The Story of Ana and Mina

Meet Loudiana (barbie shirt) and Loudemina (butterfly shirt). 

Their story starts at their birth. They were born at home, in a shack, in a country village called Abricot outside Jeremie, Haiti. Their mom abandoned them when they were infants. Their poverty stricken father Lenault, alone with a 4 year old boy tried to care for these little twin babies. Blind in one eye, penniless and only a small garden to make a living, he felt he had no choice to give them up. After all, with less mouths to feed, he could provide for his older boy. When they were 1 1/2 years old, he gave them to a friend who knew of a lady that had an orphanage far away in the town of Cabaret. 

For the past 5 years these identical twins have lived in that place, an orphanage called Bon Samaritan (Good Samaritan). They sleep on mats on a concrete floor, along with 125 other small children. Their clothes are tattered; their shoes often non existent. They are skin and bones; malnourished and anemic. They go to the bathroom in a bucket, they do not have a sink to wash their hands.

Their original orphanage sits directly on the side of a river. During the hurricanes of 08 at 2am, this river mounted the huge banks and the walls of their orphanage, and flooded mud and water into the orphanage breaking through the concrete block walls. Amidst the darkness, the thick mud and the water, all 125 children got out alive. All the children were moved to the Mission of Hope (where we work and live) and lived in our high school building until Oct. when the mission rented a new orphanage building in Cabaret for them.

Our story with Loudemina and Loudiana starts in Nov 08.

Because our mission helps to provide this orphanage with some of their basic essentials, we visit this orphanage from time to time. In Nov. 08 we visited to see one of the children sick and lying on a mat. We enquired and were told that she had seen a local doctor. Shortly thereafter we were back at the orphanage with another mission team and saw the same child lying on the mat still. When we enquired, the same child was still sick but worse. She could not lift her head. She was severely dehydrated and malnourished. They said she had typhoid fever and the local doctor had given her medicine. When we checked the medicine, it was in fact the right medicine for typhoid, but the child had been dehydrated for too long. She was listless and when you pinched her skin, it stayed. We knew that the medication might cure the typhoid, but the dehydration would kill her first. We told the orphanage director that she needed to come to the mission asap to get on an IV. Thankfully, she did. By this time, the child was skin and bones. This was Loudemina.

Upon getting to the mission clinic, it was very difficult for our nurses to get an IV in due to the dehydration, but they were successful. Thankfully we noticed her recovering at the orphanage over the next few months although she remained very skinny. After this time, we did not think much more of them over the other orphan kids, until Loudemina started coming over to us every time we visited the orphanage. Through this we learned that she had an identical twin Loudiana. We think that we just thought they were one child before, but now realized that there was two of them!

In March 09, we had a pivotal moment. We came to Good Samaritan with our friends Grant and Sandy from The Meeting House and our old home church. As we walked through the door with the group of 30 people we came with, I (Cheryl) happened to see Loudemina looking much better in the background. I noticed her quickly start to scan each and every group member's face as we walked through the door. She looked very intense (I wondered what she was looking for) as I watched her scan the faces until her eyes rested on mine. When this moment happened, she gave a whoop of joy, and ran full speed to me and jumped into my arms, where she promptly would not leave the rest of the time we were there. Her sister Loudiana was quickly in tow and stuck close by. 

At the end of our time there that day, (after Laurens, the kids, our guests and I had our fill playing with the kids), I went to put Loudemina down, 

just like all the kids I have to put down every other time we leave from our visits at any of the orphanages and I told her we would be back another time. Our friend Sandy was beside me. Only this time was different, she would not let go. I guess we did not realize how these kids were warming our hearts as much as they were. As we stood there, I could have let go of her completely and she would have stayed attached like a leach! Suddenly she turned to me with eyes I have only seen before in the eyes of malnourished dying children, eyes of complete desperation, and said,"Don't go!". Trying so hard not to cry, but with tears streaming down her cheeks, she said," Don't go, don't leave me here, don't go, pleeeease take me with you, please can I go with you?, I want to go with you, don't leave me here"........... It was at that moment where I looked deep into her eyes, and I felt without a doubt in my mind, that I was looking into the face of Jesus. 

As my friend Sandy left out the door in tears (she could not understand the language but was touched by the scene and could not hold in her tears), I pried myself away and all I could hear was Matthew 25:40 in my head (see the whole context passage below) over and over again. 

Matthew 25:34-40 

 ³⁴ “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. ³⁶ I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’³⁷“Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? ³⁹ When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

⁴⁰ “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’

The rest of that week and month was filled with the tragic death of a missionary here and our planning of his funeral. The girls were out of our minds most of the time due to this and all other surrounding events. Then In April, through my medical work, we learned of some potential abuse going on at this particular orphanage. My mind started to flash back to the scene from March and the desperate eyes of Loudemina. We started to go back there with teams a little more often, when we could afford the time. 

Both twins started running for our family every time we came and somewhere in all this, I had the most nagging feeling that God wanted us to take these kids. I just couldn't shake it. After learning of the abuse, I laid awake at night praying that all the kids, but these two in particular were not being hurt. For the next few nights, I could not sleep (and I usually sleep great!) and could not shake Matthew 25:40.  

Laurens and I shared with each other about our nagging feelings and our struggle with God. We argued with God....but.....there are 2!!! We continued to pray that God would give us guidance.

Since the time we shared our feelings with one another, Laurens did a lot of visiting with the kids, praying and thinking about all the practicalities of a decision like that. In May, the girls got sick again. Very sick. Loudiana this time was the worst. One day we came to visit the orphanage and the kids were standing up and singing a welcome song to the visitors. We saw one of the twins (Loudemina) lying on the floor, then we saw one of the orphanage "mommy's" grab her roughly to stand. She had no energy and cried out and slumped back down. The mommy talked roughly at her to get up. Then she looked over and saw us, got up and scampered into Laurens lap. 

She was burning up. We asked her where Loudiana was and she pointed to the group of kids singing. There was little Loudiana standing in the middle of the group, looking sicker than her sister but obediently singing the song. I motioned for her to come and she did with relief, crawled up into my lap, even hotter with fever than her sister. She had no energy to smile or talk, she just snuggled. 

We got health care for them again, we got sick from them, and they are now looking a lot better. The first photo is from the other day. 

It was during and after this sickness as he watched them waste away again, that Laurens came to me and said, " I know that I can think of a bunch of practical reasons not to take these kids, but I can not go against God's will. I think we should pursue adopting them". 

Tomorrow, their birth father comes to the mission to sign a paper that will allow us to move them to our own orphanage while we come home to Canada for 5 weeks. When we return, they will move in with us.

We have decided that the bottom line is that even though we may be more stretched financially, or that it will take more of our time, or that there are logistics to figure out, that it will take a while and that it will be difficult road ahead; compared to what these kids have now, compared to how they live now, we DO have the means, we DO have the heart, we DO have loving families, we CAN figure out the logistics and we CAN NOT turn our back on them. We can not "refuse to help the least of these" Matthew 25:45

Thanks for being so understanding and we appreciate your prayers as we pursue adopting them and giving them a better life.