photos - team - part 1

Tuesday August 7th and Wednesday August 8th were clinic days here at Coram Deo. Part of a huge team of 60 people participated at these clinics. Yonel had a busy couple of days keeping an eye on the gate.

Jn. Eddy was happy :) The guys enjoy when teams come to the house and they enjoy participating to help the team members.

A few of the team members organized health education seminars for the older students and teachers of Coram Deo.

The team was well prepared with their materials. They left us with these materials for use in our school program and for our parent meetings during the school year.

The visitors were determined to make sure that everyone understood what they taught.

photos - team - part 2

You can see the seminar participants listening and keeping attention to what was being said.

Everyone except for Amos. He asked the visitor a question that made her pause and scratch her head :)

Erol did his best to translate the answer to Amos's question. Amos didn't spend too much time at the seminar. I sent him to do a couple of hospital runs with a couple of patients :)

Because teeth cleaning and the chiropractor part of the clinic needs more time than a general medical consultation we were careful to not allow too many people into the yard at once.

These people were waiting their turn to get their teeth cleaned.

photos - team - part 3

It was a relaxing couple of days. The community loves it when there are clinics.

The man holding this baby is Amos's brother Gilbert. Gilbert is a teacher at Christian Light School.

And this older man is Pastor Marcelin. He has raised his family of 12 well. 3 of his sons work here at Coram Deo ( 2 teachers + Amos).

Evangelization was done at the clinics while people were waiting to register to see the medical team.

Providing for people's spiritual health is important too.

photos - team - part 4

One of the tracts handed out were "Ant ou menm ak Bondye" (creole for between you and God)

Another one handed out was a small booklet called "Yon Kado Gratis Pou Ou!" (creole for"a gift for you!")

This minister pastors a church in Kissimmee, Florida. Each winter he pastors to the Canadian "snowbirds" who spend their winters in the warmer climate in Florida.

It is good to see the young adults of Coram Deo helping the elderly. Sony is preparing to carry an elderly lady out to the gate....

... and placed her onto a motorcycle :)

photos- team - part 5

Kimosabee made a couple of trips to hospitals to treat patients who needed hospital treatment.

This team member is holding a young boy.

This young girl has a serious eye infection. Amos brought her mother and her to the General Hospital eye care department. She received good care and is recovering from her eye infection.

This young boy has a hernia that is bothering him. We are trying to get him hernia surgery at Bernard Mevs Hospital.

This baby is starting to develop hydrocephalus. We brought her to Bernard Mevs/Project Medishare Hospital to register her into the hydrocephalus program. She got a cat scan done on Friday.

photos - team - part 6

Macdonald's physical handicap limits his movements but he eagerly sits at the registration table whenever a clinic is held to help register the patients. He also helped the rest of the week at clinics that the team held at other mission sites.

This is the lighted candle technique of removing ear wax!

Young and old got their ears cleaned out by this process.

It took some convincing for Manu to participate :)

After each patient was finished the candle was unwrapped and the ear wax plugs were attached. Proof that this technique works very well !

Haiti Update - August 11, 2012

“If you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones; you shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.” (Isaiah 58:10,11)

Hi! This past week was a busy week! The team of 60 people led by Joshua Grooms and Jim Hambrick spent a busy week sharing their skills and talents at various missions during the week. On Tuesday and Wednesday medical personnel and helpers were here at Coram Deo conducting clinics for general medical, dental hygiene, and chiropractic care.

They set up an ear care station where they removed ear wax build-ups from people’s ears. The technique they used involved the use of lighted candles which were hollow in the middle and were dripless. Somehow the lighted candle caused the ear wax to rise out of the ear and into the middle of the candle. When the candle was extinguished the candle wax was unwrapped, and in the middle were plugs of ear wax which had come out of the patient’s ear. Manu has a skin disease called icthyiosis, and as a result he gets build-ups of dead skin and wax in his ear. He showed me the 2 large plugs of ear wax that came out of his ear. I am going to have to find a large supply of these special candles for Manu :) This candle process is an amazing ear friendly procedure and is very effective!

A couple of the visitors also did a health education seminar for the teachers and some of the older guys here at Coram Deo. The visitors said that those who participated in the seminar were very attentive and asked lots of questions. They left us with their materials so that we can use them to teach the students in our school program and also their parents, when we hold parent meetings during the school year.

Some of our Coram Deo people also served as translators throughout the week at the various locations that the teams went to. Manu knows some sign language and he assisted at an ear clinic at Pastor Lenny’s church. Pastor Lenny is a missionary from the Philippines and he has a deaf outreach ministry in the Delmas 19 area. He ministers to the deaf community that settled into the large La Piste refuge camp near Airport Rd. Manu had fun explaining to me the reactions of some of the deaf people when they saw people with lighted candles sticking from their ears :) A couple of them almost ran away :) The team left on Saturday after a week of doing pastor training, vacation bible school, medical/dental care, special education, health training and evangelization.

An extra surprise was when Jim Hambrick told me that they rented the Notre Maison house last week and are now in the process of making repairs to it. They will attempt to raise funding to purchase the house in a year. The Notre Maison house will now be a guesthouse for visiting teams and also used as the base of operations for their ministry centre. This is a great benefit for the Delmas 31 community. Teams will continue to help out missions such as Sherri, Dorothy, Pastor Lenny, Coram Deo, and others. Pray for their efforts in establishing this guesthouse/ministry center.

On Thursday afternoon we picked up Gordon and Diane Lewis, the directors of Mission of T.E.A.R.S from the airport. They will be having a busy week of meetings with the various crèches that they work with here in Haiti who do adoptions, and also meeting with Haitian government and legal officials. Presently in Canada, adoptions from Alberta and Ontario are allowed. There is an interest for adoptions to Quebec as well and meetings with government and legal officials will be made to know what the Haitian government expects for an adoption file to be processed. Haiti has passed the Hague convention for adoptions recently and now they are developing their adoption protocols. 8,000 adoptions are made from Haiti each year to countries such as Holland, France, the United States and Canada.

Haiti has a serious problem with child slavery. 300,000 children live as restaveks here in Haiti and many of them are abused and mistreated, and not given the opportunity to attend school. Parents give up their children in the hope of a better life to serve as “child domestic workers”. The International and Haitian governments are working to eliminate child slavery here in Haiti. An awareness campaign was announced this week by Compassion International, BPM (Brigade for the Protection of Minors), and IBESR (Institut Bien-Etre Social et de Recherche – Haitian Social Services). It is called “Ansanm Pou Yon Ayiti San Restavek (Together for a Haiti Without Restavek). 2 hotlines have been established. “188” is to report incidents to the BPM and “511” to report incidents of child abuse. Children are one of the priorities of the Martelly government. Pray for the government as they seek to improve the lives of the children living in Haitian society, and pray as well for an adoption process adhering to the Hague convention.

On Monday, my sister Michelle will be having surgery to remove her rectum (this is where the primary cancer tumour originated). She will have a colostomy for the next 4-6 weeks. Pray for Michelle as she continues her cancer fight. My mother will be entering the hospital on Wednesday for surgery to remove gall stones from her bile duct. After one week she will have further surgery to remove her gall bladder. For the last year she has had trouble digesting certain foods, and as a result lost a lot of weight. Her surgeon told her that the gall stones were the cause of her eating problems. Pray for a successful surgery, and that she will be able to eat ice cream once again :)

Last weekend, Manu, Sony and Fedner went to Jacmel and stayed at a family member of Sony’s. Jacmel is a beautiful area that is an excellent location for tourism. Fonise has been visiting her mother and siblings in the Aux Cayes region. Paulna is spending the summer with her family in Bonnette. Benson came back this week after visiting his family while I was in Canada.

Calens is also spending the summer with his older brother and extended family. One of the medical teams who had visited here during the year has arranged for Calens to get cornea transplant surgery. Calens is an orphan and we are having trouble finding a family member to be his official guardian. A passport or visa cannot be applied for as long as a family member does not appear in court and is officially declared to be his legal guardian. The sad thing is that the extended family is seeing this opportunity as a chance for them to go the United States. They won’t sign on as his legal guardian until we guarantee to them that we will send them to the United States as well. We can’t do this and I can’t ask the team to be responsible for an adult who might be an immigration risk. A medical visa is a great thing but when a person doesn’t return back to Haiti it could make any future medical visas more difficult to obtain. We will continue talking with the family and may have to wait until Calens’ older brother turns 18 years of age in January 2013 before pursuing legal guardianship for him. Pray for Calens, that one day his sight will be restored, and that his extended family will cooperate in preparing Calens’ paperwork.

Lots more happened this week but that will have to wait for another Haiti Update :)

That’s all the news for today. Have a good week!

Karen Bultje, Coram Deo