“The faithless will be fully repaid for their ways, and the good man rewarded for his.” Proverbs 14:14
Hi! This past week was busy with both the school and medical programs. The students wrote their 2nd semester exams throughout the week. We will be having a meeting with the parents on Thursday and the report cards will be handed out at that time. The children will be on Easter break until April 13th when the 3rd semester will commence.
Silin Jean took a tumble near his home in the Fond Parisien area and badly broke his arm by the elbow. His father took him to the Love a Child mission to seek out medical care. After an x-ray was taken it was determined that he needed surgery. I contacted Raymond Cloutier, who is a medical engineer in Florida. He currently is working with some of the best orthopedic surgeons in Haiti by making it possible for them to perform hip replacement surgeries right here in Haiti. Dr. Nau is one of the orthopedic surgeons in the program and he agreed to donate his services. We drove Silin and his father up to the Baptist Mission on Monday morning and met with Dr. Nau and another orthopedic surgeon from Florida who were working together at doing a hip replacement that day. They agreed that Silin needed surgery and Dr. Bernard, who is the director of the hospital approved that the surgery could be held that day. The only cost involved was the hospital bed, medicine and operating room charge. Two pins were put in place to properly position the bones to the elbow joint and Silin was discharged from the hospital the next day. We give the Lord thanks that a way was found to help Silin get the surgery that he needed. He will need to have the pins removed in one months’ time. Pray that the bones will now properly heal and he will have full use of his arm again. We drove them back home to the Fond Parisien area on Tuesday afternoon.
Cynthia, Carmillo and Calwens all went for cat scans this week. The hydrocephalus surgeries started on April 4th. The plane was late in leaving Miami, so the neurosurgery team could only do 3 surgeries at Hopital La Paix on Saturday. We ended up with 5 of the mothers and their children sleeping overnight here at Coram Deo. It worked out well and the mothers were comfortable. We are providing the breakfast and supper meals for the parents and children staying at the hospital. Everyone here is pitching in to help prepare and distribute the food. The team examined Carmillo’s cat scan and it was determined that they couldn’t help him with a surgery. Please pray for Carmillo and his mother Yolande. Yolande is only 17 years old. She got pregnant after being raped and ended up needing a caesarean operation because Carmillo was born with an already enlarged head. She is a good mother and has been looking after Carmillo well. We drove them home Sunday morning. Jaezer Elima is another baby that also couldn’t be helped. We drove him and his mother home to the La Tremblay area Sunday afternoon. It looks like Calwens will be added to the surgical list. The neurosurgery team started surgery early on Sunday morning. Pray for all the children who will be receiving surgery. It is an amazing thing to see children come out of surgery with heads no longer under intracranial pressure.
For the last couple of months there has been another boy around Manu’s age playing with the children in the yard. I found out about him one day when it was time to hand out snacks and the children came and said don’t forget Mackary. I asked them who is Mackary and that is when I met him. He hasn’t caused any trouble and goes home at the end of the day. One of these days I will have to find out where his home is and make sure that his family knows he is hanging out here. Today I came home from bringing Jaezer Elima and his mother home and noticed there was another boy in the yard who I had never seen before. I went up to him and asked him who he was. He told me that he was Mackary’s brother. I call him Ti-Mackary (Little Mackary).
There was an interesting incident on the Tabarre Bridge this week. A crowd of people were watching the “Bird Woman”, who was just under the top of the bridge in what was a small cave-like opening. Around 50 people were on the dry riverbed looking up and wondering how she got there. She couldn’t have climbed up the cement column and people standing on the top of the bridge were looking down also trying to figure out how she got to where she was (that is why they called her the “bird woman”). The fire department eventually came and removed her from her “nest”.
The neighborhood has been quiet with shooting for a long while, but at around 11:30pm Friday evening there was a bunch of gunshots, which were very close. Our next-door neighbor put on his backyard spotlights. We heard voices of people on the street and then a motorcycle riding away. The neighbor then turned off his spotlights and everyone went back to sleep after a while. During the shooting our dog didn’t even bark. Saturday night he refused to go outside and didn’t want to leave my room.
Saturday morning, one of the local guys who works for the tap-taps at loading up passengers on Delmas 33 caused some trouble. “Shaba” stole something from a passenger and another passenger noticed. This person told the thief to give back what he just took. Shaba got angry and hit this person with a rock. Later in the afternoon a couple of men came up to him and told him that his work was now over. They took him aside and shot him a couple of times in the chest. They then walked past the people who were watching and told them that this guy would no longer be stealing or hitting people. Shaba died where he was shot. People think that the person who shot him was a police officer dressed in civilian clothes.
That’s all the news for today. Have a good week!
Karen Bultje, Coram Deo
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