DAY 7

Today is the last day of our trip. We spent the morning at another tent city, “Camp Mega 4”, where about 4000 people live. This site seemed like the poorest of all the tent cities we visited this week. We were able to see 55 people in 4 hours. Most of the children are seriously malnourished. One of the babies we saw was 13 months old and he was the size of a 6 month old. He couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t even hold his head up. He was in such bad condition that when the 17 year old mother tried to breastfeed him, he didn’t even have the strength to eat. He would literally die of malnutrition in a couple of weeks if no help was provided. The sad part is, the mother didn’t have any idea of the severity of the problem. We didn’t have anything for the poor little baby at that moment so we went back in the afternoon and brought them some milk. Our hosts Andre and Sylvie plan to visit her every two to three days to check on them. They are even willing to have the mother and child move in with them for awhile until the child is better. The entire team was deeply moved by the condition of this child. We are all praying for his total healing.

In the afternoon we visited a nearby orphanage, where our hosts Andre & Sylvia stayed for 2 weeks because the earthquake had demolished their house. This orphanage has a clinic facility and on site nurses, and runs clinics two days per week. They are very open to us using their facility in the future if we should ever have such a need. We then went back to the guest house and started an inventory list so we know what to bring for future trips. Our plan is to have a small pharmacy setup in the guest house to facilitate future medical trips.

At the end of the day, we give God all the praise and glory for what He has done through us and how faithful He has been to us over the past week. In this short time we were able to provide greatly needed dental and medical care to 600 adults and children. Haiti is a beautiful country and the people were so grateful for the help they received. I think it is fair to say this is a trip the entire group will remember for a long time. If we should sum up this experience in one word it would simply be “AMAZING.”