Planting Seeds...Physically and Spiritually

Wow, another week of new experiences. Things have quieted down a little bit with one of the ECHO interns, Jenny, and the ECHO-Haiti Director’s wife, Paige, leaving for the states on Monday. We drove them out to the Pignon grass airstrip and said good-bye leaving four of us for morning devotions and meal times for the remaining weeks here.

Tuesday and Wednesday I worked on a Visitor’s Packet for the HAFF mission. HAFF often has churches interested in their ministry or sending a work team. To better communicate the mission’s ministries and guide teams interested in coming down they needed an updated packet with information about the mission, traveling here, staying here, the culture, etc. I actually thought it was a fun project to work on because, again, it showed me how much I have learned over the past two months. When I was preparing to come to Haiti I really didn’t have any idea what to expect. Now I feel very comfortable here and can even communicate in the native language. What an encouragement to look back and see all God has done, both physically in teaching me, but emotionally and spiritually as well.

I finished the packet Wednesday afternoon and sent copies to the director of the mission and the stateside mission office. Hopefully they will make comments and changes to make a truly complete packet!

Thursday, Carolyn, Beth, Tim and I went out to a local farmer’s field to plant sorghum. We recently finished a sorghum variety trial at HAFF and showed the different varieties to some local farmers, as talked about in previous weblogs. The farmers shared which varieties they were interested in and would like to try growing in their own gardens. The problem now is how to supply all those farmers with enough seed to try these successful varieties?

HAFF does not have any land next to water and in the next few months Haiti will begin to shift into the dry season. This is a problem for the sorghum. HAFF does have some irrigation, but it would not produce enough water for the sorghum to grow well and produce seed. To solve the problem we rented some land from a few local farmers who own land next to the river. We will plant this land with the sorghum varieties that were successful and let them produce seed. We will harvest the seed and then distribute it to the farmers who are interested.

Friday was a really fun day! This week HAFF has a work team from Chattanooga, TN visiting. They are a fun group of 8 people who truly have a heart to serve for the week they are here. There is a doctor and a nurse on the team, so they have been volunteering in HAFF’s clinic most days. Yesterday, a large group of us loaded up a truck with medical supplies and drove out to a town called Labadu for an outpatient clinic.

The drive there was an adventure within itself, as are most trips here. Again the road was muddy in places and we almost got stuck twice. Our drive finally ended when we did get stuck in a huge bog of mud at the bottom of a hill. Luckily the church where the clinic was supposed to be held was just up the hill and around the corner, maybe a ¼ mile away. We all unloaded the truck and carried the supplies and things the rest of the way.

By the time we got there, there were already about 30 people waiting to be seen. Who knows how early they must have gotten up to walk there just to see a doctor? For many, this may be their first and only time to see a doctor in their lives. That is such a crazy and humbling thought for me.

The church was an open structure with no walls and a tin roof. Inside they had set up two rooms by tying sheets in between poles. Inside each sheeted off room was a bed and a chair. The doctor from the work team saw patients in one room, and Dr. Jerry, who is an American dentist that works with HAFF six months out of the year, saw patients in the other room. It was a pretty crazy set up, patients seeing the doctor on one side and Dr. Jerry pulling teeth on the other side.

The nurse had a small table outside of the two rooms and she would take blood pressures, heart rates, listen to people’s lungs, and get their complains before they went in to see the doctor. Beth and I started the day playing with the children. There were so many kids! We had bubbles that we blew and the kids would run around to catch them, and long balloons that could be blow up and twisted into dogs and hats and other things. The kids really liked this.

After about an hour, the nurse said that she needed more help and wanted to know if anyone else knew how to take blood pressures. I do, so I went and helped her! This was the highlight of my week! I would call the next patient in line, sit them down, take their blood pressure, write it down, and wait for the nurse to tell me what she got for their heart rate and lung sounds. I would then write these down. We also worked with a translator, which was a huge help because I am severely lacking the Creole vocabulary when it comes to medical terms. The translator would ask what their complaint was and I would write that down. Then we would move the patient to another chair to wait for the doctor and call the next one in.

It was so fun to get to work as an assistant. Also, toward the end of the day the nurse said she needed a break, so I got to take the heart rates and listen to their lungs as well! Oh it was so cool! I can’t tell you how good it felt to connect with each of the patients one-on-one and to help them. Other members of the work team would pray for people as they finished visiting the doctor. I believe God really showed up in this outreach!

The clinic finally ended in the afternoon and we saw the rain clouds coming. After they pulled the truck out of the mud in the morning they left it at the bottom of the hill. So we grabbed our stuff and headed back down the hill to the truck. All the Haitians at the clinic helped carry stuff and walked us down to the truck. After the truck was loaded and we started driving off, we could turn around and see the street filled with Haitians waiving us good-bye. It was a powerful moment.