This morning I was leaving Haiti for the 50th time. It was a short but exhausting trip after a cancelled flight cost me an unplanned night in Fort Lauderdale. We were running late for the airport. I didn’t have time to eat the breakfast prepared for me because I was up much of the night putting things in order, and maybe just maybe….I was a little grumpy. As I approached the open stairs off the 3rd floor I looked down at the neighbors property and I received a surprise that made my day.
3 months ago I was told that the neighbor, who often came to cook in the kids’ club was sick. “Sick” in Haiti is a term so broad that it encompasses everything from headaches, diarrhea, broken bones, lice, severe mental illness and all mysterious things in between. I went with Richecard to visit her. I wasn’t prepared for this version of sick. The woman who was now only referred to as the “sick lady” was confined to her bed with her foot propped up. I’m not a doctor, but this was extremely serious. Her foot was swollen double size, most of the skin spilt wide open, puss and large white chucks of dead skin made up what used to be her foot…if that sounds awful, it looked worse. I struggled to keep my composure as if I had seen this before and said “you have a serious infection, can I take a video so I can show it to medical friends of mine?” She had been receiving some treatment but stopped because she couldn’t pay for it.
Preventative deaths are sadly just a norm in Haiti. Last month a 7 year boy in the kids club died after a one day fever. A 16 year old boy that worked in our house died 2 months ago from a small stab wound suffered in a rowdy voo-doo celebration because there was no method available to repair a punctured lung. Last fall a 7 year old girl from our kids club, Micka, died likely from Typhoid because her mother didn’t have a few dollars to go to the doctor. This time I thought maybe we were in time to help this “sick lady”. I didn’t want to see a mother taken from her children simply because of an inability to afford a visit from a doctor. Richecard and I prayed with her and I promised my help to find proper care.
The next month I visited her again. She had received good care and was recovering until her husband found some medicine he was told would help and gave it to her…all of it apparently. The overdose of this unknown medicine made the skin all over her body slimy and wrinkled. A full recovery was on hold.
Now two months later I looked down and there she was, walking and working behind her house. She saw me, I waived and said “Bonju!, Ou byen?”
She smiled, waived and said “mwen byen, mesi ampil!”. In that moment I realized God calls us into action to care for those He loves in different ways each day. We are not called to “make good happen” or micromanage the outcome, only to do what God in His sovereignty has put in our path to do to bring Him glory. I often reference the big numbers of 50 schools 612 teachers supported, 8,000 children assisted with education and food…..but God is the God of the big things and the little things just the same. He is in the details of our day, and the one who keeps the universe in alignment just the same.
Please keep IOCH in your prayers and consider supporting as God puts it on your heart to do so.
God bless,
-IOCH Founder David Garman
“UNITING THE PEOPLE OF GOD TO WORK FOR A BETTER HAITI”
