My friend Anne Jackson, who blogs at flowerdust, sent in another report from Haiti. She’ll send us one more recapping her visit. But this is what she was experiencing just a couple days ago on the ground:
We went into the tent city today wondering what would happen.
Thousands of people last night had flooded Twitter with pleas to media and NGOs to help get food, supplies, and medicine to this community we had found yesterday.
Thank you for so quickly falling in love with the families we met that needed so much.
When we arrived shortly before 9 am, the people had planted a church – various tarps and sheets with a small area to use as a stage. Music began immediately, and people filed in singing, dancing, and thanking God for the help that was to come.
The tent city is in a valley, a flood area. To get to it, you walk down a paved road and turn down a dirt road full of rocks and head down an incline. As people kept singing“God is my provision” and “I have no other source but God” I kept looking up from the valley, up the hill, waiting for a caravan of supplies or media to show up.
The verse went through my head, “I lift up my eyes to the hills–where does my help come from?”
I began losing faith.
An hour had passed, and nobody had met us.
We began praying for hundreds of people in the church – they lined up for our team members, and each of us with a translator would hear their request, and we would pray for them. For healing, for protection, for food. I even dedicated a baby (as you can see, she was thrilled).
I kept looking up the hill.
Nothing.
—
Adam came up to me and asked if I had seen the Cuban Medical team arrive on the other side of the camp.
Seriously?
I took off, alone, but armed with Lars’ iPhone (mine broke on the trip the second day) and hiked the quarter mile through the dust to the other area. Sure enough. A medical team from Cuba was there and had set up shop, looking at people, and giving antibiotics and vaccinations and water.
Help had come.
—
By the time I returned to the church-side of the tent city, half of our team decided to go to the airport – where all the official relief was being coordinated – to get some supplies and help. They worked their way in, cut through red tape, pretended to know more than they did, and were able to register the cities to receive official help.
They weren’t able to get food though.
And that wasn’t acceptable.
So they did what they could.
They went to the grocery store and spent $60,000 Haitian dollars on food. That’s about $2000 US. And they took it back to the tent city to distribute it through its leaders.
Help had come.
—
As our team drove away from the tent city, now with medicine, water, and food to make do until they begin receiving official assistance, a UNICEF truck was pulling in to take an assessment.
Help had come.
—
As I said in the earlier post, we didn’t know what today would look like. We just knew we needed to show up. We prayed and worshipped with our new friends, waiting for help.
Help had come.What was desolate and unknown yesterday has now been provided for today, and will receive provision in the future. Those who were forgotten are now known.
Faith wins.
Again.
