will carry to S. Marc tomorrow. Thank God for that.

We face significant problems tomorrow. YWAM is standing by to help, they are incredibly able. We have been thorough and done all we can do. But we need God's help, guys.

Update Lagonave resupply 2/7/20 - word from the Irvines and base

2010-02-07T19:29:00.001-05:00

Many of you know how difficult communication has been due lack of telephones and the intense workload our mission folks have been enduring. They get more emails per day than most of us in a year. The time just isn't there with such grave need in Haiti.

It was amazing to hear from base, they know we are coming, and Dan has a distribution plan that will feed the people in Anse while reducing danger to our people!

The emails below are in order of most recent. As you can see, the folks, boat and trucks will be in St. Marc tomorrow to move the supplies to a safe warehouse and begin delivery.

There's a lot of mission left in this effort, so please continue to pray for safety and efficient delivery of food to the people, and that they see it is God Himself who is supplying their daily bread. Also, please pray for Josh Nerren who is in FL getting ready to accompany the next conex down by the same route. He needs a sat phone, please pray that God supply him graciously for all his needs and for his safety.

Message from Joy Irvine 2:20 EST 2/7/10 (today)

Hello Chris,
I have been trying to get Caleb via SAT phone. I know that Butch was in St. Marc today, and is planning to pick up the things tomorrow. As I mentioned in a previous e-mail he has 2 semi trucks that will haul containers and fuel drums to a warehouse in St Marc.
Joy Irvine

Message from Matt Tegen at base, 1:00 PM EST 2/7/10

Hi,
Its good to hear that everything will be released tommorrow morning. THats what are contacts on the dock have been saying as well but its nice to hear it from somebody on the boat. We had somebody at the port this morning looking at the boat but there is nothing that we could do since the port is closed on sundays. Right now myself and several others are planning to be up there first thing tommorrow morning with two truck that can carry one container load a piece. We plan to arrive whenever the port opens around 8 or 9. Also I am going to contact Caleb and let him know the plan as soon as I finish this email. Its really exciting seeing all the logistics of this coming together. Please let me know if there is anything else that we need to do in the mean time.
Thanks,
Matt

Message from Dan Irvine 12:30 PM EST 2/7/10 (Yesterday)
Hi Chris,
Thank you for all you are doing. Our boat and truck seems to be the best way to get supplies in. We did get a small infusion of medical supplies today. IV fluids are still a great need.
We have decided for security reasons to rent a warehouse in St. Marc. We have 2 semi trucks to haul the supplies to the warehouse. This gives us the opportunity to ship things in smaller quantities with more discretion and more control. A lot of distributions even those done by military are done in circus atmosphere, but they can be dangerous. I saw a body on the ground after a recent distribution in PAP, so low key in small quantities will work better. A cavalry charge causes a riot. J
Thanks again. I hope to see you while you are here.
Dan

update 12:30 2/7/10 La Gonave resupply

2010-02-07T12:54:00.003-05:00

Please forgive my hurried writing here, I will string together an update of the last hour. This is about typical of every time we hit action points in this mission.

So I hear from the boys who inform me that: they are docked but the lobster boat is not there yet, do I know where they are? Nope. I email Matt Tegen.

Then: the boys say nobody and no supplies leave the ship until tomorrow. But they can pump fuel. I email Matt.

Then: maybe the boys can leave the ship, but no cargo. Maybe they can carry off the expensive antibiotics in a duffel bag but unsure. Where's the boat? Dunno.

Then: ships master tells the boys he never heard of any fuel to be pumped to our boat/truck. Do we have proof of payment? Some tense text messages later I am asked to email receipts to the master via an account in Ukrainia. Ok, now we're getting somewhere -- I email the invoice and receipt of wire transfer. Then they bounce because the master's account won't accept over 10Kb size, i.e. a simple text message.

Then I call RJ at Monarch shipping in FL, who calls the ship master in Haiti: oh, you did pay for the fuel but it is in 18 drums, not bulk as you ordered. Plus, I WANT my empty fuel drums back dude.

I email Matt and base again and suggest they punt. Butch is expecting fuel that can be pumped to a fuel truck or boat via a hose. I hope they can work with the drums.

I will keep you posted, but please keep this matter in prayer.

The ship arrived 8 AM 2/7/10! La Gonave resupply

2010-02-07T10:05:00.001-05:00

They have arrived in St. Marc! Text messages from Caleb below:

08:05 PULNG IN. LEFT DAN MSG. U COULD TO. HOT HERE. SMEL CHARCOAL
08:50 STIL DOCKNG. PIER MOSTLY CLEAR. SEE 1 ARMD GUARD. HEAR FRM U ON LINK UPS?
AT LEAST 5 HAITN CUSTOMS AGNTS HAVE BRD'D.

Butch has not yet showed up with the lobster boat yet. Please pray they don't have problems and get there in a timely manner.

Folks, the customs area real concern. Please pray that they do not charge us onerous fees. We have no budget for that, plus it is wrong on many levels for them to extort fees from goods intended for their own poor.

I have a communication from Dan Irvine, the first one we have had in two weeks, and I will share that later. He has a plan to distribute food, but there are serious concerns for security and safety. Please keep this in frequent prayer.

La Gonave resupply - ship position 17:15 2/6/10

2010-02-06T20:01:00.002-05:00

As Pete said this morning, "I hope they wait to turn right for a while".

Caleb reports fair seas and a relaxing day. The crew says their arrival time in St. Marc is variable owing to the effect of the ocean current. Still looks like Sunday morning, but tomorrow for certain.

The relaxing will be over tomorrow when they have to hump rice sacks down to the lobster boat.

Ironically, the current the ship is steaming into is the very current that carries Haitian boat people (they typically jump off in northern La Gonave) north around Cuba and deposits them near Palm Beach. A reverse trip.

A request from the La Gonave resupply team

2010-02-06T13:46:00.000-05:00

The request is direct and simple, if you could help. Please forward the link to the Wesleyan/Calvary Spokane resupply mission to at least 2 or more people who are unfamiliar with our mission. Ask them to do the same with several of their friends and family. And so on. We need to let people know of the desperate situation on La Gonave.

http://actuallyhelpinghaiti.blogspot.com/

We need to get the word out to more people, and we feel this is a good way (and easy) to do so. The website holds all the information, photos, and videos of all our efforts. Anyone who is unfamiliar with the plight of La Gonave, our base, and the resupply effort can learn everything in one location.

We have substantial obstacles to sustaining our effort. If more people knew, then more people could pray with us. If more people knew, perhaps others would respond financially with generosity... as you have already done.

The website has been a vehicle for raising much needed funds, they continue to pour into District. Many from out of state, and many from outside the local church family. God has done great things, with over $65000 donated and converted to food, medicine, and supplies. The reality is that this must be sustained, it is only 12 days or so of food for the increasing population of Anse-a-Galets. Please pray that God feed the people in a place with no food.

La Gonave resupply - ship position 09:19 EST 2/6/10

2010-02-06T10:23:00.002-05:00

Good morning. Just heard from Caleb and it appears they are making good time as they follow the Cuban coast toward Haiti.

The map above has been updated.

As you may recall, they rented a sat phone but are limiting communication to text (sent to my email by the miracle of technology) since the phone charge is $11 per minute.

Here is Caleb's recent message:

ROUGH ARV:SUN0900 FRIENDS W/OFFCRS,CREW,HTN PSNGR2,MISSNRY4. WILL TEAM UP

I take this to mean they have made friends with the ship's officers and crew, 2 Haitian passengers, and 4 missionaries. They will work together.

Also, I mentioned that Pete is working on getting free meds and supplies for air delivery to La Gonave. I know a few skeptics wondered why they would be free, but they are and in the video (linked below) you will see pallets labeled "Hands & Feet for Haiti". That is us.

You will also see goods destined for Dan Irvine, PAP, who is running a MASH unit in Petit Goave.

Our friend and brother Josh Nerren has checked inventory of our container #3 (thanks, Josh!), and is now working with Pete in Ft. Pierce to get air supply to the island. He made the raw video of the Hangar and supplies, and has photos of our latest container.

Please pray that God open the door to air transport to La Gonave, it would provide speedy relief to a difficult situation and a long supply chain.

Haiti Project Update

2010-02-05T12:31:00.000-05:00

Friends of ENY-NE District,

The money continues to come in daily for the District Haiti Relief Project from our churches and from other districts and from friends of friends and relatives of friends. And we’re not only receiving money through the U.S. Mail but money is also being wired to us from a church in Spokane Washington, and we’re receiving donations through the Hands and Feet for Haiti blog site (www.actuallyhelpinghaiti.blogspot.com).

If you haven’t had the chance, also check out the photos of the first shipment on our group Facebook page. The easiest way to get to it is by first going to the district website— www.enynewesleyan.org --and clicking ‘Join Us on Facebook’ from the Quicklink list (top left).

When it looked like we would reach the $20k point, which is what is needed to fill and ship a container, we gave our friends from Long Lake the ‘go-ahead’ to begin the process of ordering more groceries and fuel. The pastor from the Spokane church, one of our partners in this project, is in Palm Beach to oversee the container packing and to travel on the ship to Haiti. The ship is scheduled to leave port on February 8, but we learned from the first shipment, that date is, by no means, fixed. But you’ll be glad to know that the first ship finally left port on Wednesday afternoon.

You’ll definitely want to check out the blog because there’s a video posted of a newscast featuring our Caleb Thompson and Andy Pratt and the desperate need in Haiti for food and supplies and the creative way that Caleb and Andy have chosen to get there.

The video is downloadable. If you use a computer and multi-media projector or TV in church, you can play it for the entire congregation this Sunday. Here’s one way to download it…

If you have RealPlayer (free download), a ‘download this video’ ribbon appears over the video box as you mouse over it. Click the ribbon to start the download. When the download is complete, mouse over it in the Downloader window to see options for sharing it or converting it to a different media form (mp3, Blackberry, etc.). Make your choices and save it to your desktop or wherever you want to store it. It defaults to a media file that is used with a PC or Mac and default-saves to ‘My Library’ in RealPlayer.

Thanks to all the churches and individuals that have been so generous in giving to this project. What we have accomplished together is significant! After this second ship sails, we will have sent over 130,000 pounds of food, lots of medicines and medical supplies and 3000 gallons of fuel. That is awesome and will be a real blessing to the people of Haiti!

Pray…

• that the first ship and the guys aboard arrive safely
• that there are no unexpected custom fees
• that the food will be protected until it reaches it’s intended destination
• that missionary Dan Irvine’s lobster boat has no trouble on the multiple trips back and forth to LaGonave transporting the food.
• for Pastor Dan and the Haiti Team as they work out the logistics for speedy and efficient distribution
• for every missionary and every relief worker in the country as they bear up under such difficult circumstances. Surely this will take supernatural help
• that God would be honored above all

Cam Engert
Office Administrator
Eastern New York/New England District

In the news!

2010-02-04T21:46:00.005-05:00

They cut out any mention Caleb made of God, BTW.

WPTV story follows:

RIVIERA BEACH -- In the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, relief workers, medical supplies and food are needed very badly. But the airports aren't exactly rolling out the welcome mat.
"Our biggest hurdle was, getting down there," said Jim Vance of Vance Construction in West Palm Beach.
He's bringing down heavy construction equipment to aid in the cleanup and reconstruction.
"Flying it over's not an option, it had to be shipped," said Vance.
Luckily for Jim and others like missionary and carpenter Caleb Thompson, Monarch Shipping Lines has offered aid workers free passage for the three day trip aboard their ship, "The Monarch Empress."
"Our Wesleyan Church mission base on the island of Laganas was swamped with refugees. They said if you don't find some way to immediately get us a lot of food here, were going to have to evacuate. Which would mean losing the only hospital on the island," said Thompson.
"We've never had passengers before and it's fine I like it because they're new faces, you know?" said the Empress' Chief Officer Woladymyr Kuznetsov.
While the passengers may be new and exciting, for the crew, going to Haiti, especially aHaiti ravaged by natural disaster, is not. They were anchored just off shore during the quake.
"The ship began shaking. It's pretty far from Port-au-Prince but I felt it," said Kuznetsov.
For now, the aid workers just hope they can help.
"We're little people and we're gonna be little people at the end. We'll just disappear. Hopefully other people will take our place and that will keep happening until things get online again," said Thompson.

Update La Gonave resupply - FINALLY UNDERWAY!

2010-02-04T17:01:00.004-05:00

There they go, slipping away from the dock at 3:09 PM. Our thoughts and prayers accompany them.

In a nice development, they are traveling with a very experienced and capable man. Roy Dixon (I'll find his website information and ask Mike to post it later) who reconditions ambulances in England and ships them all over the world. He, and I believe an ambulance, is on board headed for St. Marc as well. I believe he is affiliated with YWAM, but in any event he has much experience in dealing with ships and customs. His experience in Haiti could be useful.

Caleb said the crew is quite a mix: the Captain is Ukrainian and the crew is Honduran with other nationals included. I had an image of crews from pirate movies, but Caleb said they wore normal clothes and were hard-working and seemingly decent guys.

In other news: between District and CC Spokane we have funded a third conex. Intended shipping is Feb. 8th, but expect delays. The funding keeps coming and the need on La Gonave increases hourly.

I have not added items to determine the weight, but I did ask Mario at Trujillo Supply to pack the container to the gills. It should be in the 45+K pound range. Also District stepped out in faith to fund 2000 gallons of fuel for the base. This a lot of money folks, and answer to all our prayers.

Josh Nerren from Spokane is in Palm Beach verifying container quantities for us. We are trying to work out some malaria meds between him and our local Doc, then he will be assisting my brother Pete with an air supply of meds to the sand strip in Anse-a-Galets. If you did not see Pete's update on the website, please take a look and lift that matter up in prayer. Please pray that we can find a way to fly necessary medicine to the hospital in Anse, and that Pete establish the necessary connections to get meds and planes specifically consigned to our base. Please pray for Josh as we works with Pete, and that he get his medications in time and can join the Feb. 8th boat.

West Coast update 020410 - 1130

2010-02-04T14:32:00.002-05:00

Well, Josh Nerren is on the ground in Palm Beach - got in last night and has a car to get around in. Praise the Lord we have everything moving to get CONEX 3 loaded. He's rested and ready to go. But, to say that things are flowing well might be another way of saying that circumstances are pretty fluid. Here's a recent example:

Yesterday we had 6 aircraft lined up to help ferry supplies to Bahamas Methodist Habitat's (BHM) logistics hangar in Nassau. I got direct communications with the volunteer loadmaster at Mission Flights International (MFI) at Fort Pierce and he was poised to help us get more goods. What a saint. Last night it turned into one or two flights to Ft. Pierce to pick up our goods, but our man Josh, just arriving, will have a few hours in the afternoon to help MFI sort and stage the next loads, preparing for future flights that we are sure will come. But this morning it was one flight. And by the way, there just isn't a way to ensure that as it is flown and staged in Nassau that it will go to Anse-a-Galets. Kind of hard to take after all that effort to coordinate - and the promising new resources to get the materials to our folks in need. So within one hour our plan to stage FREE medical, shelter, and other supplies for pickup and delivery by air to La Gonave took a turn into the indefinite maybe of whenever.

Then an hour later, a call came that reversed the earlier concern. By second party communication, Nassau has confirmed the intended destination and that every effort will be made to get our tagged bundles directly to the island. Possibly even daily, depending on aircraft availability. And Josh's primary task this morning was postponed until tomorrow, so he's free to go help sort the goods now and take the time to develop more contacts with our aviation friends.

Hopefully this helps all of you see the need for prayer in all things. So much of what we do and see daily in our secure, safe, confortable world reduces our faith to trusting in what is seen. This is a small way in which we all can begin to put our trust in Him who asks us by faith to believe in Him, who provides us all things. The chief of all the best things being joy, and not just happiness that we got to have our way today.

A few prayer requests:
The people in Haiti, the staff and people on the island
Cool heads and diligence for Josh, Caleb and Andy
Lodging for Josh in FL
Success in airlifting medical supplies and shelter to the island
Funding for CONEX 4
A second missionary team member to accompany Josh

Thank you again for your involvement for the people who need our help and the good news of Jesus Christ.

Caleb and resupply mission on Florida TV TONIGHT 4Feb10

2010-02-04T13:52:00.004-05:00

Caleb chased down a news team working the dock. Good work.

Airs at 6 PM, will be online at 8 PM if you care to see it.

He had five minutes of camera time, but we don't know how they will edit it. He mentioned our website. He is not sure how much other info he was able to gag out.

News Channel 5
WPTV (NBC affiliate) W. Palm Beach FL
WPTV.com

Quick Update La Gonave resupply 2/3.1/10

2010-02-03T19:33:00.003-05:00

It is always exciting to see God's work, and also the unexpected manner in which He accomplishes it. New developments appear daily, even momentarily, and today is no exception.

Caleb and Andy are on board the Monarch Empress, precise sailing time is unclear -- either tonight or at daybreak. Josh Nerren, our new teammate from CC Spokane, is still travelling from WA to FL via Philly. Dunno why, except that his ticket is on SW airlines and they tend to make many local stops. Philly makes me nervous since they are well known for losing luggage. They get it to you eventually, but I'd like to see them attempt delivering to La Gonave.

Having been given the clearance by DS James, I have ordered the supplies and they will be packed into a container to be delivered 0700 tomorrow. Josh will be our partner in checking the delivery against the invoice, but this shipment should be easier to handle than the last since we don't have to coordinate with church group deliveries.

I did not hear from Matt Tegen at base today. I have heard from YWAM St. Marc, with whom we have good communication, and they advise concern about the Haitian customs apparatus being revived. Please pray that God protect us from onerous fees for which we have not budgeted.

A matter for prayer: details are unfolding, but our Veronica Thompson has been reassigned from her duties to work with YWAM Montana to raise funds for La Gonave. There are some challenges here, so please pray that they may begin work very soon. YWAM has tremendous energy and resources, and they are dedicated to serving God. I would love to have them partner with us. Would it not be odd to see 4 Thompson's working on the same mission? It is up to God how He assembles His teams, but of course I would be thrilled to see it happen like this.

Update La Gonave resupply 2/3/10

2010-02-03T14:21:00.001-05:00

We finally have a time: Caleb and Andy board the ship at 4 PM firm. In an interesting development -- and I would ask you to pray because the timeline is short -- Pastor Josh Nerren of the Calvary Chapel Spokane church is arriving in Florida this afternoon. As you may recall, they have contributed generously to this mission, in fact it would have been impossible without them. Josh feels led to serve at our base in Anse-a-Galets, and will leave either via our container ship (God willing) or stay and pack the next container for Anse-a-Galets and follow that to St. Marc. They really need help on the La Gonave base, and it will take young and faithful missionaries to do I. I am praying Josh makes this boat.

We have been working in faith to begin the process of organizing the next container without full certainty of funding it. I just spoke with the DS -- what a leader! -- who said "son, when Calvary Chapel Spokane gets their funds to us tomorrow we still won't have enough money to pay for the container. You go ahead and start ordering food tomorrow and I will find the money somewhere."

Dan urged us to send more containers as soon as possible. The need is great as you know. Please pray that the money continues to flow toward relieving the island and our base with food and fuel.

Update 2/2/10 La Gonave resupply mission

2010-02-02T15:23:00.001-05:00

More news on the shipping front: the ship leaves tomorrow about 12-3 PM. Yes, we have heard several departure dates before and we trust God that the timing be correct. This time the boys were told to be on the pier before 12 PM tomorrow to load their gear and antibiotics, so they believe this is the deal. I know everyone is eager for this to happen. It's probably the hardest on the boys, it's like the military where you are told to hurry up and then to wait.

Good news: this delay permitted Pete to send $500 via Western Union to the boys to carry to Dan/Butch. We had heard from Butch that they were out of money to pay native laborers. As you surmise, the banking system in Haiti is running on one cylinder if at all.

Good news: Pete has been working at communicating with the military to make them aware of the situation on La Gonave. We now have credible confirmation that element(s) of 24 MEU will be on island conducting assessment with a long-term plan of providing security and relief. Please pray that occurs, the Marines would be able to provide security for our shipment and people when our food/meds hits shore. Everyone from here to Anse is concerned about security for our folks since desperate nationals can act violently. The food has to be taken from the lobster boat and hand-loaded onto a truck for transport into town. Lots of things can go wrong here without a platoon of Marines...

More good news: our District has received as of today about $9000, and Pete's Calvary Chapel in Spokane about the same coming soon. We are looking to get another container started per Dan Irvine's request that we move quickly. It costs about $20,000 per container to pack and ship, and it would be nice to have enough funds to buy much needed fuel for the hospital generators.

Good news: Caleb and Andy rented a Sat phone for the trip so we can get accurate information about port security in St. Marc, and to better understand the needs of Anse-a-Galets. We tested it and everything works properly. Communication with them will be by texting since the cost of a call is $11 per minute!

Attached is Mike Wilcox's hit map of people visiting our website. I thought you might find it interesting how far word of our mission has spread.

So who are these men and what are they doing?

2010-02-02T10:17:00.003-05:00

Caleb Thompson and Andrew Pratt are native Long Lakers, both 29 years old; they attended Long Lake CS and respectively attended Binghamton University and the West Point Military Academy. Andy served six years as an officer in the army, including two tours in Iraq as a Tank Platoon Leader and six months as a supply officer. During the latter assignment, Andy was responsible for coordinating the movement of a large amount of equipment and supplies onto ocean vessels for transport from Kuwait to Germany. Caleb currently owns his own construction business and has a professional background in the field, having trained for four years under a Master Builder in Washington State. He has been on three missions’ trips in the past three years, including one to the La Gonave Base this past November.

Andy and Caleb have been lifelong friends and have backpacked over 25 countries together in their adult life. They hunt, camp and have collectively spent months in the Caribbean on various trips. They are critical thinkers who understand the gravity of the situation and environment they are about to enter into, and are well prepared to meet the challenges they will face there.

The day of the Haiti earthquake they felt led to find a practical means to bring relief to the suffering there. The Long Lake Wesleyan Church has been supporting a mission led by Pastor Dan Irvine on the island of La Gonave. During his November trip, Caleb established personal communication with the members of the base there, and contacted Pastor Irvine after the earthquake. Dan confirmed that his need was great and the details of the situation highlighted that the need for urgency was even greater than the news media indicated. Andy and Caleb have been in constant contact with shipping companies and currently have a shipper and bulk food supplier standing by to act immediately upon on a phone call and receipt of payment. The Wesleyan District, Pastor Paul James and Skip Trembley, were highly responsive and provided solid leadership and a concerted fundraising effort. Upon receiving the go-ahead from the Church, Andy and Caleb will schedule the shipment, head to Florida to facilitate it, ride that same boat to St. Marc and help Pastor Dan get the contents to his base. Christopher Thompson, Caleb's Father, has been working alongside Caleb and Andy throughout, and will serve as the communications link between this effort in Haiti and our support base back here.

Ships from Miami will leave on the 26th and 28th and the plan is in place and ready to be executed. There is no reason why 45,000 pounds of much needed food cannot be in La Gonave by early February if funding is met by this Sunday.

Update La Gonave resupply 1Feb10

2010-02-01T10:42:00.002-05:00

I entertained updating the blog with "I have bad news" to inform you that ship departure is delayed until tomorrow for unknown reasons. I refuse to do that, since we have seen daily God's hand in this mission and how delays have permitted advances in other areas. We would never have gotten 10,000 antibiotics had the ship not been delayed.

So I view it as good news that we have an opportunity to improve our mission today. At the moment I am working with District to see if funding is available for more medical supplies, or possibly cash money to carry to Dan. The Haitian banking system is as broken as the country, and we speculate that Dan is short of funds for buying goods and hiring laborers.

Perhaps you would pray with us that God show us what needs to be done today?

Brief update Hands and Feet for Haiti - Anse-a-Galets 013110

2010-02-01T01:47:00.006-05:00

Dear supporters,

As far as we know, the situation on La Gonave is as bad as before. Probably picked up another couple thousand refugees in the past few days, bringing the total to about 30,000 refugees. Water is still flowing there, hospital is still plugging away with what they have. No current emails from staff - could be bottlenecks in the ethernet. No change in distribution on the Haiti 'mainland'.

On the good side, I have the Bahamas Habitat (Methodist Missionary Flights) guys and the Missionary Flight (MFI) guys linking up to get 592 lbs of medical stuff direct to La Gonave. Still looking for a doc or two to fly with it - there's bunches of medical people flying out on MFI flights to PAP so we're hopeful to snag a couple. Pray for adventurous but capable volunteers. For you Navy buddies out there, I finally got a job as unpaid squadron duty officer - got a plane, got a payload, just need a body.

A Gideons rep from Arizona emailed me immediately when he knew of our need for bibles. We should see some work at the national level tomorrow to get those headed to the island by plane or boat. The Gideons team in Haiti is still reeling.

Funds are flowing into the ENYNE Wesleyan account - no number yet, but informally I'm told it's a significant amount. We're pretty sure that one of the next FCCM's (food container courier missionaries) has been called and is prepared to go to Miami. Hey, a new acronym! Is that cool or what?

Another really great piece of news is the revival of sorts breaking out in Long Lake's Wesleyan Church. This is really the best news today - broken hearts and transformed lives. Let's pray that this finds it's way to the people on La Gonave, and real 'hope and change' is given to them. This morning, Caleb and Andy had an AWESOME worship experience in a little baptist church in Palm Beach - a drive-by worship. The pastor just called them right up to give their testimony - major fire lighter there - and Caleb said he prayed extra hard that he wouldn't say anything stupid. Must have been answered. Just worship and communion, like a super charge before they walk up the gangway to the ship tomorrow. Caleb was on cloud 9 tonight.

Chris and I both experienced (in separate places and times) what had to be the fruit of prayer from lots of directions. Conviction of sin, deep worship, renewal for the fight, recharged all the way around. Pastor Ken at Calvary Spokane, along with all the pastors and servants there, are eager to run through this door that the Lord opened - talk about total commitment and trust in Him! The Lord spoke pretty clearly in Ken's message from 1 John 5:1-3. We're to be ready to follow him, learn from Him, and GO. Interesting quote "God doesn't anoint plans, he anoints men of prayer" - E.M. Bounds.

Tomorrow is the beginning of plowing new ground - getting more med pallets lined up, helping to set up the next containers of food, connecting with the Gideons, finding links to communicate with the 24 MEU, connecting to Senate and House offices in DC, inviting other local churches to participate, calling the Spokane Homebuilder association, tickling the Spokane Spokesmand newspaper editor, connecting with the Calvary folks in Boston and SoCal, solving world hunger (oh, that's the UN's job). I predict I'll get maybe two of these things done.

Prayer requests:
The suffering and disheartened on the island, all over Haiti
The staff continuing to serve despite the hardships
Caleb and Andy and the food going to St. Marc
The coming problems of delivery and distribution
Doctor or med staff to escort the med pallet to Anse a Galets
Bibles for us or other missionaries to distribute
Those called to serve on the island in caring, helping, sharing the gospel with all
Communication line with the 24 MEU to coordinate security, other assistance
Involvement by the US Senate and House reps
Long term aid supply to the island
Where Pete should stop with this list....

If you haven't seen it already... Anse a Galets sometime before 25Jan10 as seen by the press...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/35141453#35110260

Here's a link to a current video of the PAP airport on the MFI site - view of the ramp as the Caravan touches down. Just add cows and it's complete chaos.

http://missionaryflights.org/field-reports/155-on-the-ground-in-port-au-prince

Thank you for your prayer and support of this small effort to be Jesus' hands and feet to these desperate folks. The clock is ticking for them and thus for us.

Update Wesleyan La Gonave resupply 31Jan10

2010-01-31T17:23:00.002-05:00

Prayers answered! As you last knew, we had on short notice had help from our physician and staff to fax scripts for large quantities antibiotics to Florida. Our unhelpful national chain store refused the script.

Caleb called Saturday morning to say that he could go no further. The big W store had promised to forward the scripts to an independent pharmacy who could help, Christian folks, but instead informed Caleb on Saturday morning that they destroyed the scripts and would no longer assist.

Our local physician and the PA in Newcomb were both out of town. We were out of solutions and went to prayer. I thought I should give Sandy a call at home, and she volunteered to go to the office and reissue scripts, maybe stay at the office to unsnarl problems. This time the scripts went to the right hands as it was no doubt intended to be.

The intial contact was superb, so if you are ever in Palm Beach please thank My Community Pharmacy. They in turn directed the guys to other stores in a chain sequence, everyone sending them to someone helpful. The guys bought out the available inventory at every place until they depleted their assigned budget. The grand total is 10,130 pills of various antibiotics. Don't get sick in Palm Beach, they are out of antibiotics. If anyone needs a list of medication names and numbers, I have it. Andy is very thorough and always gives detailed phone reports.

I am so grateful that God is here to open the doors, and also to arrange the timing of events. I have been chafing over delays in sailing for St. Marc, but without the shipping delay there would be few antibiotics. God knows what the people of La Gonave need, and when they need it.

Another matter for prayer is this: my brother Pete Thompson is working successfully toward getting a light plane to fly straight to Anse-a-Galets with a pallet load of medicine. Prayer is needed because he needs to find a doctor to take the right seat, and must coordinate with Butch at the base to get a truck to the airport. Communication with base is very difficult for reasons you can imagine. We also need funding, they don't ship for free although it is under $1000. It appears that the meds will be free of charge, hard to believe, but apparently supply is overtaking the distribution network in PAP.

Here is the answer to the big question: it appears the Monarch Empress will sail tomorrow. She has been delayed by Coast Guard inspections which are backlogged by the amount of ship traffic. I'll update as soon as I have firm news.

MSNBC report on La Ganove

2010-01-31T17:22:00.000-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Other Parts of Haiti Update Saturday, January 30, 2010

2010-01-30T18:38:00.002-05:00

his appears to be from a Catholic mission. Please note the desperate conditions they face there. Famine looms over the land. Please pray that God shine his light into this dark and troubled nation, and that we open our hearts in love to those in need.

Fr. Roosevelt reports that food is becoming more difficult to find on the mainland. When food is available, it is mostly rice. Oil and beans are not available from any merchant. Even if merchants have food for sale, they are reluctant to sell too much because they are afraid they will run out of food to feed themselves and their families. After finding rice in Mirogoan last Monday, Movil Camille took the chaloup from Pointe-a-Raquette to Mirogoan on Wednesday to try to purchase additional food. He was able to get a small amount in Mirogoan, but he had to take the boat farther west to purchase enough food to make the trip worthwhile. Father sent the Director of the chapel in Ti Palmiste to St. Marc, north of Port-au-Prince, yesterday to purchase more food. He has decided he must go back into Port-au-Prince, where it is rumored that food is available, on Monday. Father will need to rent a truck to take the food from Port-au-Prince to the dock at Monwe which is north of the city. A sailboat will bring the rice directly to Pointe-a-Raquette from Monwe. Father will take the chaloup to Anse-Galets and travel by motorcycle back to Pointe-a-Raquette to meet the sailboat. This is a very indirect route to get supplies to Pointe-a-Raquette, but it is not possible to travel south from Port-au-Prince to Mirogoan with supplies. The roads are blocked with rubble south of the capital.

Because of your generosity, Father already has purchased about 10,000 pounds of food, which will provide about 40,000 meals. This food has been distributed throughout the parish of St. Louis, from Picmi and Opak, which can be reached only by boat, and to the mountain towns. Father’s truck is not working well enough to travel the mountain roads, so the people are coming down from the mountains with donkeys to take food back to their villages. Distribution is occurring under the direction of the chapel directors. No food from any international source has been received in Pointe-a-Raquette since the US Navy distributed food for about 500 people 10 days ago. Your donations are keeping the people in Pointe-a-Raquette and the surrounding areas from starvation.

Here is a message received this morning from Fr. Roosevelt:
We give all the people in Pointe a Raquette some food. We go in every house to give a marmite of rice. They are very very glad. For Ti Palmiste I gave Mme. Emile money to go to Saint Marc to buy some food for people who are very hungry. Pointe a Raquette is full of people. I do not know exactly what I am going to do with Hunger. Thank the people giving money to save lives in Pointe a Raquette.

God will continue to assist you and protect your life.
May the almighty living God bless your mission to help the poorest of the poor.

Fr Roosevelt