Safe in His Arms in Port-au-Prince

We have arrived! We spent Thursday in Santo Domingo, for the most part in a church lobby with a guard at the door as we waited to meet up with the local pastor and a few missionaries. Friday we took a bus all the way across the island of Hispaniola (= Dominican Republic + Haiti). It should have taken 5-6 hours but we were stuck for 2 hours at the border. It was a frightening journey at certain moments, as desperate people gathered around the bus each time we slowed down, to be met with some soldier with a machine gun. Already so many refugees were amassed at the border: in makeshift tents, wandering, scavenging, sitting despondently, looking hungry, some dipping buckets into the stream (run-off from God knows where). All waiting - waiting for what? To get out. For food. For help. For a lift somewhere, anywhere but Haiti.

Then further on as we crawled towards Port-au-Prince we arrived in Petion-ville, which I'm sure you've seen in the news. A recently–set-up tent city is the new home to at least 50,000 people in the park there. The bus pulled into the terminal, and everyone left but us. But our contact person didn't know which bus station to find us. So many Haitians approached us to warn us that it was getting late, that we should not be outside. Late - because of the darkness (6:30 PM). It's not safe in the dark here. But we had to wait, regardless. We prayed. Our ride came to fetch us 2 hours later. It was Tom, a missionary, in an open truck with a logo "Jesus in Haiti" (http://www.jesusinhaiti.org/). What a welcome sight! He had 3-4 Haitian orphan teens whom he had taken in to his home. Tom has a host of orphan children under his personal, fatherly care. They were late because they were playing a soccer game with 600 kids, and one of his boys ran across the street and got hit. They'd had to get him to the Army hospital. We stopped for snacks: dinner for us was a pack of raisins and a shared bottle of Coke.


Tom drove us to meet our guy with Touch Global, Mark. Mark set us up to share a little apartment with him in a hotel next to the PaP (= Port-au-Prince) airport. He briefed us before bedtime. This will probably be our base along with other Touch Global/EFCA staff who are coming, and only some of us are lucky to have a bed! Speaking of bed, when we arrived within the hotel courtyard, it looked like a campground: tents were packed-in lining the pool and the yard: the base-of-operations of NBC News crew. One of their guys said to us: “So, you reserved a room here? Most of them were damaged, so we are camping out because there’ve been so many aftershocks, we don’t trust the structure.” Mark responded, “Our room’s on the top floor.” The journalist: “So, you’re just gonna ride it down, huh?” I should say that given the condition of the room, staying in a tent may be more pleasant! The place was falling apart before the earthquake, I imagine. But we are grateful, so grateful. Army helicopters and others fly right over our heads, and NBC broadcasts from the roof.

Today, Saturday, It’s 81 F and climbing to 90 F. We will go with Mark to pick up some more colleagues then drive to inspect a house for rent outside of PaP which could serve as a base for Touch Global in the long-term. He wants us to give a hand at the “Jesus in Haiti” home where Tom is caring for all those orphans. Originally, it was thought that the outflow of refugees from the capital would move north to where Reach Global partner ministry Vision of Hope is located in Cap Haitian. But the predicted exodus never took place in that direction. Mark wonders if the death toll was so much higher than thought, because calculations of those who would flee were so much greater in number. But under these circumstances we will not be needed up north. So we are flexible, adapting to a situation that is ever unfolding, and staying in PaP for now.

We are counting on your prayers! Pray for our health and strength. Pray for Mark, Tom, Steve, and the rest of Reach Global personnel to discern the needs here now and in the future. Pray for God’s provision to be able to help people best. Pray that we can be Jesus’ hands, feet, and mouth to touch lives in this broken place. Thank you!