THE VAN DER MARK CREW

Two years later

2012-01-12T08:11:00.005-05:00

Today marks two years since that terrible day. Since the day that the ground shook and we all lost faith in it’s solid foundation. The day the earth’s crust moved a bit too much in a place a bit too poor with buildings a bit too weak in a city with a bit too many people. It is still a day we as a family will never forget. The Haiti earthquake of 2010 is something we wish never to relive yet those days hold a special bonding in our hearts to a country we love dearly.

On this day we remember the fear, we remember the blood, we remember the death, we remember the stench, we remember the dust, we remember the screams and we remember the sobbing. We remember the mass graves, the collapsed buildings, the stories of deaths, the smell of decomposing bodies, counselling mothers after their babies die, the little boy with a crushed body that took his last breath 13 hours later, reducing and repositioning countless broken bones, the open wounds, the stitches, the burns, the broken pelvises, the scalps torn off, the disfigured faces, the missing limbs.

But between all this horror, we remember the songs of redemption, we remember the singing voices, we remember the prayers answered, we remember the life change, we remember the strength, we remember the resolve, we remember the courageous stories, the extreme human benevolence, the superhuman successes, the dependance on a higher power, the will for survival, the heart to never give up and the power or God.

Please join us in remembering those that perished as well as those both physically and emotionally scarred forever by the Haiti earthquake. Please pray for continued strength in the Lord and redemption for the people in Haiti. Join us in being thankful for our lives and pray that we never take our moments here for granted. Each day is another that God has decided we need to be here on this earth. We pray that we will all search for the purpose of why He has decided we need to be here while others are gone and then charge full force in fulfilling that purpose.

We are in Canada today but our hearts are in Haiti. Nou pap janm bliye.

Mass graves close to our home in Haiti - where we are in spirit today...

P.S. With all the media negative on "where did the money go?" Please watch the video below to see the exciting things going on right now at Mission of Hope. Mission of Hope is a Haitian NGO that employs over 250 Haitians and works in relationship with the government and local area for all it's programs. The Haitian people are all involved in the decisions of MOH and the money gets to the people.
For specific stats on programs advanced in 2011, please follow this link to see MOH's updated progress.

MOH Visual Summary from Lespwa Means Hope on Vimeo.

Reflecting on 2011

2012-01-01T01:51:00.000-05:00

I (Cheryl) was recently in Haiti. It was my first time back after moving to Canada full time. It was fantastic and surreal at the same time. I missed my family a lot while there as it did not seem the same without them however the reception you get with Haitian friends and co-workers is like none other. I completed the next section of Mission of Hope's community health program and everything went as planned. Now those of you that know Haiti well, that in itself is a huge thing! As planned?!?!?! It was such a fruitful trip and things are progressing well. Praise God!

As we think back to 2011, it has been another year of tears and joy. A year of tough decisions and a year of scary steps. A year of loss and a year of successes. A year of endings and a year of beginnings, a year of sorrow and a year of happiness. A year of yearning and a year of questions. A year of following where the Lord is leading us.....

Things we will miss about 2011.
Waking up to sunshine and warm temps every single day. Period.
Seeing smiling brown faces everywhere we go
Hearing the laughter of orphanage kids playing nearby
Speaking a different language every day
Teaching and training
Adventure and drama
Challenges that continually push you to your limits
The beach
Jolibris
Our tropical gardens
Bare feet
Sandals
Lizards
Driving like a maniac

Things we will not miss about 2011
Packing and Unpacking
Incurring debt
Kidnapping and murder of friends
Leaving Haiti
Acclimatizing to the cold
Rats, tarantulas, mice, scorpions
bad plumbing
cold water
power issues

Of the above, two major events stand out to us for 2011. First making the tough decision to move back to Canada full time and second the murder of our gardener and friend Jolibris. Jolibris was the sweetest old man you could ever imagine. He loved the Lord with all his heart and soul. He came to work each and every day with a smile on his face and love in his heart. He watched out for our kids and our dog if he escaped. He kept our gardens watered and cared for. He was father to our Pastor and friend to all. He was kidnapped and murdered this fall. Senseless. We will miss him greatly. May he rest with the Lord in all His splendor. We love you Jolibris.

Although we remember 2011, it is with joy and anticipation that we look forward to 2012. We savour the road that God leads us on and look forward to what adventures He will put in front of us.

We wish you and your families a blessed 2012. May you follow the path set out for you with all of your heart and all of your soul for it is the Lord our God that we work for.

Emotional goodbyes and newfound hellos

2011-10-22T20:18:00.002-05:00

The VDM Crew in Canada

Wow, what a tough adventure returning from full time missions in a 5th world country. I know we have been silent for a while and mainly to be honest it is because we just did not know what to say. Our hearts ache for our Haiti home, our co-workers and friends, the broken lives and faith-filled hearts. At the same time we know that God has called us back to Canada.

We miss the smiles, the heartfelt greetings, the heat, the sweat and the tears. We miss the community living (it's true Rachel), the relationships, the language and the bond between earthquake survivors. As crazy as it sounds we miss the life threatening traffic, the hour and a half dangerous drive to groceries and the rocky mountain hill. We miss friends that are willing to lay down their life for you and we miss being there for others no matter what time of day or night. We miss our lives in Haiti.

Transition back to a culture that is for the most part oblivious to poverty, God, their eternal security and most things that do not relate to their daily schedule has been tough. Relating to and integrating back into that is harder than we thought yet not...

We have found a fantastic and I mean fantastic Christian school for the kids where they are nurtured and loved beyond what any parent would hope for. They have teachers that see their potential and encourage them to be all that God has called them to be and they are being used mightily. Teagan has her grade 10 class sponsoring a grade 10 student at Mission of Hope school already and she is leading a mission trip to Haiti this March break with 15 of her students. She has been asked to make presentations at which she has made people cry and ignited their hearts...The Lord is using her in amazing ways. The 4 younger ones are excelling both in the classroom and on the field and we are told by their teachers they are setting an example for others in their caring ways and leadership abilities. Praise God for how He is using them as well.

Laurens is getting used to being back on the force and remembering all the paperwork involved in investigations in Canada, the rules in Canada and the red tape in Canada......all the whole appreciating the fact that Canadians are fortunate to be in a country that provides so much for it's people and what a blessing it is to live in a country where so many have a job that pays more than enough.

Cheryl is getting used to being mom to 5 kids that have homework, activities, driving to school and who have things due all the time, all the while unpacking in our new home. She will be starting to do chiropractic out of her home office soon and covering for other chiropractors on vacation and maternity leave. She misses all her orthopaedic surgeon, ER doc and FP friends from the US and is hoping they will relocate to Canada and refer her patients :) Most of all she is trying to get used to being away from her Haitian staff friends and missing her housekeeper horribly!

We feel a renewed strength to share our faith with others and to open the eyes of others beyond these borders. We look forward to not just jumping back into same old same old but rather in to same old place, fresh new outlook.

It is an interesting road that we travel when we follow the Lord with all our hearts. He walks with us into difficult situations and is there before, during and after the fire. We seek His face in all things as we get used to this new phase in our journey with Him.

Thank you for being with us on our journey. The journey never ends and we are pressing forward with joy in our hearts.

Bridgely getting ready to race

Grayden showing them how it's done in the long distance

The twins...like they have always lived in Canada!

Haitian Mother's Day

2011-06-03T11:23:00.000-05:00

You may think this is a little late for Mother's Day but in Haiti, it was just last Sunday. This Sunday was special and I was proud of our Haitian men honouring the mother's. When so many countries in the world do not honour women, it was nice to see.

Now in Haiti, woman are not seen on the same level as men and there are many very chauvinistic practices for sure, but they do see the woman as essential to their being. As one of my Haitian doctors said in his mother's day speech, "today we honour women because without them there would be no perpetuation of life. We praise God for creating women so that life can be renewed and continued".

At church on Sunday, one of our elders in the church who likes a good party (who also looks like a Haitian biker with a big moustache) called out to find the oldest mother in our church. He stated at 100 and counted down until he hit the age of the oldest lady in our church. In Haiti the average life expectancy is only 56-58, so anyone over 60 is pretty old. He made it down to 85 before 2 ladies came forward. You can see them both in the photo below (the one in the blue dress and the one to her left. At 85 years old, they have seen so much in this country and what an accomplishment it is to live that old.

If you have ever seen a Haitian lady this old (and I have met a few that are 98 and even one that claimed 101), they are the sweetest things in the world. He proceeded to count down until we had the group of oldest mothers in our church.

Here is the photo of the oldest "mommy's" in our church. They range from 75 to 85 years old. These women have a legacy for sure, praise God.

Easter thoughts from Haiti

2011-04-23T20:38:00.000-05:00

We are enjoying our Easter in Haiti. As we reflect, we are reminded of how much God loves us.

Easter is the day Jesus died on the cross for us. Many people take this for granted or chalk it up to tradition or religion, but let's think about it for a minute. This man named Jesus that people all over the world are still talking about over 2 THOUSAND years later claimed to be the living God; "God on earth"; God's son. The bible claims that God loves each one of us (not just Christian's but everyone (yes even murderers, adulterers, alcoholics etc)) so much that he sent a living part of Himself (His son) to this Earth to die for us. What does this mean really?

Well, let's think about it. Our teacher Diana related a story similar to this to our kids in school on Friday and it really puts things into perspective. It is a story of a dad who has a choice to save a train full of hundreds of people that is barrelling down the track to sure destruction; or to save his son. He has a desperate choice to make, 1) either pull the switch and save the train thereby directing it onto his son that is stuck on the other track, or 2) save his son and let the train crash on the track it is currently on. He chooses to sacrifice the life of his son to save multitudes of others. How many of us would do this? I know that I could not. Whether you agree with his decision or not, this is what God does. He sacrifices his son and saves the train. Now picture yourself on the train. That is where you are...... on the train. God has the power to save you or let you continue to sure destruction. What would you want Him to do? What would you expect Him to do?

Most of us would want Him to save us but most of us would expect a dad to save his own son not us. How could you expect a father to sacrifice his own son to save you? This is the point. You should not expect it. It is a free gift that you do not deserve. It is a love that runs so deep that the God of the universe should love you so much that He was willing to sacrifice His own son; he was willing to let His own son die for you.

Many people do not understand why they need this saving. What are they being saved from? The bible teaches that heaven is living in peace with God for ever and ever and it is perfect. It is eternal and it is more awesome that anyone can imagine. The creator of everything lives in perfection. Nothing that is imperfect can enter this space. Nothing. The world that we live in is not perfect. It is anything but. We are not perfect. Man made the decision a long time ago to break from God in order to make his own decisions. Man was deceived by Satan and decided to go his own way. By following this imperfect way that we are all thrust into, we are heading to spend eternity with Satan....in hell.

So where does this leave us? We are not perfect, the world we live in is no longer perfect yet heaven is perfect. Therefore, we can never enter heaven. Even those of us that try to live our best and do good things are not perfect. Every time a judgemental thought enters our brain, every time we think we know better than someone else, every time we complain, every time we think badly of someone, every time we depend on our prideful selves, every time we do not let others go before us, every time we buy things we do not need. All of these things are not perfect.

This brings us back to the brutal reality that we can not enter heaven. I remember the first time I had this realization. Up till then I always thought that good people go to heaven. This is not what the bible says. No one who is not perfect can go to heaven. Yikes. I remember staring down the hell barrel thinking, "that is really where I am headed; where all of us are headed?"

Well, here is the good news. This is what Jesus (God's son) died for. The penalty for sin (doing things short of perfect) is death. Hell. Not being allowed into a perfect heaven. Jesus claims in the bible to be the living God, the son of God, and He claims to die for our sins. He claimed that He came to live among us to take all of our sins, all of our imperfections and take our resulting death (hell punishment) upon Himself. He died to absorb all of it for us. He thrust it upon Himself, God sacrificed His son, so we could live. God poured all of the judgement we deserve as imperfect beings on His son, therefore saving us.

Why you may say, does the world have to be so imperfect? Why does God not just fix it all? You have to know that it is not God's will that the world is like this. It is because He loves us that God has given people free will to choose how they want to live. He does not want us to live like robots under His spell. Because of the fact that Satan (a fallen angel) deceived the world and man to make choices outside God's plan, the world is not as it should be. The bible promises that bad things will happen. It promises that because of this, there will be bad people, bad situations, sickness, earthquakes and trauma etc, but it is not God causing it. God is the one that loves you so much it hurts. God is the one that pulled the switch on the train because it hurts His heart so bad to see you barrelling towards destruction. God is the one that is with you every step of the way even when you have turned your back on Him.

How, you may say do I know that this self proclaimed Jesus is the living God, God's son? Well, Jesus made many bold claims about being God in His time. He radically claimed to save the world and die for people's sins. He claimed that it was God's plan that He die for all sins. But the key is that He claimed that he would rise (come back to life) on the 3rd day. This people call the resurrection. It would be one thing to claim you are God and you are going to rise on the 3rd day (to prove you were actually God) and not do it. It would also be one thing to claim that you will take everyone's sins and then never rise again. But is is a whole different story when you claim to be God, you claim to die for everyone's sins so that they can live with God forever and then actually rise on the 3rd day to prove it. Without this resurrection, Jesus is just another false Messiah, false profit or cult member. But with this resurrection, one must think that maybe Jesus is the living God. Maybe God really does love me this much. Maybe God really does want to restore the world to a perfect heaven with me in it. Maybe, just maybe everything he said and did was the truth. Jesus tells us that upon believing that He is the living God, and upon accepting that He died for you and that by deciding to live your life out of eternal gratitude to Him, you will enter heaven, perfectly. There is not other way in. None.

Christianity (Jesus followers) is not a religion (a set of rules and regulations to follow). It is a faith that what God talks about in the bible is the truth. It is a life of gratitude for what Jesus has done for us and a way of following Him as a compassionate loving father.

Now what? Where do we go from here? Is it worth looking into? Is it worth learning about this guy Jesus? Is it worth thinking about Easter as more than just Easter bunnies? You may say. No. It is not for me and that is your choice.

But what if Jesus' claims were actually true, what if he really did rise again, what if He really is God, what if He really does love you that much. What if God does not want you to spend eternity in hell? What if God really did pull the switch and let His son die to save you? Are you willing to ignore Him?

A Chapter Turns

2011-04-06T23:14:00.001-05:00

This is one of the hardest things we have had to write during our time in Haiti.

After three awesome challenging years, God is leading us back to Canada full time this summer. After a lot of thought and prayer, we feel that there is a reason that God has given Laurens a three year leave of absence from the OPP and we feel that it is time for him to return. We also feel that our older children need to come back to receive further high school education in Canada. In addition, one of Mission of Hope's core values is indigenous leadership. We have worked hard over the last 3 years setting up programs, teaching, training and equipping our Haitian counterparts. We feel that we have accomplished many of these goals and are happy to say that many things are running well indigenously. If this is the case, no matter how difficult it is, then it is time for us to pull back and let them fly on their own.

We have changed so much these past few years as have our kids. We have grown in the Lord and have come through many trials. We have grown closer as a family and now depend more fully on God. We have made amazing cross cultural friends and we have learned a new language. We have shown others Christ and others have taught us what He is all about. We have seen destruction and we have seen hope. We have lived with those that are so poor materially but who are so rich spiritually. These past 3 years in Haiti we will never forget. They will forever be a part of us and we of them. We have made friends for life. We love Haiti and Mission of Hope and all that it stands for. We will continue to be a part of Mission of Hope and help anyway we can to the advancement of the programs for the Haitian people from Canada.

Over the past fews years we have been a part of the clinic growing from newly open, to services such as outpatient, lab, pharmacy, dental, ER room, ambulance services, surgery, patient ward, prosthetic lab, mobile medical clinics, a medical supply program and community health programs. We have seen our student body double in size, our orphanage grow, our church explode and our facilities improve. We have been part of well drilling, windmill projects, water systems, facility projects and too many construction projects to mention. We have seen homes and lives rebuilt, miracle healings, death and hope restored. We have trained, lead, facilitated, built relationships and empowered people. We have been blessed beyond measure through all that God called us to do in the little country of Haiti.

I have to admit, a big part of me is scared. Scared that we are moving back into a world that is so very different. One that we can put on a good front with, but one we no longer feel comfortable in. A world of intense materialism and one where people try to "keep it all together" as if our challenges should be faced all alone. One with large expectations and big questions such as "what are you going to do for work?", "where are you going to live?" (because "obviously the little townhouse you bought is way too small for you") A world where no one can be expected to "get it" and life bolls you over. A world that does not have God at the forefront and one where it is not politically correct to mention Him. A world that has SNOW in APRIL (come on people!!) and I have to check the weather before getting dressed. Ok I just started to cry.

My heart yearns already for the kind words of the hospital cleaning lady or the hugs of my patients. It yearns to hang out with one of my unlikely 50 year old friends to whom I teach English. To laugh when it comes out as "Goot job" or "plese, come sit down" and is followed by him trying one on his own to get someone to stand, "plese, come sit up?" My heart aches to lose experiences like having a flat tire and sitting down amongst mango trees making new friends while it gets fixed by every local man who all think they know everything about tires. Sorrow surfaces to know that I will miss the wash lady's 3 year old daughter every day singing "wouj wouj, lat tomat" which should be "wouj wouj, pat tomat" (red red, tomato paste). I already miss the smell of the dirt, my pants sticking to my skin and worshiping in Creole. I already miss driving like a maniac (not by choice) in Port-Au-Prince, narrowly missing other cars and them me, dodging potholes, broken down cars, school children, motorbikes..... and it being normal (we have already started our driving offence fund for Canada). I shake my head when I realize that casual conversations people have with us about which family member of theirs died in the quake, in a motor vehicle accident, from cholera, a "criz ke" heart attack or voodoo curse, will not be normal conversations anymore. I yearn to continue to save the souls of those dying in the ER as they turn their eyes to Jesus before passing.

My heart breaks when people tell us with tears streaming down their face, "this is NOT good (that you are leaving)" "this does not sit well with me" or "you are not like the others, you are supposed to stay forever", "you are like family, you can not go" or still, "I have no reason to be here if I lose you, my friend". It cracks when I think about not hearing the children from the orphanage playing outside my house all day, not seeing the babies grow and not being able to get quick hug or a sassy smile. I tell you it is tough.

However, despite all of these emotions, God has clearly spoken in our souls that He has always has a plan for us. For now, that plan moves forward in Canada. God's plan for our life is not one that ends with one season and begins with the next, it is a continuum of His call for obedience to His perfect will. God has not changed His plans for our lives, He is moving us continually forward to His ultimate goal. Our calling is to follow Him wherever He may lead and we must be faithful to that calling. We know that he will walk with us always.

Haiti will forever be part of us and "si Bondye vle" (If God wants) we will be back. It is part of us, part of our kids and part of our souls.

We finally made the visit!

2011-04-04T22:03:00.000-05:00

In 2007 God stuck a spark in us for this country. We felt in our hearts that we needed to be a part of these beautiful people. Back then we sponsored children through an organization in Haiti called New Missions before we even knew about Mission of Hope. Pierre and Djenica have long been in our hearts and we have on many occasion thought we needed to visit them and it never worked out. We tried to see them once before but it was a Sunday and it was not meant to be. This past month we finally made the trip out to where they live to see the children and their families that we have prayed for all this time. It was AMAZING. Let me tell you though, God had his reason's for us not being able to go until now since in the beginning we just did not know Haiti and the language nearly good enough for what we would have to go through to find them! We will tell the story though a series of photos.

We first showed up at New Missions compound to find our children. After a long wait, they did not show up like they were supposed to (not surprising for Haiti :) so a Haitian pastor took us to their school in rural Haiti outside Leogone. After a bit of a drive and a walk down to the school, the teacher said they were not there that day as they were sick. Thus started our trek with Frantz, a high school student that thought he knew where they each lived.

We first set out to find little Pierre. Pierre we first sponsored when he was five and in kindergarten. Now he is is turning 10 and his birthday was coming up. First we went into the country to a small village settlement to find Pierre and waited for an hour for the family to come home. True to Haitian hospitality, a sweet old lady came out of no where and gave us chairs to sit on in the dirt. We waited and waited. Finally a little child walked up and they said, there he is. We took one look at the child and knew it was not our Pierre. After a discussion, we found out this was Pierre's cousin and Pierre himself lives a little further.

After that our trusty Frantz was pretty sure he knew where to go so this is us traipsing through the field to go to the next location.

Once we emerged from the field and out the other side, we saw this beautiful scene. It was so lush and gorgeous it took our breath away. This is a small part of the Haiti that has not been cut down and instantly I was reminded how much I love this place.

After the field and the beautiful mountains, we passed a river and saw houses through the trees. Could this be the houses we thought? Would we finally get to meet little Pierre?

It was!!!

Here is Pierre (the one in the front with his head tilted to the side) with his mother, big brother (on the left) and his baby brother with mom in front of their house. A cousin (in the blue) stood for the picture too.

After we met them and explained who we were, Pierre's mom ran into the house and pulled out a family photo of us we had sent to her 4 years ago. This photo below is of us comparing the kids now to their photo back then. It was so touching to see she still holds that photo in her hands. This is quite amazing and let me tell you why. Pierre lives in this lush valley but this valley is also one of the areas hit the hardest by the earthquake last year. The house you see is a temporary house built by the Red Cross. There original house fell into rubble on the ground right here in this spot. The wood frame shelter they now have sits on the same footing. It is amazing that amongst the rubble, our family photo is something they pulled out and kept. Luckily the family ran out and all survived with minor wounds.

We were able to see Pierre's dad too before he had to run off to work but here is a final picture of our two families together.

Pierre (next to me in the photo below) came with us on our trek back to the truck and we had a chance to chat. He is a sweet boy with a quick smile despite the fact that he had an infected tooth.

Past the mountains and temporary houses with Frantz

Back at the car we showed Pierre his birthday present and read him his birthday card.

And off he went one happy little kid and a some new friends made. Praise God for this little boy in a valley beside the mountains.

Then it was off to find Djenica. who was 6 when we started sponsoring her and is now 11. We had quick success with this as the little steep climb up the side of a hill next to the road led us directly to her house. Here is her broken house from the earthquake more than one year later. The inner rooms are still intact but the outer rooms stand open, a grim reminder of the past.

Here is Djenica with her only sibling a little brother.

Her father explains how the house broke and how they narrowly escaped and we talk about their family.

Here we give her photos of our family while her excited father and Aunt look on. Our kids had a big part of choosing things to bless her with and so were excited to share some of their things with her.

Here is a family photo of us all (except her mom who was washing at the water hole) before we left. Poor Djenica who was feeling ill that day stood for the photo but found it hard to break a smile, not that Ana did much better :)

It was such a blessing to be able to see these two children that we have prayed for all this time. Not only did we get to meet them, but we got to meet their whole families and visit their homes too. We wanted to not only sponsor them but also build relationships with them and let them know God cares about them so much he brought us together across the globe. It was fantastic to be able to speak their language and connect with them in that way.

Praise God we finally made the visit!

What's up????

2011-03-11T10:38:00.000-05:00

It has been one of those no blog months! Yikes.

Ok so I am still learning to ride the motorbike but no falls since!

Here is an update on life.

Grayden had an adventure as he bit into something and half of his molar came off. Not being able to remember if he had already lost that tooth, we could not decide if it was an adult tooth (a lot of dental work needed) or a baby tooth (no big deal). Praise God there happened to be a visiting dentist that week! In our new dental suite at the clinic (wow progression), he was able to consult with Grayden to let us know it was in fact a baby tooth and he could either take out the rest of the tooth, or Grayden could start wiggling and get it out himself. Grayden was quick to choose wiggling it himself :)

My mom always complains that Laurens never takes pictures of his work at Mission of Hope. So here are a few. Below there is a windmill that is part of a big water project that has just been completed at Mission of Hope. It is a system of integrating well water and rain water to collect for our cisterns. You can learn more from Laurens' point of view on the MOH blog that he wrote (click on mission of hope on the right).

The picture below is a picture of homes that we are building for earthquake victims. The people going into these homes have been living in temporary housing for over a year. It is a master planned community that we have planned for 500 homes.

Below you will see one of our crews building latrines. This is a great picture both for development but also for community health. You will notice that with all our construction we hire national workers and we supplement with visiting teams to do the "easy stuff" like painting etc. I love the fact that here at Mission of Hope, we provide jobs for so many.

I have been busy training and creating modules within the community health program. Here you can see myself and one of our Haitian nurses educating a small village in the mountains how to protect themselves from Cholera and other diarrheal diseases. We love visiting the remote areas to educate people on how to prevent disease from a cultural and spiritual perspective.

We have a lot of new things going on here since we have so many more staff living and working with us. We have a couples bible study, a kids devotion and games night, young life program with the orphanage and staff kids, ladies night (no men allowed) etc. The kids also got their first term report cards and they all did fantastic! We are looking forward to taking a week break in Dominican soon if we can make it there without the twins getting sick (they get car sick!) Look for our next blog on the amazing adventure of finding our sponsored kids (kids we had sponsored before even knowing about Mission of Hope) from an organization called New Missions in another part of Haiti.

Motorcycle adventures

2011-02-13T20:52:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was my day to learn how to ride a motorbike. These are the things we do on our days off on a Sunday...

Some of you know I have wanted to learn for a while and have always meant to take the course at home but never got around to it before moving to Haiti (right Tracy?). Well I wait no longer!

Through a mission friend Laurens has got a couple bikes that he uses to toot around the mission. I had one small lesson with Laurens previous but yesterday I had time to learn and practice.

As many of you know, I like to tackle things head on so I figure let's learn how to ride a motorbike in Haiti, on the rocks (some of them boulder's actually), down/up a mountain hill with a lot of corners! Laurens assures me that if I can learn on this, then when I learn a bike in Canada it will be a piece of cake :)

My ATV driving years have helped. I only fell once. OK I was getting the hang of letting out the clutch and giving it gas in first gear and for the most part only stalled it. It was when I decided to rectify that and give it more gas (too much) that it leapt from me and I did a graceful tumble off. Graceful it may have originally felt but the landing on pointed rocks and unforgiving ground did NOT feel good. Bruised left hip, left hand, left knee and right elbow.......not bad!

After my tumble it was try, try again. I was able to drive the rough terrain quite a bit and started to get used to the bike. When I felt that my clutch hand could go no further, Laurens told me to ride it home. For those of you who have been here you know that riding it home from the hospital means riding it up a very steep, long rocky road with huge gutters.... then at the top, it means turning a corner on loose gravel, big rocks, and in the middle of a gutter. No problem I thought, just scrape me off the ground when you get there.

With the security guards and orphanage kids cheering me along the way, I made it all the way to the top and brought it to the perfect stop at home. I have a long way to go but am off to a good start ;) Another great day in Haiti.

Cheryl

Haiti Documentary

2011-02-03T06:11:00.000-05:00

Hey Haiti supporters,

Tomorrow night is the scheduled time for the Haiti documentary one year after the quake on CHCH news. It will air at 10pm on CHCH and then posted to their website soon after. There will be coverage of both Mission of Hope and us among others. We hope you enjoy it! You will all see it before us as we do not have Canadian TV and we can not download videos easily so let us know if it was good :)

God Bless and thanks to all who are still helping us with our efforts for the Lord in Haiti.

Cheryl and Laurens

CHCH News Haiti Update

2011-01-17T21:08:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone,

Many of you have been watching CHCH News coverage of our family over the past year. Here is a little clip they did after they just got back to Canada. More to follow will be their follow up documentary around Jan 28th.

Have a great day.

You can view the clip here: CHCH News - Back from Haiti

Cheryl and Laurens

Closure

2011-01-12T22:39:00.003-05:00

Today was a tough day. It is hard to write this blog as really I am at a loss of words to say. Today was the first day I visited the mass grave. I have not been able to emotionally visit it before now but it was time. Laurens and I slipped away together for some private closure and Laurens was reminded of the last time he had been. That time he had seen the rows and rows of pits full of bodies.

The massive area more than 70 000 people are dumped to rest in mass graves

The crosses stood in rows and I was reminded of the poem “In Flanders Fields”. They represent almost 300 000 people who lost their lives 1 year ago. A large cross sits atop the hill that looks over the site of the mass grave like a soldier standing firm. The banner stretching out beside it reads, "12 Janvye Nou Pap Janm Bliye" (12 January We Will Never Forget...). Another large cross commemorates those lost; the base it stands on only partially finished by the time the anniversary comes around, a small reminder that is typical of Haiti.

Hundreds of crosses commemorate the dead

Cross on the hill

Lone Cross

People are scattered around, some curious visitors but most grieving people like us, mourning the loss of so many. We connect with a lady who cries out, “Se’m te mouri!!” which means, “My sister died”. She shares her story of how her sister’s house fell on her, her body lying limp in the street. She tells us of the dump trucks coming and picking up all the bodies including her sister’s before she could figure out how to do a funeral for her. No closure.

I think that is what we are all looking for today. Closure. We are ready to move on but it is hard and today is a grim reminder of the pain. The memories of the injured and dead flood back while looking across the graves. The memories of the stench of decaying bodies under buildings flood back and I question the why behind the bible telling us in the days before the Lord returns there will be earthquakes in the lands.

This morning I left my ER radio and phone behind for 2 hours. I thought I could get away with it. I mostly could but nearing the 2 hour mark, I was summoned out of church to help with an ER case.
Our visiting paramedic, doc and resident nurses dealt with the emergency under Laurens' direction/help so thankfully I was only needed to secure a transfer location. I was surprised by my mind's reaction. There was nothing out of the ordinary with this case and I did not have to be involved much but for a short time, it brought back the fear of the earthquake and the sorrow and pain of the more than 150 trauma victims we treated exactly one year ago today. Seeing this woman lying there under a white clinic sheet not responsive was a grave reminder of the past.

Our mission had two special church services today. I am struck again by the tenacity of our Haitian friends' lives. Their strength to move on. The joy in their worship of God who by His grace allowed us all to be standing in the church today. Their thankfulness to be alive, to have crawled out of broken buildings or to have just stepped outside moments before their building crashed down. Their thankfulness to be walking and breathing when so many are not. Their praise of God in His awesome power that they have a chance to still make a difference in the lives of others. We have been given a second chance. Life is so precious and can be gone in a second. We have learned over the past 2 1/2 years here in Haiti that each day is a gift and we must use it wisely.

As we looked out across the vast gravesite today we mourned. We wept. We prayed. We have been forever changed and we hope never to forget......

Closure

Please visit the Mission of Hope website for more anniversary coverage (www.mohhaiti.org).

Preparation for the memories

2011-01-10T23:04:00.008-05:00

Tonight I am sitting in my yard. The beautiful tropical trees we planted 2 years ago over barren ground now strong and majestic, are whispering softly in the wind. It is a beautiful night. The moon lies directly in front of me half covered by cloud, peaking through like a sleepy eye half covered by an eyelid. It glows an eery orange but it takes my breath away. As I look up I am surrounded by a million stars, their constellations forming beautiful pictures across the night sky. The black sky so vast and endless. Everything seems so still and powerful.

It is such a contrast to one year ago. The day our world shook. The day nothing stood still. The day when all that we counted on to be strong, fell. January 12th 2010. The day we will never forget.

We can not really believe that it has been almost one year since that dreadful earthquake. Since the day lives were stamped out and families lives were changed forever. We can not believe it has been a year since we lost that innocent trust in the soil and since we helped and saw so many crushed bodies.

Photo Taken By: Alex Albojer

As we prepare for Wed... the memorials and the memories, we look back on a year marred by tragedy and pain. A year of destruction and sorrow. A year of faith tested yet strengthened. And we look forward to a year of hope, regeneration and a future.

Click on the following links for information about what is happening at Mission of Hope:

*** New *** Mission of Hope website

Mission of Hope on YouTube

Mission of Hope on Facebook

Yolande Clerge ?/08/80 - 17/12/10

2010-12-28T13:45:00.002-05:00

When we first met Yolande Clerge she seemed like a young woman with a lot of anger. A woman with a lot of frustrations. A woman who had lived a hard life and was immersed in voodoo beliefs. As Ana and Mina's birth mother, she had not seen the girls in a few years.

Our search for her began when God told us to adopt the twins. In Haiti you have to first find out if the abandoned child has a mother, and then you need to either produce the mother or produce a death certificate. Not only do you have to produce the mother, you also have to produce her birth certificate and identity card and have her sign her children away.

Our search began with the girls father. A man whom we had tracked down through connections at the Haitian orphanage they were living at. Their parents had not talked to each other for a while and he was reluctant to find Yolande. Penniless and blind in one eye, he was afraid she would be mad at him to know the twins had been living in orphanages for the past 2 years. She was.

We remember the day we first met her. We sat in the adoption orphanage room while the adoption lawyer talked to her about what an adoption was and meant. That it meant her girls who were living in extreme poverty, who were dirty, malnourished and sickly would have a future. That they would be healthy, well fed and be given an education. We remember how mad she was at the father for not telling her where they had been for the past 2 years after she left them. She had a lot to absorb in a short period of time. We remember her questions such as "will the blan (white people) rip out their hearts and eat them?" (a voodoo belief). We remember the father telling her what a blessing this was. At the end of the information session she agreed to sign for the adoption.

The next time we saw her was to take her to the lawyers and to social services where she would sign. We picked her up and dropped her off at the lawyers. We waited in the waiting room for a bit, excited that today this young lady with 6 kids living in poverty in a slum in Port-au-Prince would be giving 2 of her children the best chance at life. All of a sudden the lawyer emerged seeming really frustrated. It did not look good. She said Yolande would not sign today since the girls looked so healthy (they had been in our care for 2 months) she thought she could take them back and they would stay healthy like that forever. They could help her take care of the other kids. She also stated other voodoo related beliefs with respect to the kids and us. Our hearts sank. We knew that if she took them back, they would just end up in that terrible orphanage again because she had no means to take care of them. They gave her until Dec 17th 2009 to make the final decision.

During the next month, we started to pray for this young woman. So lost and so lonely. So broken and so overwhelmed. Living in a slum with 2 other kids in her care. Her other children scattered around. No husband, and being used by other men around her. We prayed that God would intervene in her life. That God's plan would reveal itself. We knew without a doubt that God wanted these girls in our family so we could only trust that He had a plan. We prayed that God would show her His love. That she would listen to God's voice and not those that surround her with the voodoo voice of Satan. That she would be cleansed and relieved of her anger and feel the peace of God. The night of Dec 16th 2009, the eve of the day she was to sign or refuse to sign, our group of missionaries prayed that God would intervene in her life that night. It was all we could do.

The next day, Dec 17th 2009, we saw a new Yolande. The Yolande that will forever be in our hearts. The Yolande that God has always seen, a child of God. Expecting the worst, we saw her walk to the car as we were to take her to sign for the adoption. As we laid our eyes upon her we saw she had a huge smile on her face! She looked totally different. She radiated. We asked her how she was and she said, "Great! Mme Laurens (Cheryl), you will never guess what happened last night! Last night I had a vision from God. I heard a knock at my door and as it opened I saw you standing there and I heard God's voice. He said "I have sent this woman to you". After that I let you in and we had tea together. Now I know you are from God and I am so blessed that you are going to adopt my children. What a blessing this is!"

This was the first step in her transformation for Jesus. After she signed that day, we saw her one more time before the earthquake of Jan 2010. She was still happy and pleased with the adoption. After the earthquake, we did not know if she was alive or dead. She lived right in the area of most damage in Port-au-Prince. If she had died we would have no way to find her body and therefore get a death certificate hence possibly making the adoption process years or impossible. Finally we got a phone call. She was alive! The house she was squatting in collapsed missing her and her other children. Instead of being devastated, scared or crying we heard the smile in her voice as she told us the story, "My friend was always trying to get me to go to her church and I always told her no. After the vision I started to think about God more. After the earthquake I had no home to go to so guess where i am living????", she yelled. "In the church! God wanted me to go to church so bad he broke my house and now I am in the church!!" We laughed at her enthusiasm.

Since then we have gotten to know Yolande as an extension of our family. We see her from time to time and help her out with her needs, keeping tabs on her other children and teaching her about Jesus. We helped her to get her other child out of her bad orphanage and back home. We limit the girls access to her as this is confusing for them mentally but we share pictures and occasional visits with them.

The last time we saw Yolande was just a few weeks ago. She called us in a panic, "Everyone around me has cholera, I don't know what to do." I (Cheryl) told her to come and see me. When she arrived I taught her all the cholera preventative information that we teach in our community health program. We went over early detection, what to do as soon as she sees symptoms, how to make oral rehydration salts at home and how she needs to go to a centre right away, how to wash her hands properly, how to cook her food properly, how to teat her water and how to disinfect etc etc. I gave her money to buy bleach, soap, sugar and salt (to make the ORS). She left feeling better.

On Dec 16th 2010 we got a call from the girls Haitian father saying Yolande and 2 of the children had cholera and were in a treatment centre. As we are having less deaths in centres now than before, we thought she might be OK since she had made it to a centre. On the other hand, we knew that it might be too late.

She died the next day from cholera.... Dec 17th 2010; exactly one year to the day she had the vision from God, exactly one year from the day she first let a ray of Jesus into her heart and exactly one year to the day, she signed the paper giving her permission for the adoption of Ana and Mina. We never got to see her before she died. We were there only after. We know that she died knowing we were praying for her. She lived through a life of poverty, abuse, malnutrition, earthquake, hurricanes, only to be taken by a curable disease in one swift day. She was 6-7 months pregnant.

We are thankful that God knows things long before we do. We are thankful that He had our special children in his plan long ago, knowing that their birth mother would die before long. We are thankful he did not give up on Yolande as a child of God and we are thankful to be a part of showing her Jesus before she died. We praise God for the life of this woman and her wonderful transformation. May she rest in peace with our great Lord.

Yolande Clerge ?/08/80 -17/12/10

Yolande 2 weeks before her death

The end of the most eventful year of our lives......ever........we hope

2010-12-24T23:22:00.000-05:00

Thank you to all who have supported us through this difficult year. We thank God to know each and everyone of you. We feel blessed to have you sharing the love of Jesus with us in the country of Haiti. Thank you for your financial support and thank you for your prayers. Together we are making a difference in Haiti.

This year has been the most eventful of our lives so far that is for sure!. The devastating earthquake in January, disaster relief coordination of the aftermath (one of the greatest human tragedy's of our time), mass trauma accidents (without enough resources), building of temporary hospital's and living quarters, building new homes for those that have lost theirs, our girls adoptions and Canadian visa's, their first trip to Canada, the cholera epidemic, the death of our girls Haitian mother (will write more on the next blog) and now election turmoil violence and blockades. We are not done yet with this 2010 year as our girls VISA's are expired and they are again stuck in Haiti until Canada issues us their passports (a delay due to election rioting). Whew. It has been an emotionally draining and character building year, but we hold on to those experiences and thank God for helping us grow through them. We thank God for creating better people out of us through the events of this year.

Despite all the death and trauma and homelessness and constant troubles the Haitian people have to endure, today was a great day of celebration. All throughout our area, people had smiles on their faces with a joy that reached their eyes and deep within their hearts. They were celebrating the birth of Jesus and thanking God for the blessings in their lives. It was a great day of hugging your neighbour and wishing them Merry Christmas. A great day of telling others how much you appreciate them and glad you are they are in your life. For so many, they are praising God for the sheer fact that they have made it through this year alive. Let us tell you in this country this year, that truly is a blessing. All in all it was a great day of friends and family and well wishes.

We pray that you and your family have a very Merry Christmas. We pray that you will not get too caught up in the materialism of the season and that you will realize how intensely blessed you are to be alive (300 000 in Haiti died this year from earthquake related deaths). How intensely blessed you are to have a home (1.2 million people in Haiti are newly homeless). How intensely blessed you are to have a job (80% of Haitian's are unemployed and the average person lives on $2/day). We pray that you realize how intensely blessed you are to have a family that loves you (there are 800 000 orphans in Haiti) and how blessed you are to be free (even the few Haitian people that get a passport still need to pass rigorous standards for a visa to enter any country in the world). We pray that God speaks to your heart this Christmas and sets a fire of intense love for Him and His people. That He will show you His purpose for your life in this world and that you will act on that. There is no greater gift than the gift of salvation God has given you through the birth of His son Jesus and we pray that you will have the courage to tell others.

We wish you the best of Christmases and a great start to 2011.

Haiti days

2010-11-29T15:44:00.000-05:00

Time for an update!
We made it back to Haiti Oct 26th. It was so great to be back home to our own house and our own beds and our dog Trigger! We of course were not naive to what may be in store. :)

Our dog: Conveniently thought he would sport fleas for our return. Thoughtfully, he thought he would share those fleas with us by sleeping on our beds in our absence. How nice.

Our house: During our absence a few inhabitants thought they would move in for a while. A small cockroach family under our sink, a mouse family in our cupboard (mama thought she would surprise us with her new babies that day), another mouse family behind the stove and 2 sets of mouse families in our Christmas tree box. The last unwelcome guests; a cupboard full of termites in the wood.

Work for day one after a long flight home: Spray all beds for fleas. Wash all sheets and covers, kill mice, kill cockroaches, kill more mice, spray termites, kill more mice, set traps for the rest of the mice, throw out mouse peed/pooped on Christmas tree. Whew!

Ahh home sweet home.

Since then many of you have been asking about how things have been going here in Haiti with all you have been hearing on the news.

Cholera: Yes it is all around us but thankfully has not hit our immediate villages too hard. It is to the North of us, to the NW of us and now to the East of us. We have been on standby but have not had to open a cholera treatment centre in our immediate vicinity. We have seen cases in our clinic and transported them out to treatment centres and we have been actively sending personnel and helping in cholera treatment centres close by. It is a terrible situation and already over 1600 people have died because of it. People are scared for sure.

Hurricane Tomas: Our other welcome back to Haiti was Hurricane Tomas. At first it was heading straight for us but then as prayers went up, it turned and went West of the island. There was some damage in western parts of Haiti for sure but it was not nearly as bad as we all expected. Praise God. The people in tents just would not have survived.

Paramedics, Laurens and I braving the winds in Tomas

Community Health: This is my new focus this year in Haiti. I was coming back knowing that I will be creating and launching MOH's new community health program. The goal is to have a program Haitian run and lead by the time I am done. Little did I know that it would be life saving with an immediate impact.
We have educated over 7000 people in 9 different villages over the past 2 weeks on cholera prevention and treatment, hygiene and sanitation. Ears were more closed to these messages before but God is using this horrible epidemic to open the ears to sanitation information. Thankfully Cholera is an illness where we can literally save lives by teaching prevention education. People are so eager to learn and I have great Haitian nurses and community ladies to work with and through. I am so fortunate to know the language and to be able to work with national people to get the message across in a culturally relevant way to them.
Yesterday and the day before we travelled to the mountains to teach in the schools. It was music to my ears to hear students, parents and members of the community all singing our hand washing song at the top of their lungs with smiles on their faces. Of course.....I forgot my camera.....man!

Site Management: Laurens is working to put systems in place to help the whole mission run more effectively. He is working with a Haitian counterpart to empower proactive thinking with operations of the site. He has a full time American builder who is now here full time who is dealing with the construction side of things so this is a huge help for Laurens with all the post earthquake building etc that needs to be done. We are both enjoying working mostly with only Haitians now.

The Elections: We have been fine here and there have been no problems in our area. There are parts of PAP and Cap Haitian that have had demonstrations and many people are frustrated with the corruption surrounding the elections yesterday. Today no one showed up to work as people are afraid and the tap taps are not running. The next few months will be unsettled for sure and our movements will have to be limited but time will tell depending on how things pan out over the next few weeks to months. We are keeping a close eye on the situation.

The boys and their new friends on a mountain hike

Family: The twins had their 7th birthday in November, my (Cheryl's) parents came for a week visit and we celebrated American Thanksgiving with our staff yesterday. The kids have settled back into school and home well and they are all doing great. The kids have 2 new boys in their class this year and that has been a blessing for Grayden and Bridgely. Laurens and I feel like a weight has been lifted after our break in Canada (it was so great to spend time with family, friends and our church family) and we feel God's healing power over us. We feel refreshed and ready to continue His great work here in Haiti. We know that this past year will be with us always in more ways than one and some days are still difficult with memories but we have learned and grown so much from it.

Ana and Mina's 7th birthday in Haiti

Our Car: Well someone smashed into the back side of our car but thankfully everyone was fine. $2700 dollars in damage to squeeze out of insurance that we hope they pay. (I don't know anyone that has gone longer than 5months without at least a bump like this.) Such is driving in Haiti. Those of you that have been here and seen the driving are nodding your heads saying, "yup, I can see that".

Thanks to all who are continuing this journey with us and please pray for safety and the end to Cholera over the next few weeks/months.

"When tomorrow comes....." Oh wait! It's here!!

2010-09-13T22:10:00.002-05:00

So for those of you that have been following our recent saga. Here is the best update I have for you. Laurens and the girls are finally coming to Canada!! As our senior pastor at the Meeting House put it: "YYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"

How this happened was incredible. As you know, we were going to have to go to Dominican to get a visa or wait 19 weeks to get the citizenship visa.....as of this morning. With Laurens' flights booked tomorrow the possibility of them coming this week was looking slim, again.

However, God had other plans. Due to some e-mails we sent (we think) and the fact that they knew of our case after the earthquake, Citizenship and Immigration Canada coordinated with immigration Canada in Port-au-Prince and sent them the approved paperwork they needed directly bypassing the next 19 weeks!!. Praise God. Never did I really think that they would get this done prior to this weeks flight. It was amazing. It made the 5 hours on the phone and e-mail Friday afternoon worth it for sure.

We feel like we have been running a long long race and I can never say the finish line is here, but we have at least almost reached a rest stop. We are so happy to have all we need and look forward to being together in rest.

Thank you thank you thank you to all our prayer partners. We know that you have helped so much. It was so interesting to see the number of e-mails we spontaneously got today of people saying they were thinking about us and praying for us today specifically. God had placed a burden on many people's hearts to pray over this situation today and so many were faithful. Thank you. Thank you for how you have touched our lives.

This morning I was having my quiet time with God and like usual I prayed that I would see the scripture through the eyes of the Holy Spirit living within me and not with my own eyes. Today it lead me to a passage of Abraham's faith. In Romans 4, Paul explains Abraham's faith as believing in God. This is not believing in the sense that He believes God is real, he knows God is real. Rather, it is the believing of when you believe in someone. Like you trust them completely that they will do what they say they will. If God calls Abraham the father of faith and of all who believe in God, then I wanted to know more. In verse 18 it says "Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping" I wanted to know how so I kept reading, Verse 18-19 "- believing that he would become the father of many nations. For God had said to him, "That is how many descendants you will have!"And Abraham's faith did not weaken, even though, at about 100 years of age, he figured his body was as good as dead - and so was Sarah's womb." OK now this is what gave me hope. Abraham did not give up his hope in what God had said to him even after YEARS. He was 100 and still waiting for babies.....This was very humbling as I had found myself complaining to God about my short end of the stick for 8 months, only 8 months!......So I read on; Verse 20- 22 "Abraham never wavered in believing God's promise. In fact, his faith grew stronger, and in this he brought glory to God. He was fully convinced that God is able to do whatever he promises. " So this put a question to me. Did God promise something to me? Yes he did. He clearly made a path for us the last 8 months and he clearly laid a path to tell us what He had planned for us over these few months (that is a different story). So the question was then was I fully convinced that God is able to do what He promises like Abraham? I realized that I was part way there, but I needed to fully commit. I needed to fully believe in the being of God, I needed to trust His integrity, His character, His faithfulness, His power. I knelt down and prayed. I gave Him all of my trust, all of my problems, all of my worry and had a peace come over me as I fully believed in Him, that He would fulfil His promise according to His will and timing. I continued the last part of this chapter and I read in Verse 22-24, "And because of Abraham's faith, God counted him as righteous. And when God counted him as righteous, it wasn't just for Abraham's benefit. It was recorded for our benefit, too, assuring us that God will also count us as righteous if we believe in Him, the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead." I wanted God to count me righteous too because I fully have faith in Him that he will do as He promises.

Today I receive righteousness from God. Today He also fulfilled His promise as He knew He would. He did not make it easy. He does not promise to. Look at Abraham, he was 100 when God still had not fulfilled His promise for children! But He did fulfill his promise as He always will in His perfect timing. In recording this for you, as it says here in Romans, I pray that you too will be called righteous for your faith - believing in the person of Jesus Christ, God the awesome father and the Holy Spirit that dwells within you. He is the real deal and you can trust in Him fully. I can honestly say that my faith is stronger because of this and that brings glory to God. I pray that God will be glorified further by our story.

Our girls are finally van der Mark's...but the saga continues

2010-09-12T00:31:00.000-05:00

Praise God! Ana and Mina are officially van der Mark's! Laurens is relieved to now have all of the official adoption papers in hand and the girls passports. Yea! We are very excited that they are officially part of our family. We feel so blessed that from something so horrible (devastating earthquake), things were sped up for us in this process and we have our little girls.

We were so excited in fact that Laurens thought he would have no problem getting back to Canada on Tues. so we booked his flights. All he had to do was go to the Canadian embassy to get the travel Visa and he would be off. But wait!! It could not be that easy could it? It could not be like they said after the earthquake. "As soon as you get the following documents, bring them all in and we will issue you a travel visa right away". Of course not!

Upon arriving he was told that a little while ago they stopped doing travel visas to Canada for Haitian's from the Canadian Embassy in Port au Prince........due to the damage in the building, they had decided to move this service to.....Santo Domingo Dominican Republic (8 hours away). They forgot to tell us.

So here we are stuck again. They will only issue Laurens a citizenship Visa for the girls provided we have Part 1 of our citizenship approval in hand that comes from Nova Scotia. OK, this we have applied for. Good! This was supposed to be at our place in Canada before Friday. It was not! Bad! We called and were told that instead of the 8 weeks they stated on the letter, they are on a 27 week delay for citizenship part 1 approvals. We have 19 weeks to go! :(

We have put out e-mails to all our contacts and are praying that someone will know a way to get Citizenship and Immigration Canada to give the approval now instead of 19 weeks from now.....we are so close to reprieve yet so far.....God only knows why, but we know there is a reason. If you have any pull in this department or have any ideas, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Our desire is to have time to heal in Canada as a family before heading back to Haiti where we will continue the work God has for us there. If you are new to this blog, we encourage you to read through the last few blogs to see the work we have done pre earthquake, through the time of the devastating earthquake, and the aftermath up to now. You may get a tiny glimpse of why we feel we need some time off.

"Oh how great are God's riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!" Romans 11:33

The drama continues

2010-09-06T22:42:00.001-05:00

I know many of you are wondering if Laurens and the girls have made it to Canada yet. Don't worry. I will let you know when thy have made it!

The drama continues as the process to get passports that should take a day has taken over 4 weeks. We are not surprised by this, only frustrated. Every day things are "so close" yet not finished. Through all this though we know that God has His perfect timing. There are so many little things that pop up that I can see God knows so much better than I. He works all things for our own good and we are trusting His word in that.

Laurens now has verbal confirmation that both girls passports are completed. Yea!! Not a total sigh of relief for us yet as he still does not have any papers in his hands. That is when I will have a sigh of relief. When all papers that prove adoption and passports are in hand.

Anyway, the latest drama is as follows. As you know, we are adopting identical twins. Now to me (knowing them intimately for a year) they don't look that identical anymore. To the untrained eye however......you can think you are talking to the same twin until she looks at you like you have two heads (this is because it is actually the other twin you were talking to earlier, and this twin has no idea what you are talking about). Well this is the problem in immigration today. They do not believe it is two different children! After they finished the passports, they said they have to do an "investigation" to make sure they are 2 separate children! Laurens is offering to bring the children in front of them to prove it (which he may have to do).

I guess I am naive about why you would possibly want to do 2 adoptions and 2 passports for the same child. I am trying to think in devious terms and I can't even think of a corrupt reason why someone would do that. Sooooo anyway, with tomorrow's flight wilting away (flights now being only every Tues to Canada), this is where we stand. God can do a miracle and get the passport issue cleared, get all papers in hand, get Laurens to the Canadian consulate, get the travel visa, and have Laurens make it to the airport by 1:30pm tomorrow.....but we will be trusting in Him that He will do what is best for us.

I have tried reasoning with God, I have cast Satan away (every step of the way), I have pleaded with God, I have read both old and new testament scripture to find out how others in a situation such as this pray, and I have worked through them all. Laurens and I have been away from each other for almost 2 and a half months at a time when we need to be healing together and I can only think God has a reason and a plan and I need to trust in Him. I know our reunion will be all the more sweeter because of it.

Please pray that this investigation does not delay the situation for too long and that they would make it back soon. If you are a prayer warrior, tonight and tomorrow morning are great times to pray a ton for a miracle :)

Please also pray for Laurens as he has hurt his back today lifting a huge gate that had fallen on a security guard. The guard was flattened and stuck under the gate. The gate crushed the guard's body breaking his finger and lower leg. SInce he could find no one else around to help at the time, Laurens had to lift and move the large and heavy fence off of the guard himself to relive the guard's pain and set him free.

Just another day in Haiti

Prayer update

2010-08-24T22:25:00.000-05:00

Computers. I hate computers. OK it is a love hate relationship. Laurens has heard me say this many times.

Today it is computers that now stand in our way of being reunited as a family in Canada. For those many of you who are asking for an update on the girls passports....we are still waiting.

There is apparently a problem with the computer system in Haitian immigration keeping our girls passports from being completed but we are hoping it will be rectified soon. Please continue to pray for a miracle and that if it is God's will, that things will be done soon.

We will keep you posted.

For all those that have been so fantastically generous, THANK YOU!!! We have all the borrowed mattresses and temporary furniture that we need. Wow, I wish it was that easy to get stuff like this to our Haitian friends. We also have the funds in place for the flights. Praise God.

Thank you to everyone! Bringing everyone here to heal will definitely be a team effort.

"God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterword they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him." James 1:12

Time to Heal

2010-08-20T10:45:00.000-05:00

It is time for an update on our family and our crazy journey. After a harrowing 6 months, we have finally come back to Canada for a much needed rest. Like our friend Rachel, we did not have time to think to deal with the earthquake due to our busyness post quake. As others left around us, we continued to be strong and pushed forward, consumed by the intense work that we had to do. Slowly over the months, we started to get people in place to share the workload and we were able to prepare plans for moving forward.

Over the past 6 months, we had incorrectly assumed that we were dealing with the horrible trauma well. I in particular, had stuffed down deep inside all the death, mangled bodies, pain, suffering and smells that I had dealt with in order to function. I had ignored the effect of the massive traumatic truck accidents we continued to have after the earthquake. I had compartmentalized the grief, the wailing, the suffering of my patients, holding people while they die and the emotions that go along with it in order to function. In doing so, we reached a point where relationships started to suffer. We had no more emotional energy left for anyone outside of our family. I in particular had built up a wall of safety and security around my emotions so that the floodgates would not break. It was a protective mechanism as I was not yet ready to face the horrible images, smells and emotions that went along with the work I had to do after the earthquake. We had nothing left to give. It took Brad, the president of our mission to pull me aside and point out my lack of emotion towards other staff and some teams, to put a crack in the wall that did not want to be broken. Also like our friend Rachel, once things became more manageable at work, that crack started to open and we realized we had a lot to deal with.

Since then it has been quite a journey for our family. We decided it was time for a break however as you all know, we are adopting Haitian twins who have been in our family for a year. Some of you know, that their paper work was ready to be submitted to the authorities Jan 10th (2 days before the earthquake). The papers were not submitted in time. We were faced with potentially years before they would be legally adopted (even pre earthquake it took 2 1/2 years typically). Since then the Lord has blessed us tremendously as the earthquake actually sped things up and provided opportunities for us to connect with people that have helped us with our files. It was not completed however by the time we needed to break back in Canada and the girls are not allowed out of Haiti. This meant that Laurens and I had to split our time in Canada, each of us taking 1 month with no time to spend together as a family.

As you can imagine after what we have been through this has not been enough time nearly to process anything (throw in family expectations etc) and we desire more than anything to decompress as a whole family. I never knew that after going through something this big, that by 4 weeks you are only starting to realize what you have been through. We are starting to heal but without us being together (we are each other's true best friends) we have barely touched the iceberg. This brings us to the most important part of this e-mail. The girls papers and passports are almost done. I mean any day! This is a true miracle! Because of this, we have postponed our flights back and we are praying that this will come to fruition so that we will be staying to heal and "deal" for 2 months before going back to Haiti. We have decided to see missionary trauma counsellors here in Toronto and we are excited to break down the walls and go back to Haiti strong.

We need you more than ever right now.

Please pray today and into Monday for:

1. The girls passports to be completed (they are at the office today)

2. That the authorities give Laurens the original papers that he needs to get their travel visas (this is a huge prayer as getting these papers is more difficult than it sounds)

3. That all this happens in time to book the only direct to Canada flight from Haiti this coming Thurs. (otherwise they have to wait until the next Thurs.)

Please pray in general for:

1. Our mental healing

2. That we get the rest and family time that we need to be strong for the Lord

3. That God is glorified through our family's story and through the miracle of the twins adoption

Practical Needs that you may be able to help with. Please e-mail us(click on the e-mail to the right) if you are able to help in this regard:

1. Assistance for funds of the flight. Because of the late booking, all regular seats are gone and the tickets for Laurens and the girls to join us are $2000 more than they usually are.

2. A vehicle to borrow for 2 months that fits 7 people

3. Mattresses for us to borrow to sleep on (in our empty house)

4. Very small kitchen table chairs x4 (we don't have a lot of space)

5. Stools for breakfast bar x 3 (wow we have a big family)

Thank you so much for your support and prayers through this difficult year

Miracles

2010-07-18T23:57:00.000-05:00

Those of you who are in the health care field and are also Christians may have also struggled with Matthew 17: 20-21 before. This is where Jesus chides his disciples (current day....us) for having so little faith that they cannot heal a boy that is having severe frequent seizures. He tells them that if they even had the tiniest of real faith, that of a mustard seed, that they could move mountains at will.

I have often struggled with this verse and have always flipped back and forth on whether this verse is literal or figurative. Before coming to Haiti I camped on the figurative side. It could not actually mean that they could medically and scientifically heal anyone in Jesus' name if they just had enough faith that God would do it! Since coming to Haiti, I have flipped back and forth. In times when I could not cure a patient with my prayers or hands, I have thought, well it must be figurative and other times in the same situation, I have felt like God is screaming this verse at me that I just needed to have more faith in him.

I still struggle with it but let me tell you why I am learning to trust God more and more and why I am learning to put my faith in him fully...........

Last week in church a lady visiting from a Christian choir in PAP, started to get a huge headache. She almost collapsed in the church. They lead her out, but before doing so, they prayed fervently over her for healing in Jesus' name. I have to be honest, my faith was not great that it would have done anything. I did not leave my seat as I figured she had just gotten lightheaded from the heat and in a few minutes out in the open air she would be fine. She was not. After leaving the church the headache got worse and she collapsed. She was rushed into the clinic and our visiting anesthesiologist and cardiologist went to work on her. I knew she was in good hands and by the time I got there, she was lying peacefully. The doc then told me that she was completely unresponsive and her pupils were dilated and fixed. She was breathing fine but she most likely had suffered a small bleed in her brain.

Her story is as follows. She had a concrete block fall on her head in the earthquake and ever since she has suffered from intense headache and she has not been able to see out of her left eye well and has had blurry vision ever since. It had been getting progressively worse.

So as I enter the room, she starts to respond to pain stimulus and starts to talk, but her pupils are still non reactive and she states she cannot see a thing. We conclude that her small bleed in her brain has progressed to the point that it is taking away her vision completely in both eyes. Are there other possible diagnoses, sure, such as a tumor, but the bottom line is the same. She also still complains of severe headache. It is not likely with our lack of CT or MRI scanning abilities or lack of neurosurgeon in country that day that she will ever regain her vision. Her condition remains unchanged over the next hour or so. We feel helpless.

As we all work on deciding if there is another facility that is better equipped to monitor her, her choir starts to pray outside. They all surround in a circle and cry out to God for healing in Jesus' name. The girl lies there quietly praying. I recall praying myself but my prayer revolved more around God help me to find a place that can take care of her, and, God help her to be able to live with this in a country like this etc. After calling all around, no one will take her and we decide to keep her here. The doc sits quietly in her room while he waits for us to take her up to the ward later. I go back to orienting our new medical team from the states.

Suddenly my radio squawks. "Dr. Cheryl and Sarah, the patient can see! The patient can see" I actually physically looked down at my radio, not sure that is actually what I heard and I asked him to repeat it. "The patient can see!". I rushed back to the bedside and sure enough her pupils are reactive and she is looking around. She had all of a sudden sat up and looked the doc square in the face with normal pupils and he said shocked, "you can see me can't you?" and she breathed "yes!". I held up fingers and she got them all right and chuckled joyously that she had no double vision for the first time in 6 months. Her severe headache of 6 months was gone! Her vision restored!

From that moment on, she started to sing. Her voice was incredible. She was singing to God beautiful worship songs half laughing, half crying with her eyes closed. Every now and then she would peak to make sure she could still see and with a chuckle, she would close her eyes again and continue singing to the Lord. Nothing else existed at that moment for her except her and her beautiful saviour. I stood holding her hand humbled as I had witnessed a true miraculous healing that made no scientific sense. She had at least the faith of a mustard seed. That I know. She believed God would heal her and He did.

And hence, my struggle with Matthew 17: 20-21 continues and I nowadays lean toward the literal side. Ok I lean a lot to that side, but have a hard time fulfilling it. I pray that God gives me the strength to have that kind of faith. That I will not lean on myself but on Him.

This is why God sent me here

2010-07-01T23:14:00.001-05:00

RoseMarie is a little girl who's parents died. At the young age of 9 she got taken in by a family as a "Rest-Avek". A rest-avek in Haiti is a slave. Usually it is a young girl with no where to go and she is enslaved to work. Moping, washing, sweeping, cleaning, living in filth, sleeping on the floor, beatings and sexual abuse. She endured all of this. Then one day in December of 09 the beatings (with large stocks of sugar cane) got so bad that her left shoulder shattered; her bone broken in pieces... a part of the bone sticking out of her skin. They left her like that. They did not take her for help. She endured the pain and infection until the ground started to shake. The earthquake of Jan 12 was a horror to many, but for RoseMarie, it was escape. After the earthquake, she made her way to a nearby orphanage. Now 12 years old, the Pastor and his wife took her in.
Being extremely poor themselves, they had little to give her but food and water. The kids sleep on the floor and they had no money for health care. They took her to a local clinic who did not have orthopedic docs so all they could do was dress her wound once in a while. It was then, 6 months after her bones were shattered that I got the e-mail regarding whether we would accept this little girl. They brought her in and we did surgery on her infection riddled shoulder, a shoulder that she will never use properly again.
Before she went in for surgery, we became fast friends. I told her that many people were going to love her while she stayed with us, feed her, give her clothes and do her hair. And as I sat and talked with her about Jesus, listened to her quiet yet strong words and looked at her beautiful smile; I was reminded; this is why God sent me here.

Marie Joseph is a young girl of about 8 years old. I hear the crackle of the radio telling me that there is a paediatric emergency in the ER. The visiting paediatrician and our paramedic are there so thankfully I sigh, I do not have to play paramedic today too. However, I do wander over to see what they have and if I can be a set of hands. When I get there, I see they are working to keep her breathing. She breathes independently but barely. With an O2 mask over her face, she waits for the doc to prepare what she needs to intubate.
Marie Joseph can not talk, she has no energy. All she can do is squeeze out desperate moans. As approach her, I see the voodoo necklace around her neck and I have a terrible sense of dread in knowing that she does not know the saving grace of Jesus. Her family members explain to our Chaplain that the voodoo necklace is to protect her from evil spirits and he starts to talk to the family.
No one is beside her now as they prepare the materials to intubate and transfer, so I step in. Looking into her eyes of desperation I know she has little chance. I tell her to focus on my face and I lean in close to calm her. I ask her if she has heard of Jesus and she motions "yes". I ask her if she knows that He is all she needs to depend on and she motions "no". I look deep into her soul and tell her that I want her to listen to me really carefully. I tell her that Jesus is right there next to her, holding her in His arms and no matter what happens to her He is all she needs. I tell her He died for her He loves her that much. He is more powerful than any evil spirits that may be around and that right now in her heart and in her head she can cry out to Jesus to be her Lord. I tell her that no matter what happens to her today, that Jesus will not leave her and He is all she needs to focus on. I tell her just to hold on to Jesus, keep talking to him in her heart and not worry about anything else. As we break the voodoo necklace off, they intubate her and pack her in the ambulance to take her to a facility we hope can save her.
I got the call the next day. Two hours after I saw her, she died.
As I remember her eyes focused on mine hearing the good news of Jesus, I am reminded; this is why God sent me here.

Chrislene is a young girl of 11. Her right hand is crushed from a concrete block that fell on her in the earthquake. Her leg bears the scars of many wounds from that night. Now 5 1/2 months after, she sits in my orthopaedic unit while her mom weeps as she tells me the story. Chrislene's mom sends her to school in Port-au-Prince where she stays with her Aunt.
The afternoon of the earthquake Chrislene sat in her class with 600 other students. When the shaking stopped, all 600 of the kids were under the rubble; dead. Chrislene, the sole survivor was pulled from the wreckage, her leg wounded and her hand crushed and deformed. She does not remember but her mother talks through her tears of going to many different hospital locations in PAP to no avail. She talks of bodies lying everywhere in the parking lots and how she could not get any help. She talks of being accepted in one, only to be put out again. She talks of the hospital she ended up staying in for weeks but they were too busy to do anything for her daughter. She talks of giving up and going home to her town outside of PAP and caring for her daughter's mangled hand until today. Today she heard of the white bone doctor in Titanyen and so she has come.
Chrislene is now on our surgical schedule for July and God happens to be sending us an orthopedic hand specialist. As I talk to her mother, she says in guilty anguish; if I knew this hospital was here, I would have brought her earlier. And then she says but I know God has sent me to you in this place now. And as she gives me a hug, I am reminded; this is why God sent me here.

A message to our prayer and financial partners

2010-06-15T00:21:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been a long harrowing 5 months. We are so very sorry for the lack of communication over the last while.

We can not ever explain fully what we have gone through during and since Jan 12th 2010. It is something unfathomable to all of us. In fact there is not many of us left in the category of missionaries that went through the quake and are still here.....so many missionaries have left (or at least left over the past few months and are now back in Haiti). We are not sure we have processed much, if any of it. Do you ever?

Anyway, we are so excited that you have been with us and Mission of Hope over the past 5 months and we want to apologize to any of you that we have not personally thanked yet for your financial support post earthquake. You are all such a blessing to us (and your thank you is coming soon!). We appreciate your patience in this regard. Your prayers and donations have not gone unnoticed.

We wanted to fill you in on a few things. The first is that due to the earthquake, we have decided that we need to stay in Haiti longer. This country is only starting to recover and both Laurens and I are actively involved in rebuilding lives and homes. We do not feel that God is done with us here yet. The second as you blog readers know is that I (Cheryl) sold my Oakville based practice. This was something that was hard to do but that we knew without a doubt that this was what God wanted us to do. The third is that we are coming home for a break this summer!!

Our adoption process is moving fast since the earthquake but it is still not completed. This means that the twins can not leave the country yet, but they are one stamp away from being legally ours! Having said that, Laurens and the other 3 kids will leave for Canada June 28th and I will stay here in Haiti with the girls. At the end of July we will switch and Laurens will return to Haiti while I come to Canada for the remaining time to Aug 19th. It is not ideal but it will work. Please pray that God will still do a miracle and we will be able to all come home as a family. Our hearts desire is to have a break as a family but we know God is sovereign and we trust in Him.

We would love to see you when we are home and we hope we get a chance to connect. We will need some time to ourselves but will also like to share our experiences with you.

Please pray about how you can help support Mission of Hope and our family for this upcoming year in Haiti. Our financial goals are still $3000/month for our personal support and beyond that for the hospital (which now houses our amputees), orphanage, housing etc. Click on the link to the right to donate directly. If you have fundraising opportunities for us to help rebuild lives in Haiti, please let us know.

God Bless and we look forward to seeing you,

The van der Mark's

What's up?

2010-05-27T22:39:00.000-05:00

Laurens is busy. Very busy. First we have the Patient dome (makeshift ward). Then we have the Supply dome (medical supplies....affectionately called the sky dome by some Canadians) and now we have the Guest Dome. Laurens has been busy directing many construction projects in the past few months which include the above plus the prosthetics lab, laboratory trailer set up (to accommodate the orthopaedic OR), modifications to create a dental room, new main office space, extra warehouse space, the orphanage kitchen, the gym for our new orphanage village, fixing the well, and now the Guest dome. The Guest dome you say, what is that? Well we have so many fantastic people coming down to Haiti to help out with our "new normal" status post quake, that we have to build a new guest house to accommodate all the volunteers. The Guest Dome is our semi permanent home for housing teams. (I will try to add pictures when I get on the other computer). He is by far not done. He is working on starting construction on our new mission property soon where we will be able to set up a new school, orphanage and more. He will be working with Mission of Hope to help construct 500 homes for earthquake homeless.

Outside of that, the kids are doing great and almost finished school. Wow that went fast. Despite the earthquake pause in school, Diana is going to have them done just on time for the end of the school year. This year is especially great for the kids as it is Teagan's grade 8 graduation!!! Yikes. I can not believe that she will start high school next year! We are parents of a highschool student (almost). Weird!! We are looking forward to a great time at her graduation.

My (Cheryl's) sister is visiting from Canada and she is enjoying seeing her new nieces for the first time. Please continue to pray for the progression of the adoption that is moving along but is always a tense waiting game. We do not think it will be done in time to visit with them this summer, but God has done greater miracles than that, so we will pray and see. Despite this, we will be taking a break in the summer and coming back to Canada for some time away (Laurens and I will have to go one at at time). We really look forward to a time of rest especially me who will not have to run my practice when I come home. I can truly have a vacation!!

Prayer requests:
1.Bridgely is under the weather with a fever and headache but seems to be on the mend. Please pray for complete improvement.

2. I have been sick since Saturday but can not figure it out. I randomly spike a fever with body ache and headache and then I feel better. The other day I thought I felt better so went to the clinic, then promptly almost passed out. Catching myself just in time. I rested for a few days and then thought I was all over it (except for some fatigue) until tonight I am up with headache and fever etc again. Those of you that know me well, know that I hate to be down and out. I get downright mad! I have too much life to live and too much to do to be out sick :) I will do some tests tomorrow to try and figure it out

3. Girls adoption - as above

Thank you for your continued support and encouragement

Do not read this if you are squeamish with trauma :)

2010-05-16T23:03:00.000-05:00

OK so Dr. Craig orthopaedic surgeon left Wed.

Then all the fun began. It started Thursday with a mass trauma bus tap tap accident that brought in approximately 20 people with multiple traumas. We had many cases for Dr. Craig :) It was during the afternoon so it was nice to have the help of our Haitian staff and daylight, unlike the earthquake night.

In the end we had correctly diagnosed 7 pelvic fractures even 2 ramus fractures (with no diagnostic tools) and 3 other ortho fractures (diagnosed by c-arm) that were a mid shaft humerus, a humeral head, and a compound tib fib and many other cuts and scrapes. We found ourselves transferring to General Hospital and University of Miami cases that they would usually be sending to us on ortho weeks. We had everything taken care of in about 5 hours. The team did amazing and there were a lot of high 5's when we had the x-rayed confirmed diagnoses the next day.

Then came today.....oh today.

Ok so only 3 days later, just as I was about to dose off for my Sunday afternoon snooze, I get a call from Lindsay saying they are bringing in another accident, she knew nothing else but it either had American's bringing them in, or American's had something to do with it.

I got to the clinic as the first tap tap arrived. This one was worse with approx 20 people again both American and Haitian injured. A young mission team working with a group in this area of Haiti had their truck overturn on a mountain road close by. We had both American and Haitian coming in together on multiple tap taps, one after the other with large trauma. Almost the entire team and their Haitian staff were affected.

Our worst ones were serious head traumas (2 americans, 1 Haitian) with multiple lacerations; 2 femur fractures; 3 de-gloving injuries (Haitian): bilateral arms (not much left of them actually), one foot, and one lower leg. The lower leg was not only de-gloved, but the tibia was fractured so bad that the foot was barely hanging on and no muscle was visible at first glance (an amputation for sure); 5 other concussions with head lacerations (americans), 2 potential t-spine fractures (americans); partial scalping and multiple facial lacerations; other head lacerations; other cuts scrapes and shock. OK I think that is it but I may be missing some. This reminded me of a taste of earthquake night.

The medical team again did great and God provided. It happened on Sunday so this means no Haitian staff. We had only 8 medical personnel. But, as it was a local accident, our friends from Global mission showed up with 4 nurses and 1 ER doc, Samaritan's purse sent a couple nurses, another organization showed up with 2 Haitian docs and 2 nurses, the Mennonite mission sent helpers and University of Miami field hospital sent over all their ambulances. We ran rotating ambulances for the patients and worked for 5 hours.

Bottom line is post earthquake, the ER comes to us whether or not we have an official "ER" or "urgent care clinic". I am praying for funding....

and I am going to bed.

Turning a new page

2010-04-28T22:25:00.000-05:00

Things are a little more calm and God is slowly and carefully putting into place the people needed to allow us to breathe. Projects are moving fast and many people are helping but we still need firm larger funding commitments to move the hospital forward. Please pray for this funding connection for Mission of Hope and the people in our area of Haiti.

Ok I know what you are thinking. What new page are you guys turning? Well, after a lot of discussion, discernment, advice and prayer we have decided to sell my chiropractic practice in Oakville. It changes hands this Fri April 30th. After the earthquake my already busy job in Haiti has exploded and we know we are where God wants us to be right now. There is so much to be done and we have decided that it is time to let my practice go. Things have changed in our lives in a major way and I know that it is time to break free of the responsibility of running 2 jobs (my Haiti job is like 6 jobs right now).

People say,"does this mean you are staying in Haiti forever?" At this we chuckle because if there is one thing we have learned, it is that we do not make concrete future plans anymore. We have no idea how long we will stay in Haiti. We are just trying to be faithful and follow God one step at a time and right now, we know that this is where He wants us. We are comfortable with the fact that if we had to come home even 2 months from now, that selling my practice is what is best for us right now. We are so fortunate that Haiti is not too far and we are able to go back and forth to and from Canada.

Turning this new page of not being the owner and director of North Ridge Family Chiropractic is very relieving yet also very difficult. My staff and a lot of my patients are like family to me and I care deeply about them. I will miss each and every one of them. I am sure that Friday when I clean out my stuff there will be some tears. Laurens and I built this practice from scratch (including the walls etc!) so it is tough. But walls are just walls and relationship is much more important and that is why I have an Open House tomorrow night 7:30-9:30pm at my office so patients that want to come and ask questions or just chat can do so.

I am excited about turning this new page and being able to fully focus my attentions to the job God has called me to do in Haiti for this time in my life.

Please pray for a smooth transition.

Treading Water

2010-04-20T22:24:00.000-05:00

Life is happening too fast. Wow we are so busy that we feel like our heads are just above water. Many of the missionaries here are finding the stress too much. Laurens and I are holding Ok and are having more and more days of control with our jobs. We are trying to put in place the things we need to resume a normal (busy) pace. Things are a little more in a routine.

Great things are happening. Construction is all over our mission with projects moving forward and things being built to accommodate growth. Laurens has entered his busy time for sure. The initial "medical only" time is over and construction has started. He is working on building a new guest house, the village orphanage, the temporary hospital, supply warehouses, repairs etc etc. He often will have 8 projects that are all high priority at the same time :)

Medical is crazy. 200 primary care outpatients a day, orthopedic surgeries, inpatient ward of 27, wound and ortho outpatient care, ER and ambulance transfers, mobile medical clinics, prosthetics for amputees, logistics, scheduling, Haitian and North American team leadership and direction.

I am working on a medical visa to send a woman to the US to try and save her foot from being amputated. Getting the visa is not easy and very time consuming. Her husband died next to her in the earthquake, her baby died in her hand and she got crushed by a wall. Her hand is deformed, a constant reminder of her dead baby and she cannot walk as her foot is only attached by an external rod. She still has a 15 year old and a 1 year old to take care of.

Emotionally the kids are doing great! They have bounced back almost to normal with only a few things here and there remaining. Laurens is on a break this week and I am so happy as he needed it. I am stable unless my stress level gets to high but I am starting to grieve. I thought I was ready to soon go to the mass grave for closure until a mom with a still born came in this week. It was delivered in the back of a pick up truck on the way to our clinic. As I wrapped and lifted the limp fetus and put him in a bag for her to take home, I knew that I was not quite ready.

We are blessed to be where we are and doing the work we are doing. God is teaching us amazing things. Our strength of character builds daily and for that we are thankful.

Please pray for our strength to endure the stress, the time to take a rest, the grieving to continue and make it's way out and for the Haitian people who live under a sheet in the mud.

Decompression

2010-03-28T00:58:00.000-05:00

OK yes I (Cheryl) am still in Canada for those that did not know. I have had more to pack in than expected so I am here for a few more days.

I can't explain how strange it is to be here. There are many things I notice. The streets are so clean, the traffic orderly, the houses colourful. The people have so much free time.

What I mean by this is, people sit down after supper just to do....nothing! Watch TV, surf the net, share a cup of hot chocolate, talk. I realize that after the earthquake there is not a lot of this going on in Haiti. You just don't do nothing just to do nothing! It reminds me of the story Joel Percy told of the time he climbed a hill in Africa just to see what was at the top. The locals thought he was crazy that he did not have a "purpose" to climb that hill.

This serenity, this lack of concern, this worry free time, is something that I envy, but also something that makes me concerned for the blindness of many. I am not sure if that is good or bad. The bible promises us suffering if we pick up our cross and follow him. It is this fact that I have held on to through the past 2 months and for that I rejoice and miss Haiti.

I have been slowly decompressing over the past 2 weeks. The other day I thought I was ready to take a look at some of the internet videos and news coverage of the earthquake. For 30 minutes I sat glued to the screen and relived the moment. I saw videos of the inside of a house shaking that reminded me of what I went through, I saw video of people trapped in a grocery store which reminded me of my grocery store that collapsed killing everyone inside, I saw video of people flattened by buildings that I knew, I saw people being pulled out of rubble like patients I treated. I saw hundreds die like the stories I have seen and heard all around me. I held it together and went on with my day.

Later that night I was driving home and for no certain reason for no certain rhyme, I started to cry. Not just cry, but weep. I have not wept since I was 16 years old. I wept hysterically for about 20 minutes. I had difficulty catching my breath. I let a lot of anger out but mostly sorrow, pure sorrow. It felt good. I needed it. I still have tears in my eyes as I recount this, but I am slowly healing. It is not over yet.

In Haiti, rebuilding people's lives at Mission of Hope is just starting. We are moving forward regardless of the destruction. We are staying true to the plan of reaching Haiti for Christ.

Just like Job

2010-03-14T02:36:00.004-05:00

NEWS: Cheryl will be coming back to Oakville for business next week and she will have a time to "chill and chat" with everyone:

When: Sunday March 21st

TIme: 12:30pm

Where: The Meeting House

2700 Bristol Circle

Oakville ON

What will we do: Cheryl will share the story of the earthquake and what the van der Mark's have been through. She will try to have some pictures too. After that we will just hang out and chat......nothing formal (although some snacks are provided). Please if you have earthquake questions or just want time to chat with her, come to TMH that day. It will be hard to tell the story over and over again so this will be a great opportunity to tell it once to everyone who is interested in our mission work and us personally. She would love to see you there.

If anyone has extra wheels to lend for the week, please let us know...and a winter jacket....burr!!

OK now for the blog:

Job 38 - 41 is God challenging Job with His awesome power. Job is a man that God lets horrible things happen to, as a test of his loyalty and faith. We often ask God all these dumb questions about why things happen to us and why God lets things happen to us and others even when we are following God's will. This passage comes after Job asks questions such as this.

It takes God 4 chapters in the bible to give "Job" a serious talking to!! He "blows" up at Job and everyone talking about all the things He does as God and how dare we even remotely think that He does not have it all together. That we are essentially crazy and big headed to even think we know more than Him with our little tiny human brains.

We kind of take comfort in this big "talking to" that God gives in these passages. It reminds us that He is in total control. Something that we need to remind ourselves of a lot to keep on doing His work.

We are now back from a well needed break week and back into the swing of things. We have been putting things in place with the help of many people to ease everyone's loads and get into a routine. We have developed a reputation in the greater PAP area of having one of the best medical facilities around and the site development/construction management is crazy busy for Laurens.

Tent cities are everywhere. There is actually a new "town/city" forming not far from here as people look to set up new homes outside of PAP. Most homes are created out of 4 sticks up and 4 across with bed sheets draped over. A terrible thing to live in in the rain. Those that are luckier have cardboard or a tent or a tarp. It is amazing to see the hundreds of people setting up little plots and sheet houses everywhere. It really is the definition of homeless. We do not yet have a picture of our new "city" but this is a picture of a typical tent city in PAP. These are everywhere.

As far as the kids go, all are doing good and are back in school plugging to the end of the school year. Please pray for Grayden as he is having the hardest time "shaking" the earthquake off. It has helped that we have had no aftershocks for the last almost 2 weeks.

We are amazed at how God is providing for us and everyone at Mission of Hope. Thanks for your continued support, our hospital and orphanage need it more than ever. There are so many great things going on out of such destruction.

the van der Mark's

updates and earthquakes

2010-02-24T00:54:00.002-05:00

OK I agree with my friend Rachel. I hate earthquakes.

We have had more aftershocks the past 2 days that have woken us up when sleeping. These are the worst because you go from rest to panic in sheer seconds. These past few lasted a few seconds too long and resulted in everyone bolting for the door, hearts beating fast, and minds re-living the past.

Just when you think you are in the clear, they hit you again. Tough to deal with.

Outside of this, many interesting things are happening. I got to go aboard the USS Comfort boat. The big US military hospital ship. We were invited on board to visit with one of our little patients "Job" who will be discharged home to us soon and to see the ship.

"Job" was a little boy that was literally dumped on our doorstep by a motorbike that took off in the days after the earthquake. He is developmentally challenged, and has a rare condition that makes him severely "allergic" to the sun. Burned, malnourished and with an infected eye beyond repair, Job has come a long way. He is almost ready to come home and he is flourishing.

It was great to see the Comfort boat as we had worked to get many severe cases onto the ship during the post quake time. It was good to get away for the day and meet many docs and nurses from all over.

At the mission, we continue to run surgical teams and medical teams and Laurens is gearing up for construction that will be in full swing soon. We are still very busy and are looking forward to a break. So many things are overwhelming as we are not just on a medical or construction team visiting but have to keep up the pace that they do anyway. We are working to get people in place to help with this and God is providing.

In the midst of all this, we are still working on the adoptions of our twins and are praying hard that things will still be fast-tracked for us due to the earthquake. Please pray for this especially today (Thurs) as we go for an important meeting.

Tomorrow Bridgely will get a surgical procedure done on his hand that he burned as a baby. He has needed a release of the skin between his thumb and first finger for a while now and this week we happen to have plastic surgeons that specialize in burn care. God is good and brought them to our doorstep. Please pray for his quick recovery.

Ok that brings you a little up to speed on earthquake recovery and our lives. Despite the difficulties, God is doing great things at Mission of Hope and we are glad He chose us to be a part of it.

Please as life goes on for you, don't forget about Haiti. Don't forget about the thousands of people living under sheets on the road or in fields. Don't forget about the amputees lying in the many makeshift hospital wards. Don't forget about the mothers and fathers and children and sisters and brothers that have died. Don't forget that this country and these people are so close to you and need your help.

God Bless

Peace be Still

2010-02-13T23:36:00.001-05:00

So a month has passed from the earthquake. A month! We really can not believe it as time has flown so fast....just a blur.

We continue to work like crazy but things are slightly more manageable....slightly. Which gives you just enough space to breathe just a little lighter, to sleep just a little more, to sit down to dinner just a little easier.

We had another aftershock this morning. We thought we were maybe at a point of being comfortable enough to relax but we were wrong. It only lasted a couple seconds, and it was small enough that those who did not go through the 7.0 did not think it was a big deal, but it was enough to make us realize that we are still on high alert to escape the building. We went from asleep to awake and out of our beds in seconds flat only to realize it had stopped and escape was not necessary. It is hard to shake the feeling, the memories and panic you experienced.

I think that the adrenaline is starting to decrease however in everyday work. The let down has started. We are starting to feel exhausted after so little sleep in a month. We are able to cry a bit. This is good I think. We have been able to rest a little more the last few days but we wake up after a little nap feeling just as exhausted as before we slept.

The world has started to move on and forget about Haiti but it is far from over. We still have amputees lying in our make shift ward and everywhere we go, there are homeless people living under bed sheets. So many people are left without a home and they lie under their sheets, shivering praying for no rain.

Fri, today and tomorrow were National days of prayer. From 6am to 12pm and from 5-7pm each day we have been having church services. The church is packed!! They worshipped and prayed like crazy thanking God that they were alive. People were hanging out in the grass outside on blankets (like Woodstock!) and my ward patients were carried in on their mats to lie in the church to be prayed over. This reminded me of bible stories for sure. Over a thousand voices singing their hearts out and praying together is an amazing thing. It is fantastic to see how respectful people are of the injured now, whereas before the quake there was a lot of social stigma around disability.

There is a lot going on in the realm of planning and many many positive changes going on at the Mission of Hope. I was reminded yesterday of my lack of faith when something seemed insurmountable and God proved me wrong yet again. He is moulding and changing us daily.

I sit and listen to "Peace Be Still" by Rush of Fools and the tears come. You need to listen to it. It is a song that I listen to because it mirrors words spoken by God in the bible. It powerfully tells us "Please be still...... and know that I am God". In the midst of something this huge, it is all you have to hold on to. He knows what He is doing. He knows how he is going to work this to the best for His kingdom. Everyday when someone slips away in our ward, I hear His voice say, "Be still and know that I am God".

Our little conquerers....

The marathon begins

2010-02-06T00:02:00.005-05:00

We are still exhausted but moving forward.We have not had a day off since the quake and we are often working into the night. We are moving to recovery now however and need to prepare for the marathon.

Since the last update, we have now had the OR going (that was constructed in our lab for now) and have been having post op in our school. Many organizations have set up hospital wards in their buildings. We have had great orthopedic surgeons here and we have been having post op in our school. Each amputee and wounded has a story. Their stories are incredible.....

Here you can see a team of surgeons and doctors praying for the country after dealing with the many trauma patients.

I have been coordinating hospitals to funnel patients to MOH for surgeries and doing assessments in tent cities. We have had many medical transfers from Port au Prince field hospitals via US Navy helicopters. Pretty cool!

My clinic staff is all back to work now and praise God they are all alive. Many have lost their houses and family members. They are terrified that we are going to have another big quake with the aftershocks. (we only had 1 very short 4.7 this week) We have seen a 3 fold increase in patients and visiting teams are working hard to help our staff with the volume. It is a huge job to coordinate the medical teams that are coming down but essential.

Laurens is busy with the volume of changes going on at the mission as we have distributed over 2.1 million meals since the quake and many things are being changed in our infrastructure to accommodate shipments of aid coming in.

The kids are doing well. They and we have had some trauma counseling and everyone is dealing with it well in general. We have many "quirks" about things right now but they tell us that these are normal things that will pass with time and open communication.

We are looking forward to having a bit of time off as the mission will send us soon for a little break to deal with the trauma we have seen and to spend some family time together.

Thanks to everyone for your continued support and prayers.

We will keep you updated

Recovery

2010-01-28T19:37:00.013-05:00

Time is flying.

We are all exhausted but life goes on.

We have been both in the international media spotlight and behind the scenes.

And we have barely slept.

We continue to experience aftershocks including a 6.1 aftershock a week ago. We are always on edge, finding it hard to sleep inside, close the door, shower or be stuck on the toilet. Our bodies have hypersensitive reactions to sound (low rumbles of airplanes make us cringe thinking it is an aftershock) and to movement (often you are just standing or sitting still and you feel like the earth is moving). This is normal I am told. It will fade...after the aftershocks are done.

Week 1 involved us deploying medical teams all over Port-au-Prince. In hospitals, in field clinics, in triage, pre-op and post op care. At first there was not enough people to care for the over 300 000 people injured. Operative wounds stood uncared for for days, infection taking many lives. Bodies would appear on the street at days end.

Then the world descended in Haiti in week 2. Medical teams from all over the world came in working in local hospitals and setting up field hospitals. The USS comfort boat arrived. There were so many medical personnel that there were almost too many in some locations. This is when we pulled out of most hospitals and ran more field clinics.

Since then, we have had a fantastic surgical team from Texas set up a great OR in our clinic (in the lab). It is now one of the best in town for equipment and cleanliness. We completed over 30 surgeries in just a few days saving many lives. We have been busy transferring surgical patients in and post surgical patients to the comfort boat and other great field hospitals. We continue to work in other local hospitals and field clinics.

Today however, many field hospitals are pulling out of PAP. Surgeries are getting to the end thank God. Death from infection is slowing but still ever present. Post op care is a problem. Continuity of care for the country will be lacking. Surgeons to take out rods in 6 weeks needs to be addressed. At Mission of Hope, we are looking at all of these issues and addressing them so we are serving our people best.

It is exhausting.

In the end I do not know what the numbers will be. We are currently at 150 000 dead. 340 000 wounded. Over 100 000 amputees. We overheard a CNN reporter talking that he had spent years in south Lebanon and other war torn countries but this was worse than them all. It is mind-boggling.

We have moved to recovery. Our mission has started a game plan for recovery but it is a huge task. We are excited to have developed great relationships with many organizations and individuals who want to help Mission of Hope move forward. If it is God's plan, we are ready for the challenge and we have been blessed by the help coming in. We have a long way to go however.

The need for our hospital is now greater than ever. The rebuilding that will have to go on in Port-Au-Prince is astronomical and the medical needs are huge. The UN estimates that 75% of PAP needs to be rebuilt. We have 3x the amount of people coming to clinic here everyday both due to needs and due to the mass exodus from PAP to surrounding areas. God will provide.

God's blessings?

1. We hit water!!! Mission of Hope has tried to hit water for a well for 10 years now and we finally got it. Perhaps a shift in the earth's crust or perhaps for some other reason, the well drillers hit water this past week. Laurens is working on connecting it.

2. Our church is packed!! So many people see God in a different light now and many are coming to Christ asking for Jesus to come into their life. Our church is standing room only. As our Pastor said, both Christians and non Christians died. Both Christians and non Christians lived.

Those of us alive today have been given a chance. For the non Christians He has given them a chance to come to Jesus before their death in this world. For the Christians, there is a reason they were spared. He challenged us to find out what God wants us to do for Him and do it with all our might. He was not done with our work in this life yet.

3. More people are aware of Haiti and Mission of Hope's work in Haiti.

4. We have banded together as a team like never before

In closing, I still have not cried. Oh sure I have shed an occasional teary eye, but I have not yet cried full on. I find that I am so busy, I can't not stop to cry. I know that it will come. When I have the time to reflect. Reflect on the trauma I have seen, on the lives that are broken, on the stories of my friends, on the hundreds of thousands that are sleeping under a sheet propped with a stick, on my hospital walls that are broken, on my broken dishes......but then I know I will smile knowing that there is still hope and that this is the hour for God's people to shine.

PRAYER REQUEST:

On an aside, please pray that the Canadian government will push through our girls adoptions. The justice palace is destroyed and many judges with it. If the Canadian government does not push the Haitian government enough to grant adoptions to international cases, it could take years to legally adopt them (which means they can't leave Haiti). Our case was very new and we are in a special situation due to our Haitian residency status. Please pray that the Canadian government will understand our special circumstance and fast track our adoption. This is something that is too painful to think about right now, but we just give it to God and know that it is in His hands.

Thanks for being there for us and partnering with us to spread the love of Christ in this country's dark hour.

Words can not express

2010-01-19T02:52:00.002-05:00

I don't now how to start this e-mail.

Maybe with an "We are sorry" for the lack of communication.

Maybe with a thank you to my daughter Teagan for communicating with so many of you for us.

I don't know

I am exhausted, emotionally drained and in control at the same time.

It is time to tell our story.

We are all OK. Our house still stands. That is a blessing. If that were not the case, we would not have been able to help so many after the quake hit.

I was in the kitchen, my son Grayden was in his room. Bridgely was in the house but close to the door. We think one of the twins was in her bedroom and one was on the porch. Teagan and Laurens were on the porch. It started as a low hum and shake, then it grew....

My mind thought, "that is strange", then my mind thought, "what is that?". In a matter of seconds the house came alive and I was at the end of my kitchen table. The shaking was incredible. I remember seeing the concrete walls moving violently in a wave like at a wave pool. One to my right, one to my left and then one in front of me moving in a different direction. I also remember the ceiling was moving in a wave above me. The floor beneath my feet did not feel attached to me.

Grayden ran to me screaming. Hysterical screams and I clung him tight to me and instinctively semi crouched. All of this may have only taken a few seconds..i don't know. The next thing I remember was Laurens running in the house yelling "get out, get out, get out...RUN" As he grabbed my arm, I went into full action. Still clinging to Grayden, I ran to the door grabbing as many of my children as I could. Yelling myself, "RUN, RUN, RUN, GO, GO". We reached the steps to the garden and I remember how difficult it was to run down them as the concrete steps were moving. I remember running through the front drive with the land still moving. Laurens was still yelling to run further to get away from the building. The dog followed us all. When I got to the end of the driveway, I looked around and counted kids, I could not see Bridgely. I turned back to the building and screamed "BRIDGELY, BRIDGELY, BRIDGELY" as I thought he was still on the upper level at our neighbours. Then there he was in front of me. He had been holding my hand the whole time.

Somewhere between the driveway and the road, the movement stopped. For a moment..... then it started again, smaller but almost as big as the first and long as well. I gathered the kids and instructed them to sit and we huddled until it stopped. Then it started again.......Finally the earth rested for a while.

Then I stood up and turned around......From our rural hill not far from Port au Prince, we have a few of the whole city. As I looked out towards the city and the ocean, that is when I realized what had just happened. The entire city went up in dust. One huge even dust cloud arose from the entire massive city. It was like a bomb had gone off and it was the smoke rising. I looked to the right and saw a similar smaller cloud over our local village Source Matlas. I looked to the left and saw a large cloud of dust and smoke from the flour factory. I was speechless regarding what all this may have meant.

That may have been enough to deal with except that we realized that we had a team of 53 Canadian's visiting on a short term mission trip. We went into leader mode. Laurens went to check on a few things and I gathered the team. Grant went to get the ambulance and I gathered the visiting nurses and doc. We jumped into the ambulance and headed down to the clinic. Grant took the team in and I rushed to the front gate of our mission. By the time I got there, the injured started arriving. They came in tap tap (pick up truck taxi) after tap tap. Children, woman and men.

Their arms and legs were crushed, their bones sticking out of their bodies, their heads gashed open. Some crying in pain, some barely alive. 5, 6, 7, people per truck.

After a few minutes I left the gate and security took over letting them all in and I rushed back to the hospital. For the next 33 hours straight we worked on the traumatic cases that lie before us. It looked like war. We did not know the integrity of the clinic yet so we could not go inside. The aftershocks started to come and were frequent but less in intensity. We had to get supplies in side but ran back out every aftershock we got. The injured were lying all over our outside walk way. Grant, our visiting nurses and myself worked on triaging the worst patients. We are not a full service hospital, we are just a clinic.....we started to get reports that the biggest hospital in PAP, General hospital had crashed down, Doctors without Borders had crashed (the only 2 main ER's in the entire city!). We got further reports that other hospitals were down. We started to realize, that we were all there was for miles and miles and miles.

At the 20th hour, we told the gate we could not accept anymore patients as we still had to get through many many more. We sent our nurses (except for a few) and our helpers to work in shifts and Grant and I worked on. We reduced (tractioned bones back in place) open compound fractures.......putting tibia bones, back into people's legs that were sticking out. We reduced and set many many femur fractures, lower leg fractures, arm fractures. We sutured arms, legs, heads. We put scalps back together and we cleaned concrete out of wounds for hours. We stabilized pelvic fractures and we helped babies with head trauma breath on oxygen.

We had 3 die. 1 baby, 1 two year old and 1 ten year old. We had 4 others on the brink of death. We saved a lot. Because we had no other choice (as there was no where to send them), at the end of 33 hours, we had discharged all but 5 to follow up. The last few we attempted to take to hospitals. 3 refused and wanted to go home to die.

The other 2 Grant and Laurens tried to find somewhere that would take them in Port Au Prince. It was true, most hospital's were not functioning and those that were, were full of bodies, inside and out. Everywhere, some alive and some dead. Bodies were pilled up in the parking lots as there was no where to put them. Most of the doctors that used to work at the hospital's were dead or not heard of. Families had no where to take their loved one's bodies because their houses were crashed down, they still were missing family members or the funeral homes were destroyed....so they left them.

We went home and slept 6 hours. Then opened the clinic again. We worked another 10 hours, seeing the same things. Finally it stopped. There were no more tap tap's running as there was no more diesel for their vehicles.

That same night, our president of Mission of Hope arrived. We started into disaster relief planing with some partner organizations. By this time reports of what the damage in the country looked like were becoming clear. We had US and CAN doctors start to come in through the dominican to help. We have had doctors coming now since Sat. We have been coordinating a grand scale disaster relief plan for the 100's of thousands of people that have not yet got into the hospital and for food distribution. It is to say the least, no small task.

We have hardly slept, we have not been able to communicate with you. Tonight it was time.

The capital is devastated. The national palace is on the ground (white house), the ministry of transportation is on the ground, the huge justice palace (the whole judicial system) is on the ground, the ministry of health is on the ground, the ministry of finance is not down but destroyed, the entire downtown core has almost every building down to rubble, the insurance bureau is on the ground, every national bank headquarters are crashed to the ground except one that stands severely damaged, the head police headquarters is in rubble, the hospital that Laurens was in after his accident (the best in the country) is severely damaged and non functional, the building that has all the adoption papers in the country is destroyed, the only grocery store that all the missionaries shop at (that I almost was at that day) is rubble on the ground killing and trapping everyone inside, the Montana hotel where we had lunch not so long ago is completely rubble killing everyone inside, many collages and schools and crashed down, Digicel world headquarters (cell phone) and the tallest building in PAP is to the ground (hence we have no cell communications and on.....and on.....and on.

We have 160 staff on our mission and we already know of one that has died and we still have not heard from about 100 staff. Everyday that someone shows up is joyous to see that they are alive. Most everyone has a family member that has died. One security guard has 4 children that died. Many of our Haitian staff suffer severe post traumatic stress after what they have been through or seen. One of our friends was trapped in his school next to 50 of his classmates that were crushed by the building. He heard them screaming but could not save them. He watched them die, as he was trapped inside for 3 hours with a dead man on his chest. He was pulled out eventually.

Every time a plane passes over, or a car drives up, we all brace ourselves and jump until we realize that it is not another quake. Aftershocks are stressful. We often have a false sense that the ground is moving. People have a fear to go in buildings. Our building is structurally OK but I do not like to be in my bedroom for long....it is too far from the door. Laurens sleeps on the couch. A protective move I know to be closer to the kids for evacuation. We sleep with the front door open for quick escape...baby steps. It is better than the tents we slept in at first to make sure the building was safe.

This earthquake was like no other. Mainly because it hit a country with such poor infrastructure. It was completely unexpected. It is like kicking a baby down before it knows how to stand.

But we are moving on. We are alive and our house is fine. Mission of Hope is an oasis compared to the city. The kids are good. They are resilient and they started back to school today. Diana has been amazing and the Canadian team was amazing being there for them too. We have a great team on staff at Mission of Hope.

Despite the destruction, we are seeing hope, we know that God will use this to show his light. We know many people that have come to Christ already because of this event and now is the body of Christ's time to shine. So many things destroyed....yet most of the Christian missions survived. God has big things planned for this country. God has used us in mighty ways this past week. He has used us for the Haitian people, He has used us in the media, He has used us to bond with each other and He will continue to use us mightily.

I have learned more in one week than most in a lifetime. I now know how to reduce compound open wound fractures, I know how to cast, I know how to suture and have become proficient enough that I sutured the flap of someone's nose back on (quite good too I might add :) ), I know how to handle cases when there is no other option, I know how to stab an attempt at coordinating disaster relief and to run functional field clinics. I have been on TV and am part of meetings at the UN logistic base with the World Health Organization, UN, military and other NGO's. I am one of the few North American doc's on the ground right now that lived in Haiti and I am visiting and coordinating inside many field and broken down hospital set ups. It is strange. It is surreal.

Rachel (missionary here) and I were just saying today that if someone had told us that this is what we would have had to do this week prior to this event, we would have "quit". We would have said no way God! I can't do all of that. We would have underestimated our abilities based on what we were comfortable with. We have learned that God knows more than we do, that He knows what we can handle and He has more faith in us than we have in ourselves.

We thank you for your prayers this past week. This is not over, it is a long road ahead. Please pray for the Haitian people. Every person was affected by this. Please pray for supply chains to open up, pray for the port to be fixed, pray for timely food and water distributions, pray for organization of relief organizations and military. Pray that now eyes will be opened to the need we had prior to this earthquake...our clinic and hospital, and that funding will come in. Pray for our family and the other staff.

Hope and a Future

2009-12-21T22:36:00.005-05:00

There are 2 ways you can look at life.

One with despair and death : One with hope and a future

Today we had a small child (maybe 2 years old) arrive at the clinic dead. Bloated from severe anemia and malnutrition. As I listened to the child's chest and checked for a pulse, I fully realized the meaning of "dead silent". I looked at the white limp body, felt the stiffness in the child's jaw and I could hear the mother wailing behind me.

I have many choices in this moment. I can be frustrated with the inequality in the world. With the fact that many of us have enough to eat, that many others in this Western world lack for nothing while 2 year old children starve to death.

I can be mad at the mother who despite being poor did not chose to feed her child over making sure she herself was clothed adequately. Who maybe believed in the "curse" that was placed on her child and did not bring her in to a clinic on time.

I can be frustrated with a country that has 85% unemployment rate and is not providing jobs for their people resulting in children starving every day

I can choose to be thankful. Thankful that my children will not have to go through this. Thankful that my twins have been saved from this fate.

Proud to be part of a mission that cares for children such as these through a loving orphanage and health care program. Proud to be part of a mission that feeds over 14 000 meals a day preventing many more deaths, proud to spread God's word to the hurting and hungry

I can thank God that he would choose us to come to this place, to learn from this, to experience and grow like we can in no other place.

I can choose to be happy for this child. For this child will no longer feel pain, will no longer cry, will no longer hunger. She will no longer want for anything, she will no longer be judged, she will no longer be lonely.

Today, I choose the latter of the two ways to look at life. I can let it beat me down, or I can learn and grow from it.

I choose to learn and grow.

An amazing opportunity...For you? For someone you know?

2009-11-01T19:29:00.007-05:00

It is not often we get to invite someone to join us in this amazing journey, but today that is what our blog is about. Please follow along.

Our teacher Diana is amazing. Just click on her blog to the right to see. She came to Haiti with us as a new graduate enrolled in a missionary development program. She came on faith. Not really knowing what she has gotten herself into but knowing it was right with God. She came and taught our three children for one year and then committed to another, only things changed. God has stretched her and challenged her by adding another missionary family to the mix AND beautiful Haitian twins (added to our family). As she sits now, she teaches 9 children in 4 different grades and ESL as she goes. She is incredible in what she does, but as anyone could guess, that is a lot for one teacher!

We have all reached a point where we realize that we need some help. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Diana to give the kids all the attention that they need in order to have a fantastic school year. The biggest challenge is that even though our twins are learning English well, they require a lot of one on one attention to keep them up with the group. School is completely different than what they are used to and they are still learning the language. We all feel it is best that they have a teacher of their own. We would require the teacher for the remainder of this school year.

So what does this have to do with you? Well, if you have an interest in 3rd world missions, if you have an interest in teaching/homeschooling Gr 1, if you have ESL experience or have an interest in this, if you at least remember a wee bit of your french, and if you would love to teach orphan twins who will warm your heart........then join us in Haiti! Perhaps this is not you but someone comes to your mind, then please give them a call.

Please help us find the right person God has to join us in Haiti. If you are interested or know someone that would be the right person to join us, then please contact us (info on this blog) best by e-mail and we can chat further. We just know that God has the right person out their to teach our sweet girls.

God Bless

Our walking miracle

2009-10-21T09:18:00.007-05:00

God thank you for his life. Thank you for the man he is. Thank you for your protection. Thank you that he has more work to do for you in this life.

These are my selfish prayers because I know that if my husband Laurens were to die, he would be rejoicing in heaven with God. However, selfish they may be, we are glad he is here with us.

Less than 2 weeks ago, Laurens was driving along the road with 6 Haitian employees in our pick up truck, the next minute, he was head on with a 3000 gallon Mac truck. It hit them dead on. Here are the photos. No one was wearing seat-belts. There should have been deaths.

Grant and I got the call that there was an accident not far from the mission and Laurens was on the scene. We jumped into gear to go and help not thinking that Laurens was in the accident. As I was about to jump on my ATV to zoom down to the clinic, I got the call from Laurens. He said, "come quick and to make sure our Haitian director does not waste any time getting there". The tone of his voice told me something was very wrong. I asked if he was Ok and he said with a sigh, "yeah, but I need you guys here fast". Now you have to understand my husband. Always the cop, always in control of himself and the situation, so to hear the panic in his voice (however slight) my heart leaped with fear.

When we arrived on the scene I still did not know Laurens was in the accident until we pulled up and I saw my truck. My brain did some crazy flip flop of realization that Laurens was in this accident and then I saw him. Covered in blood (and I mean covered), cuts all over his head and hands, blood all over his pants, he was walking around pouring water on people's cuts and trying to calm them down.

After the Mac truck hit them head on, Laurens body flung forward splitting his head on the windshield and breaking his ribs on the steering wheel. His hands, that held so tightly to the steering wheel were sliced in countless places. When he got his bearings, he removed himself from the vehicle and proceeded to remove all the other victims from the car. He had them lying down and "semi- triaged" by the time we got there.

Seeing that Laurens was walking and talking and seemed to be oriented, I proceeded to tend to the other patients and the crowd. Grant arrived and we got everyone headed off to the hospital. There were many cuts, a broken femur, eye injuries and concussions. But no internal injuries and no deaths.

Then I turned to Laurens. Seeing him standing there covered in blood made me want to cry, but being in "doctor" mode I asked him, "are you sure you are OK?" He looked at me and said," No, I think I broke my ribs". Concerned about internal injuries, we rushed to the hospital where we confirmed the broken ribs and we stitched him all up.

When I look back on this event and I look at the car, I can't help but be in awe. Someone should have died. You don't come head to head with a 3000 gallon Mac truck without seat belts and survive. But everyone did. God has a plan for each and everyone of those survivors and we have already seen the effects. Many of our Haitian staff now have a strengthened faith in God for what He did that day. Many are in awe that an accident that they would usually be morning someone's death in, had only survivors. Many are in awe that Laurens would care enough about others to help them when he was hurting so bad. Many are praising God.

For those of you who prayed for Laurens and the others after the accident thank you. We couldn't have done it without you.

Free Spirits

2009-10-01T22:59:00.007-05:00

I love this picture. It produces in me a lot of feelings.

It is a beautiful picture of the free spirit feeling that our son Bridgely has. It is a beautiful picture of the mountains that stand behind our house. It is a beautiful symbol of the joining of our two cultures. It shows the awesome majesty of God. It brings a smile to my heart.

I pray that you too, will get to stop and breathe in the vastness of God's creation from time to time.

I love this picture too.

It is a beautiful picture of who these girls have become. The smile on their faces and the way their faces have filled out. These two never stop talking, they never stop bouncing, they have a zest for life.

As we put them to bed tonight. We told them how much Jesus loves them. We told them He loves them so much that He always had this plan for them to join our family. Even though I am exhausted and fall into bed at night wondering if I will ever again get an afternoon nap, I am thankful that God loved them this much and I am thankful that we listened when He spoke.

Imagine

2009-10-01T21:35:00.007-05:00

Imagine being 72. Imagine fracturing the neck of your femur in a car accident at that age. The hip joint (at the top of your femur) is a ball-in-socket joint. Imagine the ball is still in the socket and the rest of your leg is sitting up above the socket and somewhat out to the side. In Canada, if this were to happen to you, you would be air lifted to a trauma centre due to the high risk of bleeding from the femoral artery presenting imminent death. Now, imagine after your accident, you simply return home.....because you do not have any money to go to a hospital. You lie at home for weeks until you can endure the pain enough to start using the crutches that someone was kind enough to get for you. Now imagine 7 months later with your femur still detached from the head, still in pain, you are sent by kind missionaries to the "bone doctor" from Canada to see if she can find out what is wrong with your leg.

This is the story of Louis Lexius. He is a walking miracle.

God sent him missionaries from one mission to feed him and refer him to our clinic. God sent him myself who has the connections to find him the location to provide him with free surgery. And God sent him the surgeon at another mission who is willing to take on his case. Due to the body of Christ working together, this man will be getting the very difficult surgery he needs on October 4th. It is a beautiful symbiotic relationship that God has provided for this Christian man. Why did he have to go through this? That I do not know, but I do know that through this experience, Louis knows that God has provided, he knows that God is working through relationships. He knows that God is good.

Imagine you are 83 years old. Imagine you are tending your goats and cows. Imagine your mind is not what it used to be and you get lost and find yourself in unfamiliar territory. As you are looking around, you slip and fall at the edge of the ravine. You fall hard. Bouncing off boulders and rocks hitting your head first. As you tumble, the rocks pummel your head and knees. You feel your head splitting open over and over again and then you black out. After some time you awaken to find yourself lying in the ravine and you can't get up. You stare up to the sky wondering what you are going to do next. You are too weak to yell for help. You are thirsty and hungry. Still no one comes. You wait and darkness falls, then light of day, then darkness again, then light...for 3 days you lie in the ravine with no food or water and open wounds all over your body. You ache all over and you have a prickling sensation in your scalp. Finally, your family finds you and takes you to the good clinic a few villages over. When you get there, God has sent you missionary doctors to care for your gapping wounds, rehydrate your body and to remove the countless maggots that have infested your wounds (maggots that consequently saved you from infection) and you wonder if maybe there is a good God after all.

This is the story of Jean Claude. He also, is a walking miracle. He should have died, but God gave him another chance.

As he gets his wounds cleaned daily at our clinic he shows off the little English that he knows, he jokes and laughs. We are flabbergasted that he is in such good spirits after what he has been through. We tell him that God saved him and that we believe He has plans for him in this life yet. He says, "Well I know God but I have not accepted Jesus.....although this is the 4th time I should have died. Maybe I should think more about that."

I am humbled by the strength in these people. I am humbled by their determination and I am humbled that God would use me as an avenue for them to see His light.

One of those days

2009-10-01T21:28:00.000-05:00

Today was one of those days. We worked hard in the sweltering heat. Laurens made it through customs inspections and a million little jobs. I had successful meetings to prepare for our new initiative at the clinic. Then we almost got lunch in. I got called to the office to help with last minute crises for the 8am tomorrow ministry of health license renewal of our hospital, and found myself tracing blueprints and writing last minute job descriptions. Lunch came, just not when it was supposed to. Later, we both rushed home (up the rocky hill on my ATV) with 1/2 hour to spare before hosting home church........Only to find the toilet overflowed all though the house, which would not be so bad to clean up except the water had run out in the cistern. With a trickle from the tap, we filled the bucket and cleaned up floor. Sweating like crazy and not wanting to stink out the rest of our home church gatherers, I squatted Haitian style to shower under the tiny stream of water that emerged from my tap. The shower never felt so good.

Things were good for too long.....we should have expected a day like this :)

Our Return

2009-09-09T16:09:00.008-05:00

OK we are back from Canada and have many joys to share.

When we arrived Mina and Ana our new twin girls were waiting for us at the Mission of Hope orphanage. We couldn't wait to see them. We were not sure after 5 weeks at a good orphanage how they would feel about coming home with us, but as we pulled up, they came running and screeching with joy. We could not believe our eyes. Our skinny malnourished girls looked so big! Our orphanage did a great job with them and with proper nutrition they were starting to flourish.

The first few days were hilarious watching them discover everything new. Their new clothes, their new bedroom, the shower, even their new brothers and sisters. The questions they asked were interesting. "Do we get 5 o'clock food again today mommy?" (after we told them the day before we were eating at 5pm) "Is this supper?" (When they had a granola bar one day). "Are you going to hit us mommy?" (question out of the blue....what they were used to at their previous homes) "when I am older, are you going to put me back in the orphanage?" (a question one night when they were showering and brushing their teeth.)

They are slowly learning that they do not need to stuff food down their throats (or grab food off their brothers plates) as they will get food again, but this will take a long time to change. They talk non stop at a break-necking pace and every word is at a volume of a yell (that is how you have to talk when you are in an orphanage of 126 kids) and they are very intelligent.

They have started learning English and are learning at a very quick pace. They love to do "school" lessons and show off their skills in what they have learned before. It is amazing to see their brains soaking everything in so fast!! The added bonus is that our other 3 kids have now learned more Creole in 2 weeks then they have all last year...they have not had a choice if they wanted to be able to understand their new little sisters. Teagan has been amazing with them and is a second mother for sure!

The twins have settled into a good routine and seem to thrive on that. We are all now getting to the point of being able to tell them apart just by looking at them although from behind it is any one's guess still. They have very similar personalities and as soon as we think we have one pegged, they switch personalities!

We are so grateful for this experience (even though we are exhausted from getting used to having 5 kids around the house) and we are so blessed that God has chosen our family to steward these children for Him.

We have a long way to go on the adoption process, but we continue to pray that God's will be done for these girls.

In closing I want to show you the difference that God has made in these children's lives. He has taken children that have no future, no hope and has given them an amazing chance to make a difference in this world. Please look at the before and after picture of Ana below to see how far she has come. And this is only the beginning......................

The Story of Ana and Mina

2009-07-09T23:12:00.008-05:00

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.

We are not done yet

2009-06-27T20:42:00.008-05:00

As we prepare to come home to Canada for a summer "vacation" we cannot thank all of you enough for your prayers, e-mails and support. We could not have got through this year without many of you praying for us regularly!

Having said that, we wanted to let you know that God is not done with us in Haiti yet. We feel very strongly that we are just getting started and so we have committed to the Mission of Hope for longer.

What does this mean? Well, Cheryl will be continuing as the Medical Coordinator for Mission of Hope, expanding current services, providing excellence in care, providing chiropractic, working to develop community health and HIV/AIDS programs. She is very excited to announce that Grant Rumford, also from The Meeting House, will be joining her on medical staff in charge of the future vision of ER care.

Laurens will continue to work on current infrastructure, building projects, managing teams, and future expansion projects. We both will be involved in Haiti One, which is the organization we are developing to bring all missions across Haiti together for the purposes of sharing tools, ideas and resources.

Sandy Rumford, (also Meeting Houser) will be coming to work on the admin. for Haiti One. It is exciting.

We know that many of you have contributed financially over this past year to our mission work and we are so glad that we partnered for this great work together. We would love for you to partner with us again as we continue on in this impoverished country. We have been so grateful for His provision this year and we are a little scared and a little excited to see what He will provide for our family for this next leg of our journey.

When we are in Canada, we will be at The Meeting House on Sunday July 26th and we would love to see you all. Please come and say "hi". We have so many stories to tell you.

Graduation!!!!!!

2009-06-27T18:20:00.005-05:00

This last week was high school graduation at the mission here. The Mission of Hope has a school with over 1300 kids. High school graduation is quite something to see.

First of all, it is about 3 hours long.......on hard benches.....very long. BUT, let me tell you how great this was.

We had about 40 graduates. As we watched them march down the isle (dance down actually as it is customary to do at graduations and weddings) we had an overwhelming sense of pride. Why? Well although we did personally know a few of them, it was not the fact that we knew them all. It was the fact that as they walked down the isle, we knew that these 40 kids were

now among the ranks of only 2%!!!! of Haitians that graduate high school. And not only were they graduating high school, they were graduating from one of the best high schools in the country (grade scores).

These kids from rural Titanyen now have a great chance, a chance to make a difference in their families lives, to make a difference in their country, to make a difference in the world. And whether they get an educated job or whether they work the land with their parents, they now have the knowledge to make changes, to think of new ideas, to work up the ranks. What was also so great was to see how many girls there were that were graduating in a society where men have priority. This is all because of the many sponsors from the US and Canada that through our sponsorship program have made it possible for these kids to go to school.

My favorite part of the ceremony was that as each kid got his/her diploma, the parents were to stand up. As I watched the parents, my throat choked at each parent that stood up that despite wearing their best clothes, they looked weathered, run down and malnourished. I knew that for this family, they never would have been able to afford to send their child to school without this program. I knew that having this child graduate would mean a better life for their family and for this I was so proud to see them standing tall watching their child take that hard earned diploma.

Teamwork and Praise

2009-06-13T22:00:00.010-05:00

Great things are happening at Mission of Hope in Haiti.

We have had many teams of Americans here lately working to help build our new orphanage village, the Village of Hope. A few blogs ago, we showed you what the buildings looked like and we are working on finishing the first 4 buildings. To go along with an orphanage village for 240 kids, is a kitchen. This kitchen was the project this past week.

Let us tell you a bit about this kitchen. This is not just any kitchen, this is Maggie's kitchen. You may remember Maggie our orphan child that passed away earlier this year. Maggie had a very hard life but she had hopes and dreams just like everyone else. Maggie wanted to be a cook when she grew up. So in honor of our beautiful Maggie, the kitchen for the Village of Hope will be named Maggie's kitchen.

The main project this week for the kitchen was pouring the roof. 400 bags of cement, 2500 square feet, and 95 people! It was amazing to see the chain link work in action all day long. 95 people, Haitian and North American, staff and team members, construction and medical

personnel, even kids working in harmony trying to get it all done before the sun set.

It was a beautiful sight and a wonderful gift to Maggie and all others like her, that will soon have a loving home, a safe home and a Christian home to grow up in.

Another exciting thing happened. We have a nutrition program at our mission that feeds over 9500 meals per day. One of those recipients of food, is an orphanage close by. We visit this orphanage regularly as I check on the kids medical needs and Laurens attend to other needs they may have. Recently they had a new baby show up. He was abandoned by his mother at someones house in the local village. People noticed this baby with no one to care for him and the orphanage took him in. I happened to go there that day, with a small medical team. We checked him out and noticed he was quite malnourished but OK. After providing him with what he needed and setting the orphanage up with formula and a re-hydration program for him, the director asked me if I would name him.

This was the first time I have been asked to name a baby and I was very excited. Many thoughts bounced through my head and then God told me what to do. I told her we would name him Mark after the M.D. that was there doing his first check-up. Mark was pleased but asked if we could name him after his son Luke. I thought it was a great idea as we have a nephew Luke. Baby Luc (Creole spelling) it was!

Today we were back there and baby Luc was doing much better, alert and holding his own head up etc. As Teagan our daughter held him all afternoon, I prayed for his future and hers as I watched her holding this little orphan child tenderly stroking the cheek of another little girl who had clambered onto her lap.

Praise God for saving this little boy.

2009-06-07T20:13:00.006-05:00

Today was Grayden's 10th birthday party. He is getting so old! We can hardly believe that his school year is almost over! He is a fantastic kid.

We had a great time with 11 kids at the party! They played sports (in 90 degree weather) and then cooled off with water games. After that they ate non homemade pizza (Laurens made the hour and a bit round trip), cake and popcorn. When they were all stuffed, they watched the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe to top off the day.

We are thankful for good times and friends and this great place

God Bless

Sucesses and sickness

2009-05-30T17:05:00.015-05:00

Last week, Laurens and I finally felt what it is like to have a wonderful Haitian bacterial infection. At first we thought it was malaria. It had all the signs and all of our colleagues both on our mission and at other missions (who had had malaria before) said that is what it sounded like. Thankfully, we have a lab on site and it turned out to be a bad bacterial infection. We slowly climbed back into the land of the living and after about a week, we were back to normal. Thankfully, the kids did not get it :)

Where did we get it? Not sure if it was the rare burger that we got to eat at a restaurant in the main city, or if it was from the 2 kids that we held at an orphanage that were burning with fever (see photos). None the less; we will be stronger for it!

Laurens has been working on many projects this month including finishing

2 village houses for our new orphanage. We told many of you about this project before we came here and it is great to see the first 2 row houses come to fruition! We will be moving kids in very soon. This project will allow us to expand from 57 kids to 240 kids when it is finished.

In addition to this Laurens has been back in the mountains installing rain monitors; part of an early warning system for flooding. This system will allow communication from the mountain villages to the towns down below that too much rain fall has occurred.

Town folk can then prepare to move to higher ground before the flooding occurs. After last years hurricanes and flooding, this will be a welcomed system when it is completed.

I have been busy with medical teams, mobile clinics and organization of our health care system here.

Grayden had his second debut as a drummer in church last Sunday and Bridgely has his debut as the bongo drummer. They had the boys on drums, one of our orphanage kids on guitar and another one singing.

It was fantastic to see and it took a lot of guts for them to

get up in front of about 700 people!

The kids are getting excited to come back and share all their experiences with everyone this summer and are starting the countdown for the last day of school. We thank God for the great Christian education they got this year in Haiti. They have really fit in well with their new culture and we are so thankful for that. I had an interesting moment today when I was building towers with Bridgely. I said, "What are you building?". He said, "Well, over here is the guard stand (like at our mission), and here is the house, and over here is the kitchen". His kitchen was a stand alone little structure apart but attached to the house (just like a true Haitian house). It was really interesting to see him meld the two cultures in his play like that and to notice that in his eyes, it was completely normal....Interesting.

We continue to feel that this is where God wants us right now and thank Him for it.

A Nation in trouble

2009-05-09T12:52:00.006-05:00

Today I am deep in thought. Today I am reflecting.

I am reflecting on the journey God has placed us on. I am reflecting on the things we see living in the poorest country on this side of the world. I am thinking of the people that I encounter. I am thinking of the life that they have to endure and the life that we are able to share here. I am trying to think of how to express this to you.....

You know when you see things on TV that you become numb to? Like the starving children, crops running dry, people

working manual labour in the fields? I wish that it somehow struck a cord with us...not necessarily to give money to the organization that is advertising it (although that is good too), but a cord of realization that it actually does exist. And not just that it actually exists, but that we would get motivated to listen to God as to where our part in this world lies.

I have been reflecting on some of the people that come to Haiti to visit. I already know what will happen in their lives before they come. Most people come thinking they will see something similar to what they have seen in Dominican Republic, Guatemala, or Honduras, or Columbia, or other poor Caribbean/South American countries, or even some come thinking it may be like what they have seen in Africa. What they find is a country very different than what they have expected (although many say that the closest place they can compare it to is Sub-Saharan Africa).

The biggest difference is that even though they may have seen poverty before, they have usually seen a country that at least has one city with wealth (given slum areas) and lots of rural poverty. They are shocked to find that as they enter the biggest city in this country (that is the size of Oakville but has 3.5 million people living in it) there are no skyscrapers (not a one!), there are not stores that you may see anywhere else, you can not walk comfortably along window shopping, there is NO fast food restaurant chains and every building (save a couple) looks like a shack. Most all vending is done along the street or in tin shack market huts.

Except for a 1% elite, no one in this country has an easy life.

In this country, it is not whether they know how to grow crops, or if they have had crops wash away, for the vast majority they do not have the means to grow them. They do not have the money to buy the tools, they do not have the land, and if they do it is often hard dusty rock. This land is 98% deforested. A lucky few live in a water shed area and are blessed with crops. It is very normal for people to eat only one time a day. I have seen malnourished babies that mom says she feeds every 3 days, when she has food. Most people live "in the now" (fitting sermon Brux) and on only about $1.50/day (think on that for a family of 7 or 8).

Where we live I stare out to trees that our mission has planted but my yard is barren rock and all the land around me is barren rock with scrub bushes. Does this mean it can not be worked? No, it just means it is much much harder.

As I sit here, I watch the young man that works in our yard on Saturday mornings leave. He works in our yard as a meaningful way to build relationship and to work off the fact that we are paying for him to go to school. He has no father and 6 brothers and sisters. He is the sole provider for his mother and family. He has no job. The meal I give him every Saturday, he gulps down thankfully and I know it may the only one he gets today.

The lady (one of countless) that I saw in the clinic yesterday tells me she has 6 kids, two of them a set of twins. She has no husband and she pleads for us to take one of her children for our orphanage. She tells me that if she can just get rid of one, then it will be a little better for her to look after the others. My heart breaks at the thought of giving up one of my children. Our orphanage is full.

There are 800 000 orphans in this country. There are even more fatherless. It is actually surprising when you hear of a dad living with a mom in the same house. Many men have many mistresses. The norm for the children that we visit in local orphanages have no shoes, often they are half clothed, their clothes often dirty or torn. They live on mats on the floor. They are sick always with diseases of lack of sanitation. They are malnourished. They crave attention, often crying as you leave them behind. Many children in orphanages in Haiti are abused sexually. Unfortunately I have medical proof.

Nothing is easy here. Even with our privileged status of having financial support from home, things are hard. You can not just run out to the grocery store, or Home Depot, or the corner store. You can not just shop at the market and get a good price (you will get the "white" price as they call it). It takes you an hour one way to go to get anything in the city. You have NO roads that are smooth. If you are lucky enough to have a paved road you start to wish you were back on the unpaved roads due to the potholes, wait no.....craters. Every where you walk is rocky and hilly and hot with barely any shade. As a woman, I can not go off the mission compound alone, I always need a male escort I have to have a driver as I am not allowed to drive further than the immediate area (with an escort of course).

Many Haitian people have no access to vehicles. If they do, they ride sometimes up to 40 people squished in the back of a truck. Many I know, walk 5 hours with a laden donkey to bring their wares to the market, only to turn around and walk the 5 hours back when they are done. They will do this 2 times a week, or they will starve.

People here do not speak english for the most part. Most can not read or write. Only the educated do. Only 20% of the population attends school. Only 2% graduate high school. This is the biggest barrier to growth and development in this country. We are dealing with extreme lack of education.

Affordable ER care in Haiti is almost non-existent. When someone is hurt in an accident, we always wait to hear the unavoidable...they have died. The lucky? survive. There is no ER hospital for the people of this area. They can't even afford the dismal ER hospital that is an hours drive away.

HIV is rampant, but ARV drugs are not readily available. Education is not done regarding this disease. Sexual sin is rampant. Stats are almost non existent, community programs not created.

Haiti is not just like a lot of poor countries. It has many many complicated issues. They are not issues that you can or will ever solve by sitting around your table at home discussing your opinion as to what Haiti needs to do or change. You will not begin to understand the multifaceted issues of this country unless you are immersed in this country for years.

Does this mean it is hopeless? Absolutely not. Does it mean that we should just give up? Absolutely not. Can we fix the whole country? Absolutely not. Can we start to make a difference in educating young people to grow up and make a difference in Haiti? Yes we can. Can we create a feeding program for kids to ensure that they are not malnourished while they go to school? Yes we can. Can we provide Christian based education programs? Yes we can. Can we provide a hospital with a desperately needed E.R.? We would love to. Can we provide a loving home for orphans? Yes we can. Can we create community health education programs? Yes we can. Can we turn our backs? NO WE CAN NOT

Why do we stay here despite all of this? Because God has called us here and we know it is right. Because despite all of the above, we love the people, the country and there is no other place right now we would rather be than on this poor little section of a Caribbean island.

Now, we want to challenge you to listen to what God has to say to you regarding Haiti. We believe He has brought your path to cross with ours for a reason. Not just so you can sit back and enjoy updates once in a while, but so that you can get involved. Please pray about how to get involved. We do not have your answer but He does.

We believe the majority of you have been called to respond compassionately to use your finances to support programs and missionaries on the ground. In addition, we believe some of you are called to come and see what this is all about; to come and experience the sights, sounds and smells here on the ground. You may not see all of the things that I have talked about above (you have to live here to see all of this), but you will see the reality, you will grasp the vastness, you will touch the lives of the people and it may open your eyes to what God is calling you to do for Haiti.

We are shortly making a decision for our lives here in Haiti and would love to have you continue this journey with us. Also, there is a missions team that is being put together to visit us in October. We have attached the information regarding that and if you feel God is calling you to serve here for a week, to get a real taste of this great mission that you are already a part of then "just do it!". We would love to see you here.

Please join us in prayer and praise for the following:

1. Praise that we have met some other American and Canadian missionaries with children that don't live too far away (with boys the same age as our boys)

2. Praise that God has been faithful through our struggles the last few months

3. Prayer for difficult decisions that we are facing as a family

4. Prayer for finances for the clinic/hospital so we can progress to ER

God Bless you all.

MISSION TRIP CONTACT:

Vaneesa Boller

5213 Thornburn Drive, Burlington, ON L7L 6R4

905-336-9703

vaneesa@boller.ca

Peace in the hills

2009-05-02T12:29:00.003-05:00

This week at home church, we discussed the issues that each of us were facing. As missionaries in charge of different ministries under the same organization, our issues were different but the themes were the same. Frustration. Our mission's goal is to train and work with Haitian people to run the programs of our mission. A goal we all fully agree with, but one that is definitely the hard road more often than not. We talked about our frustrations, our issues, what happened this week and our frustrations again. We talked about how we miss working with people that have basic common sense! We constantly feel the struggle Satan is having with us and the work that we all are doing. It is often exhausting.

However, amongst the frustrations there is also joy and triumph (even if it is 3 steps forward, 2 steps back). There are things that happen that are very rewarding. There is the big picture that is awesome! We are reminded to keep our eyes on this big picture as we do our work.

And as we sat out on our hillside porch in the evening, playing guitar and singing songs of worship, I could feel the warm ocean breeze caressing my face. I could hear the gentle sway of the trees and all seemed at peace. If just for a moment, life seemed to stay still and the presence of God filled my soul.

Rain, Drums and Fees

2009-04-25T21:55:00.008-05:00

Well, our mission work has been progressing very well. We have a communication e-mail that we send out 1x/month (ish). If you want to be updated on our projects, just send us an e-mail (on the right hand side of the screen) and we will send you the updates.

Let’s see, where to start....

Well after we had the funeral and found out that Pastor Andre is better and back home (thank you for your prayers), life went on....Let me tell you a few stories:

The rains have started in Haiti. Most of the time it rains at night but the other day, it started in the early afternoon and it POURED!! Tropical rains are very different than rains at home. They come down HARD. Here is a picture of the rain outside Laurens' office. If this is normal rain, it will be interesting to see what a hard rain is. This rain brought with it a little work for Laurens as the main office roof decided it did not want to do it's job and let the rain come right on in on top of the director's desk!! In addition to that, our hospital clinic (which has an open roof in the center) had so much rain in the hallway, that our cleaning lady was sweeping out the water with a huge broom.

We have a new water cistern system that the January Canadian Team started to build and due to the recent rains, we were able to see that the cistern started to collect the rain water off of one of the mission's roofs. This is and exciting first step towards helping the mission save money so that we can free up funds for other projects to help the Haitian people!

This month our boys started drum lessons with one of our Haitian worship leaders in the church. This has been a blessing as Grayden has wanted to learn drums for a while now and Bridgely wants do do whatever his big brother does. Grayden has been progressing well and in just 3 weeks of practice, he had his debut at church in front of 700 people! He played drums along with the worship band while one of our Hope House orphanage kids sang "Amazing Love". He did fantastic!!! Then last Sunday we had senate elections in Haiti and on Sunday you were not allowed to drive. Since our church bus could not go pick up people, we had low attendance and not much of a worship band. So...Grayden got pulled in to drum for all 6 songs for the small congregation. He was trying to act cool when he got home, but he could not hide how proud of himself he was. :)

This month brought us to our first 1 week vacation this year! For Easter we drove to the Dominican Republic for a week vacation in the sun. Now you might say,"but you live in the sun", well yes we do, but contrary to what you may believe.....we do NOT lie in the sun all day! But in Dominican did we lie in the sun? OH YES WE DID!

We had a great time with our family relaxing in Santo Domingo area and yes, with HOT showers and all the food we could eat. It truly was a break. Thank you both mom's and dad's for the Christmas gift of money and thanks to Velvet our friend at home who was able to connect us to Colleen who got us a fantastic deal we could afford.

Let us tell you about the 6 1/2 drive there (that took 8 hours). First of all, true to Haitian red tape style, we needed to get a paper in order to drive across the border to show that the vehicle was not stolen. (8 missionaries in a stolen vehicle....sure) Fine, we got the paper for the vehicle we were taking and on the day before the trip, went to the office to get the next paper we needed for the vehicle to cross the border. When we got to the office they said,"oh no, we just changed the rule now you need another paper showing you paid import tax on that vehicle, in order to give you the non stolen paper" Like that makes sense. Ok, this might be a simple thing, except that the vehicle is 9 years old and was imported back in 2000! Our only option was to take the bus (an 8 hour trip and $250 more!). We fretted all night regarding the stupidity of the situation when at 6am the next morning our Haitian director called us and in an excited voice said."I found the paper!!" Apparently he was up all night searching through 9 years of files until he found the paper!

So off we finally went (after getting our non stolen paper) to the border. Now you would think that a border would be a place where you show your passport, maybe pay a fee and they let you through. Not this border! We could get through fine being Canadian but it was the hoops we had to jump through. First of all on the Haitian side, there are no marked buildings. Once you find the right building after fending off all the people that want to "help" you, you pay a fee, then you go to another window and then, you pay a fee, then you go to the police station and they let you off with no fee (surprising). And after paying the little street boy for "watching your car" you go to a gate. They check all your papers and then let you through. At least this is all done of course in Creole which you understand. Then you drive for a bit and get to the Dominican side where of course you do speak the language......then you go into another unmarked building and guess what? You got it, you pay a fee, this gets them a little glance at your passport. After that, you go to another window where they stamp you passport and ...you pay a fee. Then you show them your non-stolen paper and no surprise you pay a fee (you know because they had to look at it). Then you go outside, follow some guy to a little building and get insurance for your vehicle....for a fee only to come back to customs agents who want to check through your bags very very slowly until you pay them a "fee".

Finally we were on our way. We had to pass many police checks, some that wanted a "fee" and others that just wanted to look at the "bonita" girls in the back seat of the car (Rachel, Amy and Diana) fellow missionaries. Luckily fees in 3rd world are not expensive!! We are still not sure how many of those "fees" were due to our nationality and the knowledge on their part that we would be able to pay.....?!

Anyway, we have been back now for a couple weeks, we are now experts in crossing the Dominican/Haitian border and we saw wonderful scenery on the way. We realized what a blessing God gave us to be able to relax with the kids before hunkering down to more great work at Mission of Hope.

Canada, friends and tragedy

2009-03-28T11:02:00.009-05:00

Well, as always it has been an interesting few weeks and I am finally able to put it all down on paper. You know when you just feel like things are good and on track and progressing and then BOOM you get hit with more? Well that is how the last few weeks have been like.

I (Cheryl) was able to fly home

for a quick business trip this month. Although it was for taxes (blech!

!) and FREEZING it was a great week. Great things are happening at North Ridge Family Chiropractic (my business at home) and I was really pleased with my staff. I was so glad to see so many of you at church on Sunday and throughout my week at the office. I was able to see my good friend Tree's new baby and be a part of my niece's 1st birthday party! I was able to reconnect with friends and family and go shopping for all the things that we can't get here in Haiti! Much to the kids dismay, I also got to have HOT SHOWERS ALL WEEK!!!!! It was amazing.

On my way back, I brought with me 4 friends from Canada whom we spent an awes

ome week with. They have now since gone home and we miss them already. It was really great to have friends from home here for a bit. It was however a smack back into Haiti reality......

One of my friends is a paramedic with Halton EMS. He had come to work in the hospital with me. I had just finished telling him that although trauma happens here all the time, we probably wouldn't see much of it in our clinic as people know we do not yet have the ER open.

No sooner had I just finished telling him that, we heard a great commotion outside the building. There was a trauma case that had just came in on the back of a tap tap. A man had slammed into the back of a tap tap off his motorcycle. He had a serious head injury it appeared and his scalp and ear were torn off. Our team quickly got him ready to send him off to a bigger hospital and off he went on the floor of the tap tap with a bunch of excited Haitians. (How I wished we had an ambulance to transport him properly). All of this is "business" in health care but what made this unique (and what made a lot of our nurses not nearly as calm

as they should be) is the fact that the man on the motorcycle lying hurt in the back of the tap tap was Pastor Andre one of our partner Pastors from the mountains. Here you can see a picture of some of his kids and his church were we hold mobile clinics.

As we all watched Pastor Andre go, I was reminded that life is a gift and I was reminded that tragedy for us here is not a distant thing and that we are going to keep seeing it over and over again.

Which brings me to the next morning. The following morning I woke up with our guests and started to get breakfast ready. I knew that Laurens had to run an errand that morning so he was not there. We had not yet seen Grant (the paramedic) and assumed he was sleeping in. My friend Angelica and I started cooking the breakfast and I went to get something at the guest house. What I heard on my way there stopped me in my tracks. I overheard the conversation that seemed unreal. Ed Hughes had died traumatically. Laurens and Grant were on the scene.

For those of you that do not know Ed, he was Canadian and ran an orphanage around the corner from us. All of his kids go to our school and we go there often. All our teams visit Ed's. (He is the one on the right in this picture).

Ed Hughes has been through a lot in his life. He has an amazing story of transformation. Ed originally came to Haiti and was going to open a night club. As he was starting to set up shop, he was struck by all the hungry kids that came to beg at his gate every day. He started feeding them.

His story continues from there........he became a Christian, opened an orphanage and feeds 100's of kids everyday. He has been kidnapped and he has been shot. He has lost his right arm. This past week, he died as he fell off a ladder and landed with his head hitting the concrete floor below. The orphanage kids were there. Now we are in the throws of working out the details of his funeral with the family and this will be our second funeral in 6 months.

Through all of this we have a true realization of the character being built in all of us. Romans 5: 3-5 says this,"We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance builds strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love." Without the Hope that God has given us, I don't know how people can deal with death and suffering and come out OK on the other end. This is a strength of character being built that we are truly amazed and thankful for. Romans 5:2 says,"Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory." This is how we feel.

I believe God has placed us here not only to do the work of this mission but to also show all of you that there are places in this world were death is real and frequent and people can not always depend on themselves. They have no other choice but to sink, or depend on God. I pray that you chose God.

Bridgely's birthday

2009-03-10T08:59:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was Bridgely’s birthday. He turned 7!! We can’t believe that he is 7 already, or that we have been here for half a year!

We had a great time yesterday. Bridgely first got to make cookies in school. Then we had a family time in the afternoon where we baked cakes and ate Jello. In the evening we had a little party with some of his friends from the Hope House orphanage where we stuffed our faces with pizza (we found the Domino’s pizza, the only international chain restaurant in Haiti......sweet sweet pizza) ate cake and watched a movie. It was a great birthday and I thank God for sending Bridgely some friends to share that with.
Enjoy the pics!

Mountain villages, a sweet boy and home sweet home

2009-03-07T17:18:00.020-05:00

Ok, So you know the more busy we are, the less we write right?

This month has been our busiest month so far. I (Cheryl) have had a ton of medical teams come and Laurens has had many teams helping out with construction of the new orphanage and post hurricane homes.

My parents came for a visit and got a taste of what Haiti is like. They saw everything from a homeless shelter, to orphanges to a nice Chinese food restaurant. They will sleep well when they get home I think!

This past month, I have taken teams on mobile medical clinics all over this area of Haiti. The highlight was that we have recently completed a 2 day clinic in an area in the rural mountains called Turpin. We saw 850 patients in 2 days, shared the Jesus film on the outside of the church wall, slept under the stars, listened to the donkeys roosters and goats, shared the Gospel, saw extreme poverty and

realized that these people have something that most of us in Canada never have.....a simplicity to life, a hardiness beyond measure, an ability to deal with tragedy and move on, a hope and faith so strong.... so intense that we were moved to tears.

Now, let me tell you about a little about a boy named Brunell Jules. Brunell (13 who looks 9) fell of his horse in November of this year. After that, he had difficulty moving his left arm and leg. The right side of his face would not function normally. Since Brunell had no other option, life went on, until our Canadian construction team came to Haiti. Brunell like many other boys hung out at the construction site watching the "blan" build houses and other Haitian men working with them. One of our Canadian team girls Maggie noticed Brunell's condition and brought it to my attention. Brunell lives with his mother in a tin and mud/thatch shack with 5 other brothers and sisters. 2 other children in his family have died. He does not know his father....he has never been there. His mother, wethered well beyond her years, is weary, has no work and can barely provide one meal a day for the family. Brunell's older brother Jeff (16 who looks 12) is the "man" of the house.

After God placing Brunell in our path I assessed him and arranged to have him seen at our clinic by a visiting neurosurgeon...(a neurosurgeon just happened to be coming that week!!) By the grace of the Canadian sponsors, we completed the CT scan on his brain that shows that he suffered from an intracranial bleed when he fell off the horse. We are looking into whether we can do anything further to help him.

Let me tell you the best part of this story. Through this experience Brunell (who's mom did not come to the CT appt) was able to see the city, get a ride on an automatic hospital bed, play with automatic windows in the truck, enjoy a big Patte (good Haitian food) and show me his house. We taked about God, invited him to church and told him it does not matter if he has church clothes or not, that God accepts him for who he is.

Here is a boy who has taught me a lot. He has NOTHING, he has no dad, he has a mom who is giving up on life, he has lost 2 siblings and one nephew. He has minimal food and clothes and he sleeps with 7 in one room and one bed. Despite all this, he has the best smile (and can't stop smiling), he has a wonderment for life, he is kind and courteous and can throw a mean baseball with his good hand. Now he has loving sponsors for his medical care in Canada, and one Canadian Doctor (me) who is determined to show him what life is really about.

Please pray that Brunell and Jeff show up to church and that we can nurture this relationship.

Thank you God for the things you teach us every day.

One other great thing this week is that I will be coming home for one week for a business trip. (March 10th to 17th) Even though I am NOT looking forward to the cold or all the work I have to do (does anyone have a warm sweater or two???!!); I am very much looking forward to seeing some family, a bunch of friends, my church family and patients and staff I work with. I will be at church at The Meeting House on Sun March 15th and I hope to see a lot of you there!

Please pray also for Laurens as he juggles the van der Mark monkeys and work this week.

p.s. Happy Birthday Julia

Canadian Teams and risky situations

2009-02-07T16:10:00.007-05:00

Wow what a busy month. I seem to say that a lot....It is true! It always seems to be a busy month but this month took the cake! We have had the fantastic Canadian teams here with us for the past month. 2 teams in 4 weeks. They had both a medical side and a construction side to their team which makes Laurens and I both crazy busy.

Let us tell you about it.

Laurens was busy with his construction team and many projects. They completed a big water project on the mission that will allow us to collect rain water and decrease our costs on the water we have to truck in. It is fantastic! He directed the team in the construction of 3 new homes in the villages for people who had their houses destroyed by the hurricanes this year. Here you see one of the people's homes that had been washed out and what the houses look like when they are completed. They also worked on many other construction projects around the mission throughout their time here.

When you did get a glimpse of Laurens it was when he was driving here or

there in his truck getting this, or that, or the other thing in order to keep the teams projects flowing. He did a great job!

I was very busy with my medical teams that were here. I got to work with 2 fantastic medical teams over this past month. The 2 teams

were very different but just the way God wanted to put them together. All the planning I have put into mobile clinics took action and went fantastic! We visited 8 different locations in 9 clinics around Haiti. We saw and helped over 1200 patients.

We had so many stories that came out of this. We saw severe malnutrition that breaks your heart. We saw a 6 year old the size of my

healthy Bridgely who was too small, weak and malnourished to lift his head and was near death. We saw neurological conditions that we could not do anything about. We saw many close to their last breath. We saw the blind. We saw the lame. We saw the widows and the orphans. We saw the homeless and those who's minds have been broken. We saw wounds down to the bone and we saw the wounded of spirit. We shared the love of Christ and touched the broken in body and spirit.

Mobile clinics are one part of my job that I will never forget.

Let me tell you of two stories that showed us God's hand was clear and evident this month.

The first is with Laurens. He was driving along minding his own business when out of the blue a motorcycle hit his truck. No one was hurt. Now this in itself is nothing abnormal. The driving here is CRAZY! The part that was not so great was that the driver of the motorcycle seeing "white" skin and the dollars that might be behind that, decided to make a scene yelling that Laurens should pay him. In about 2 .5 seconds (ok maybe not that fast) he had about 100 people around yelling (him being the only Canadian around). Thankfully, he was hit right in front of a police station and he had already put in a call to our Haitian mission director (who has a lot of influence in the area). The police came over and shortly after our director showed up and brought Laurens into the station. He really felt God's hand of protection through this. The funny part of this whole story was that our director ended up standing in front of over 100 people yelling out a lecture on driving, driving without insurance (the motorcyclist) and how this was in no way Laurens' fault. The police stood by his side just nodding in agreement. Laurens thought he might try that one day when he is back on the job as police in Canada, just yelling out a lecture on the side of the highway about the stupidity of drivers. :) Laurens now gets called Gwo neg (big guy) in that town when he works there.:)

The second was with myself. We were taking the teams to mobile clinics in the mountains and making sure that most of my team was safe I took a seat in the back of the pick up truck along with one other adventurous Canadian team member and some of my Haitian team. On the way back I was feeling a little car sick and so I switched places with Marg the other Canadian girl. A little while later we were out of the mountains and heading home on the last stretch where the road is better and you are able to go a bit faster. On the roof rack was my 50 lb portable chiropractic table. Shortly the wind picked up and I got a little chilly (yes I know it's Haiti but I was still chilly). I bent forward to try to block the wind just as a gust of wind threw my 50 lb table off the roof and straight at the spot my head was a second ago! My friend Marg who blew a muscle punching the table out of the way so it would not kill me half screamed and half laughed and hugged me after the table hit the road. The amazing part of this was not only did God move Marg out of the way (who most certainly would not have been crouching down from cold) and make me cold enough to crouch out of the way, but my table did not even break when it hit the pavement full speed!! The best part was our Haitian driver and others in the back with me said, "Dr. Cheryl are you OK????" When I said it did not hit me and only blew my bandanna off, my driver said with full conviction and awe, "I know it did not hit you because God is protecting you. You are working for Jesus and that is why!!" I thought if my near death experience caused him to have more faith then it was all worth it! :)

The kids have been great and our Haitian cook now talks to Teagan in Creole once in a while and Teagan answers in English the correct answer. (she knows more Creole than she lets on!) Here is Grayden practicing his "tricks" on our porch.

Thanks for your support and prayers, we love you all.

A Sad Day

2009-01-17T21:35:00.002-05:00

Today is a difficult day.

Today is the funeral for our sweet Maggie. Maggie is one of our children here at our hope house orphanage. She died late Monday night.......

Maggie was a special girl, a very special girl. Almost 6 years ago Maggie was found beaten and burned and left to die in a dump. She was about 10 years old. She was unable to walk properly due to post-polio syndrome and had no hope. After the Hope House (Mission of Hope orphanage) took her in she started to heal, she thrived, she learned about Jesus and best of all she had hope. She lived like that for almost 6 years with the love of Christ in her heart and a hope for her future. She had dreams. She wanted to be a cook. She loved braiding hair. She always helped with the chores. She had many many friends.

This summer she started to get sick. She had fevers on and off and she would get very fatigued. As time rolled on, she had more difficulty walking, she developed severe anemia, bone pain and unexplained swelling in her long bones and joints. Her skin hurt to touch. She started to loose weight. I spent a lot of time treating her body pain, stretching her tight muscles and giving her massages. She claimed it made her feel better. Our doctors here could not figure out what was wrong with her. Her blood work was inconclusive. I took her to an internist in the city and he started the process of ordering more tests. I lined up a psychologist in the meantime. She never got the results...she did not make it back to the internist. Last week she took a turn for the worse, she lost a lot of weight, her anemia and white blood cell count skyrocketed. She stopped eating. She was admitted to the hospital last Friday. In Haiti, nothing in the hospital happens fast. You have to bring your own linens, your own medicine and in our case, your own doctor (Dr. Jennifer our Haitian doc and the internist). It was very frustrating. On Monday, Maggie was in a lot of pain and she cried out for Jesus with every breath. She died later that night holding the hand of the orphanage director Madam Delva.

Goodbye Maggie you will be forever remembered.

It has been a long week. We have had to deal with this loss at the same time as we have been hosting one of our largest North American teams here. They have been very supportive but at the same time it is very hard to find time alone to grieve. This week we have had nights of heart break, holding our little children at Hope House while they wail, clinging to us with all their might.... Today as I said is the funeral. Please pray for the 42 other children in the Hope House today as they deal with the death of one of their sisters. Please pray for Rachel our Hope House activities director as she loved Maggie as her own child. Please pray that the kids will be at peace, that they hang on to God's teaching regarding death and not voodoo beliefs, and that they know God is near. Very near.

Thank you for all your support. Please see the attached picture from Rachel of Maggie before the effects of her illness.
God Bless
Cheryl (and Laurens)

Medical Missions and digging trenches

2009-01-11T19:31:00.009-05:00

Today I am exhausted. I know Laurens is too by the look on his face. But we are happy.....very happy. We have just finished day 4 of work with one of the biggest medical and construction teams of the year. It is the first of 2 back to back Canadian Teams. Today was a "day off" and anyone in ministry that works with teams knows how that goes. I asked Laurens, "are you going to take a break?" He said, "I did" and with a gleam in his eye he told me how he dug a trench with the new backhoe. One man's work is another man's treasure I guess!

Yesterday we held our first large mobile medical clinic in Haiti. It went amazing! At Mis sion of Hope our goal is to raise up strong Christian Haitians and to teach them how

to run programs for their people. At our hospital outpatient, clinic we are so proud that it is fully Haitian run now. I am still working behind the scenes to facilitate that, but what this has allowed us to do is branch out into mobile clinics with our teams to bring the healing love of Jesus into other needy areas.

As always we saw cases that broke our hearts. The dental team shown here at one point had a 4 year old boy who had all of his teeth rotted through from sugar. His mother would feed him

sugar water every night to stop his hunger pains. They had no idea that his teeth had "died" and that it was from the sugar. He will need all his teeth pulled or his adult teeth will be damaged too. For our dental assistants, knowing how easy it is to prevent this, it was very difficult for them to keep the tears from flowing for this precious boy.

This little child is the 5th child I have seen in

4 months with brain damage. This child will never walk, may not talk and will have mental and physical disability for the rest of her life. This is a picture of myself and a Canadian MD examining her. I think the heartbreaking thing for me is that each time I encounter a child like

this, I need to break this news to the mother. Every time, the mother has no idea that her child has something wrong with her brain, and every time I am asked, "So it can't be fixed?" or "can't you fix it?". That is when we pray.....it is all I can do. I am thankful for the donations of a few special needs wheelchairs that these children will need.

As we wrapped up from our first mobile clinic I said a special prayer of thanks.

A prayer of thanks for our safety, a prayer of thanks for how our Canadian team integrated with the Haitian staff we took along, a prayer of thanks for the lives that were touched, a prayer

of thanks for the connections made with the pastor of the school we worked out of, a prayer of thanks for our team and a prayer of thanks for this wonderful ministry.

Tonight I go to bed exhausted but happy to be starting all over again tomorrow on a new adventure.

Cheryl

Parties, Weddings, Holiday's and Termites

2009-01-01T17:09:00.011-05:00

Post Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!We have had a great last few weeks packed full of interesting things! Let us tell you about them:

We spent a great Christmas here in Haiti with the kids. Teagan made a Christmas tree out of green construction paper and paper ornaments and stuck it to our wall.

It was great and served it's purpose nicely. Here you can see the kids excited to have received a full stocking for their second Christmas in Haiti (we spent it here last year visiting).

On Christmas Eve, All 58 orphan kids came up to

the staff housing and guest house for a party and sleepover! It was

a blast full of good food, treats, movies on the concrete wall, hot chocolate and jammies. Our kids had fun colouring and partying with their friends.

After Christmas came Francia's wedding.

I know what you are thinking....what is Laurens doing in that picture? Wasn't Cheryl the only one in that wedding? Well yes she was until one hour before the wedding when the best man bailed! Not only did Laurens have 4 girls pleading him to be the best man at the last minute, he had to cut his hair, shower, borrow a suit jacket, dress up more than he was planning, rush in to the city to pick up the groom and make it back to the church before the pastor noticed! He was a trooper though and looked dapper escorting the bride down the isle.

After Christmas thanks to Rachel agreeing to watch our dog, we were able to travel to Jacmel for a 3 day holiday adventure. Jacmel is on the south east side of Haiti and is BEAUTIFUL. There is less deforestation there and so you get a beautiful glimpse of what this great island could look like. It was breathtaking. We stayed in a small hotel, overlooking great cliff faces out to the Caribbean ocean as far as you can see. While in Jacmel, we climbed mountains in our truck and drove along cliffs that no one in their right mind in Canada would pass, we drove through a river (the kids thought this was particularly cool),

hiked into the jungle and rappelled over a small rock face. Our destination was a beautiful waterfall that cascades down into pools of turquoise fresh water lakes (75 feet deep caverns under water). This picture was taken at the edge of one of the pools before we sat behind the waterfall and subsequently jumped out of it!

It was a fantastic little holiday and just what we needed as we could not afford to go home to Canada for Christmas this year.

We came back feeling refreshed and ready to tackle our work here at the mission.

Until.......... we realized that termites had destroyed one and a half of our new cupboards that the carpenters were supposed to have treated with termite spray. Boom! Welcome back to Haiti reality...(they hadn't treated the cupboards) Laurens removed the cupboard and now we await for the stores to open so we can purchase the termite treatment so we don't loose the rest of the them......

Well the Canadian Team arrives this week and we will be hard at work, Cheryl will be leading her first medical teams on mobile clinics into more un-reached area's and Laurens will be busily making sure the constructions projects go well. Please pray for effectiveness in our work for the Lord and that He will shine through in all the lives we touch this week.

We thought we would leave you with this cute picture of Bridgely doing his soccer stretches with the kids at our Hope House orphanage.

God is Abundantly Good!

2008-12-19T16:16:00.012-05:00

Thank you for your prayers!! Jaqueson (our orphan child with cleft palate on the right) not only got his surgery, but he got it done by one of the leading cosmetic and reconstructive surgeons in the U.S.! He is healing nicely and is starting to talk. It is so exciting!! So many prayers got answered on our trip to Hinche, Haiti. Tall prayers, small prayers, fat prayers and skinny prayers...God is abundantly good!! It was fantastic to see the scenery on the way to Hinche. Hinche is in the central plateau of Haiti and the landscape is so different there. On the way there we went over beautiful mountains, saw a huge beautiful lake, admired trees and valley's and smiled at little houses made with wood and stone. We met so many friends; both patients at the "camp" where we stayed and staff of Operation Smile. We spent sleepless nights, (if we weren't up with our little patient, it was noisy roosters, chicken or dogs), watched children and adults alike transform their looks, laughed, cried and ate cold meals in the truck. Throughout this experience we could feel God's hand over Jaqueson and we had a strong sense of the hundreds of people back home in Haiti and around the world praying for him. Thanks to those who were a part of this!

So many people are asking updates on a few things so we thought we would fill you in:

Yes our dog made it here safely. Thanks to Heather Fretz who took fantastic care of him and loved him as her own,

he made the trip OK. He is now settling into his new home and fits right in!

Yes we got our truck! Thanks to fantastic donors, we were able to purchase a much needed truck.

We are really grateful for this provision, it has started to make things so much more efficient for us and the mission as well as making things a whole lot easier.

For the buffs out there, it is a

Toyota Hilux 4 x 4 ... yes this is a place where 4 wheel drive is a necessity ... even without curbs!

We had a great visit from our friends Ken, Debbie and Heather and it

was so nice to have people from home visit.

The kids are now on Christmas vacation and although Laurens and I are not, they are enjoying the visit from the

Johnson kids (kids of our mission directors) who visit every Christmas. Photo: The Girls bottom, The Guys above.

As we approach Christmas, we have a lot to think about here. As we listened to the sermons from The Meeting House (our home church) these past weeks, it struck us that things are so different for us now. Bruxy and Joel our pastors were talking about Christmas and money and the commercialization of the season. They were challenging us all to think about how rich we all are in the global world. It occurred to us that this year we get to see this first hand. It really is TRUE! We (and you) are so wealthy in this world and we take for granted so very many things!

As we approach this Christmas, we do not have stores to buy our kids lots of presents at; we do not have a ton of Christmas decorations; we do not have to "keep up with the Jones'". We are now able to realize, how much we were affected in North America by commercialization. Although we knew this in principle before, we fully see the difference now that we have been removed from that culture.

It is our Christmas wish that each person reading this is able to remember that Christ's birthday is not about how many gifts from the store that we can give each other. We pray that we all remember that Christ died for us and that He did not leave it at that.....He then told us to follow Him. Read, I mean really read the story behind Jesus' life and you will see how He wants you to do that.

Merry Christmas!! (we miss you all)

Jesus' call to community and surgery

2008-12-06T12:33:00.002-05:00

Yesterday we went to visit Philia's kids club. Let me tell you about Philia.

She is the cleaning lady at our hospital. She lives in a one room house with 2 small beds and 12 people. Her house is packed in amongst other houses in her small village. She has few belongings. She has bad teeth and and a tired look about her. She is a beautiful woman of God.

Philia is my new favorite "Christian person" and the perfect model of community outreach for the church. Philia leads the women's program at our church and is a strong believer. At our home church in Canada (The Meeting House) we talk a lot about community outreach and in our home churches we teach our groups to get out there and make a difference through compassion in their communities. Philia embodies that spirit. Every Friday she holds a "kids club" in which needy kids from her village come to learn about Jesus. She has a core group of about 40 kids from teenagers down to 1 year olds. On Saturday's she has a bit more teaching and when she can afford to she feeds them all. Now talk about ultimate sacrifice. Cleaning ladies here make the lowest salary on the mission (but still better than no job) around $3.70 US per day. That is only $19 us per week. On this she needs to provide for her family and others that live with her; 12 in total. It is also out of this salary she buys food for these precious 40 children 1 day a week. Recently she has been unable to buy the food due to the increase in food prices.

After I (Cheryl) watched her teaching those children, I told her, "you are a special woman of God". She says to me, "Jesus has blessed me so much" and sweeps her hand over her house and small dirt yard and over her kids. As I ponder this I am struck by the simplicity of the situation and tears well up in my eyes.

This is true community, this is the call of the "church" to our fellow neighbors, this is sacrifice, this is Jesus' call to take care of orphans. We were blessed to have had this experience.

Tomorrow Cheryl will travel to Hinche with one of our orphans named Jaqueson to have cleft palate surgery done. Jaqueson is 12 years old and has not had this surgery done yet. As each year passes, his speech gets more and more difficult. He has waited for this his whole life while at the same time not really wanting to change.

We are going to Operation Smile an organization that you may have heard of before. We are asking for a lot of prayer on MONDAY the 7th (in 2 days) as this is the day of the screening. Please pray that they will be able to see him (there are lots of patients lined up) and that they find him a good candidate for surgery. We am so scared of the possibility that they say "no". Please join us here in prayer for Jaqueson that it is God's will he have this done now.

Blessings and Prayers

2008-11-25T20:20:00.009-05:00

God continues to bless the work here. We are in a time of fiscal crunch (who isn't right?) now at the mission and we daily feel the defeat of not enough funds to do this and not enough funds to do that. Despite this however, so many great things are happening here. We know that God will provide.

We thought you might like to see this photo of a Haitian house of one of our church members. It gives you

a bit of a view of what some people live like here. This is the condition of many of the homes of people we will visit through our mobile clinics.

This is a picture of our team of nurses at the hospital. Some of you know Francia (on the right)

. She will be getting married on Dec 27th and Cheryl will be in her wedding! We are looking forward to this and are helping her with the planning.

We recently had a dentist visit our hospital who generously donated dental instruments to our clinic. We are now set up to do basic extractions which is a huge blessing to many!

We praise God that this has been a week of blessings.

1. Our dog Trigger is coming to be with us this Fri from Canada. Yea

2. Dr. Cheryl has won a prestigious award for Chiropractors in Ontario (Heart and Hands Award)

3. All of our orphan children tested negative for HIV

4. Our kids are doing great in school

5. We received 6 containers full of food and shoes for our feeding programs and hospital

Please pray for:

1. Laurens - he has hurt his neck (does anyone know a good chiropractor? lol). I guess that is what happens when you are playing around and carrying many children on your head and shoulders!

2. Trigger - our dog that he reaches us safely

3. Safe travels for Heather Fretz, Ken and Debbie Gibbins as they travel to visit us this Fri.

4. Patience and effectiveness - as it feels like we work an uphill battle sometimes

5. The Haitian people - for the funding of our mission and others so that we can continue to advance God's kingdom, educate kids, create jobs, develop infrastructure, heal and educate the sick.

Thanks and God Bless

Tarantulas, building collapses and sand filters

2008-11-08T08:52:00.006-05:00

I can not believe it has been so long since our last post. We are sorry! I often think as I flop into bed at night, I should write a blog and then the lights are out! This is a good thing, we definitely do not have trouble sleeping!

This past few weeks have been great in getting into our jobs further. Laurens is working on directing many projects at the mission and is identifying systems that need to be more organized (or have some organization!) It is a big job that he has ahead of him but he likes the challenge. Please pray for his patience when things that should be so easy and efficient take all day to complete.

Cheryl (I) have also been learning and gathering all the info I need in order to move medical ministries forward. It is also a job, sometimes appearing insurmountable but I am plucking away. I am very excited to be starting the planning for mobile clinics where we will be taking medical teams out into villages that have no health care or that can not afford to go to a doctor. Please pray for a calmness of spirit with the mound of jobs in front of me.

The kids now have school Mon/Wed/Fri until noon and Tues/Thurs until 3:30. This allows mom and dad to complete much needed work and also for them to make sure they are getting in subjects such as music, art and gym. The initial excitement of moving to Haiti has worn off a bit on them as is typical in the 3rd month with missionaries but they are handling it well. We have short term missionary teams that come here and just when the kids are starting to get real bored, a team arrives. This is a good distraction for them as they get a lot of attention by team members. Please pray for them as they continue to adjust to life here.

Meet our friend that was on our porch the other night. Thankfully it was on the wall at the END of our porch, but our porch none the less. We have also seen 2 babies that were dead around that area of the yard and porch. HMMM I thought, babies are not good. There could be many. Today Laurens is working in our yard whacking out weeds and putting in rocks. Good Luck Laurens!

We wanted to show you one of the amazing things our mission is working on. These are sand

filters. We use a slightly different model now but they effectively clean dirty water into drinking water just with sand!! They are amazing and we are using them in our schools, orphanages and feeding programs. They are a very inexpensive innovative way to ensure kids and families are getting safe clean water to drink. This water filter is $75 US but the new model that has been developed made out of concrete costs only $75 Haitian ($10 CDN)!

You may have heard on the news the school collapse in Haiti. The area affected is in an area in the outskirts of Port Au Prince called Petionville. This is the area that we will go sometimes for supplies. More than 90 children have died and many more are in the hospital. To top it off 2 of the main hospitals in Port-Au-Prince are on strike. While none of the kids or families we know were directly affected, our Haitian friends here feel very sad for the children and families in Petionville. Please pray for the families of the children that have died and also for those that are in hospital.

God bless!

God will Provide

2008-11-08T08:46:00.002-05:00

Today is another day that broke my heart. Did you know that your heart could be broken so many times? Let me tell you the story.

Today we had a lady enter near death. She was suffering from a severe case of PEM (Protein-Energy Malnutrition). A literal case of starving to death. This is something we see far too often but what stole my heart was that with her she had newborn twins. Her twins also, were suffering from marasmic kwashiorkor due to the fact that mom has no breast milk..... I am acutely aware that 3 lives hang in the balance.

This young mom was unable to stand due to weakness and severe anemia. Her laborious breathing audible as she struggled to take each breath. As she lay on IV, I watched her stomach heave on her tiny sunken frame and I prayed. As I listened, her neighbors told the story of how they brought her in.

She has 4 children actually. 2 boys at home and 2 month old twins. The children’s father died this year...he was killed in a car accident. Without him, she has no money and no job. She slowly slips away. Her neighbors usually keep an eye out for her, but without enough money of their own, they can only be a friend. This particular day, they had not seen her at all. Seeing her young boys playing and hearing the twins crying they finally go in to see where she is. She is there, lying on the floor, too weak to get up. Her friends bring her to the Mission of Hope where they have heard there is a good clinic with good doctors.

With the mother on IV waiting for blood tests that tell us the function of her body systems, we check out the babies. Her twins are 2 months....they can not lift their own head, they do not cry, they weigh 7lbs. Although they are delayed, they do have some body fat and show signs of hydration. They have a chance.

As I rush to get this family what they need, electrolytes, good formula, protein supplements, some food, and multivitamins we realize our limitations. We are out of the intramuscular iron we need and we do not have any more iron supplements.

At the end of the day, the clinic is closing, our young mom still desperately in need of rehydration and protein rebuilding is sent home. We are not equipped to hold patients overnight. Before she leaves, she asks if our orphanage will take her babies. I tell her encouragingly that we are going to get her better so she can care for them herself.

As I watch her leave packaged up on the back of a small motorcycle, I gaze over at the hospital expansion project that is started and I thank God for the future vision of a 24hr E.R. that is so desperately needed here.

A wild week

2008-10-21T23:22:00.005-05:00

This month has been crazy and we are finally in our house!!

Carpenters have been building kitchen cupboards for us and they are almost done. They do very good work and all from scratch but take a long long time!

Those of you who have been here to Mission of Hope and stayed in the guest house (that is now our house) are going to flip when you see it now! It is fantastic. The "rat" room is now rat free and is Teagan's bedroom!

Praise God that we are getting settled and that we were able to handle the first month and a half in limbo

Our work here has been good. Laurens has been busy getting to know his team of workers and moving into his office. He finds that he does not have a lot of time to sit in an office however...as he has been supervising work projects that have been going on around the mission. He is starting to organize how to make things more efficient however it has been difficult for him as he has had to be at the house a lot. This week a team of well drillers came and set up a drill that will be used to try and hit water in early January. The mission has been unable to hit water before but this team "guarantees" that they will hit!! We will all be praying for this in early january as it will be a huge blessing to the mission. They will also be able to drill in the villages that do not have wells in the future if this works. Yea!

I (Cheryl) almost have an office in the hospital (did I mention slow but good?) which I am really looking forward to so I am not carting around pieces of paper, clipboards and my computer (that is also needed at home) everywhere I go on an ATV! :) I am really enjoying my patient treatment days which are Monday and Fri mornings (stretching into afternoons til 3pm as more people hear I am here). I am affectionately called "the bone doctor" by people who have heard I am here at this hospital. One man who had fantastic recovery after his treatment, brought back 7 people the next day!!

Praise God for the ministry of health care that I am able to provide to my patients

Thurs. of last week we were fortunate to be able to fly to Port -de -Paix in the north of Haiti to visit another christian mission there. We had learned that this mission runs a great surgical ward out of their little hospital with North American surgeons. The surgeons were in action last week and this is why we went. Laurens accompanied me in order to look at their site and operations as well. It was an amazing experience,let me tell you about it:

First we flew on a little 19 seater plane (my barf bag close at hand) over all the towns and villages that run along the coast from here to the North of the island. It was amazing as it flys low enough to see all the towns. We were able to see all the devastation from the past hurricanes from above. It was quite a sight to see where the rivers ran over and we could see the mud that went out to the sea for up to ~2 miles!

After we arrived in Port de Paix, it was like a different world. They have trees!!! We do not have many trees at all where we are due to deforestation (like most of Haiti) but this area still had some trees. It was quite a sight for us as we got a little hint of what this beautiful island used to look like. As we drove from Port de Paix along the road to St. Louis du Nord, our destination, it was very different from here.

They have lots of buildings that still retain their colonial look and almost every building was painted! For those of you who have been here, you know how different that must look. Here most towns have a lot of run down concrete buildings that are definitely not painted! There were even some big beautiful houses. Don't get me wrong, it was still Haiti and very needy but just very different than here.

Our experience at the hospital was great and we learned a lot about setting up a surgical ward and what kind of professionals we will need on board and what equipment. In the future, I would like to have our hospital be able to provide surgical services with quality as I have already seen too many problems from patients that need surgery and can not afford to do so.

In one day, we accomplished many things such as:

Talked with the lab tech in charge of lab and pharmacy

Learned how they run their outpatient clinic on a regular basis

Assisted orthopedic surgery! The highlight for Cheryl. (Removal of a massive Giant cell tumor that had destroyed a patient's distal ulna)

Assisted minor surgery removal of a lipoma

Attended 2 births

Coached a woman in labour

Toured their future O.R. and OB/GYN units

Discussed the birthing unit with the North American midwife

Met with the anesthesiologist who started their surgical program

Learned about the successful operations of their OR

Travelled to Baie du Moustique (over a river that was almost to high to pass) to view a rural mission complex and back (Laurens)

Talked at length with surgeons and staff

This was a tremendous sharing experience of 2 missions working together for Christ. We learned a lot, made some friends and were exhausted by the time we returned.

Please praise God for an amazing learning experience and pray that we will use the knowledge wisely

The kids are doing great and are starting to be a lot more settled now that we are in our own house. They have discovered Box no 2 which is the box we packed some toys, bored games and surprises in. That has been their favorite. School is going well for them and we have a meeting with their teacher Diana this week to discuss how things are going. They are starting to learn a little Creole. I learned this today when someone asked Bridgely, "Koma ou rele" (that is, "what is your name?) today and he answered," Bridgely".

Praise God that the kids are adjusting well

We will also be starting our Meeting House home church tomorrow night with the other missionaries on board here. We are very excited to start this.

Something that burdens us at the moment is this. The medical ministry here is running on "God Fumes" right now! There is not enough money for some basic medications and essential lab testing. We have recently put out a challenge to all Doctors to sponsor the hospital for a day at $1000/day. Please spread the word to your MD, DC's etc. and contact us for more information.

Please pray for general medical ministry operations funding and also that God will bring forth major donors for hospital completion funding

It is way past my Haitian bedtime..

God Bless

CAD and updates

2008-10-09T21:08:00.003-05:00

OK so what have you all been doing up there in Canada to the Canadian dollar!!! It is funny, when we lived at home, watching the Canadian dollar vs the US dollar was not a favorite pastime of ours. Now, however, dependent on the body of Christ who are partnering with us back home we are watching in dismay! We know however that God will provide that which we need.

Things are going good here. Tomorrow all of the kids from the Good Samaritan orphanage are going to a new home in Cabaret. School started Monday here in Haiti so by next week I think there will be some resemblance to a regular routine starting up. We are busy working during the day and working on painting and cleaning our house in the afternoon/evenings. The kids were so tired today 2 fell asleep before showers! Only Grayden survived.

Laurens is happy that his office is getting cleaned out and almost ready for use! He will have an office next to the other men that work in construction and oversee the vehicles and parts of the site. He is working on getting to know them (he is the only North American) and Creole. He is finding that he is really good at remembering his nouns in French. This only backfires when it is a word that they totally do not use in Creole. You know when you get the blank stare that you just said something terribly wrong and you don't make sense at all! :)

I am seeing a bit of how big my job is going to be. Currently we have a Haitian doctor running the admin of the hospital as the hospital opened about 8 weeks before I got here. The hospital team is doing a fantastic job, but my role right now is to help facilitate them in order to make things more efficient in admin. and to organize things a bit. I had a great meeting with the Haitian Admin. and we are getting along fantastic so far. (This is a big deal here because he is a) man, b) a doctor and c) has been in charge of the hospital. In Haiti, this could mean he would not want to take suggestions from a woman. However, He couldn't be more friendly, receptive and open to my authority than he has been so far. God is good.) When things are in place, then I will start to concentrate on medical/chiropractic outreach clinics and community health programming. I am just waiting for my office to be finished and then I will be more productive "in house".

Our kids teacher had her birthday on Wednesday and we all surprised her with a day off and she went on an out-trip for the day. We found some cake mix and Rachel, myself and the kids made her a cake and a card. She was very surprised! It was great.

This weekend the Canadians here (7 of us total) are going to have a thanksgiving meal together. We hope you all have a great Thanksgiving with family and friends. Please pray for those people in Haiti who do not have enough to eat this weekend.

Good night!

p.s. Happy birthday A.J.

Boxes, Orphans and Trees

2008-10-04T20:34:00.012-05:00

Wow this week went fast!

I have to say that this was my first week of baby stepping into hospital admin. stuff. I am just starting to figure out how the hospital is currently running so I can start to help make it more efficient while still being culturally relevant.

One of my first tasks is to know what we currently have. As you can see, we have a lot of boxes!! This is the warehouse where I spent a good chunk of the week doing inventory on donated medical supplies. It is mostly surgical supplies that we will be shipping off to other hospitals within Haiti who are already doing surgery. I was so excited to find a few boxes of orthopaedic supplies (my joy of the week). I am currently doing 2 days a week treating patients and today I splinted a fractured wrist. Fun!

We now hold the world record for getting the most things done in Port-Au-Prince in one day...6!! It usually takes a good part of your day to just get groceries but for some reason everything went smoothly and we were able to hit the bank (open an account), Ekco depot (Haitian version of home depot - complete with chicken's running through), paint store (buy paint for our house- it is amazing what a little paint will do), Toyota (to order a truck), lunch (epidor - good bread) and the grocery store!! Unheard of! God (and Herbie our driver) is good!

My mom was asking the other day "how come we haven't seen any pictures of Bridgely yet? Well let me tell you, for those of you that know Bridgely, he is a very busy and outgoing boy. The lack of pictures are usually due to the fact that we can't keep up with him but let me show you a few examples of the life of Bridgely.. (you see what I mean?)

In about 1 week, all the kids from the good Samaritan Orphanage will be going to a new temporary house. It has been fun having so many kids on campus this month and we will be sad to see them go. There is one boy in particular that Teagan will be sad to see go. His name is Johnny. On the first day he saw her, he wanted to be picked up by her. He did not, however, want to be put down by her! The first time she went to put him down he cried and cried. Now every time we see the kids Teagan makes sure she picks him up. He has the cutest smile for her. When he first got here he looked in pretty rough shape, but after being at the mission for almost a month he is looking a lot healthier. This is Teagan and Johnny in the picture.

Laurens has been very busy at work with his first project which is working with the guys to renovate the old "guest house" which is to be our house. You can see some of his handy work here. Do you think many rats will come in our house?? He has also been busy with the immediate at the mission. i.e. plumbing issues and flooding, electricity inverter problems, problems with no water, water pump problems etc etc etc.

Laurens also has tennis elbow today from sanding the concrete counter for two days straight. As our friend Paul would say "OOOWW" (baby!).

It seems that every week, we have something that strikes our heart. This week it was our little farmer neighbor. We are currently living in the director's house which is a very large house by Haitian standards. It sits a top a hill overlooking parts of the mission complex. Out in front of the house is a farmer's fields. We do not know this farmer but we can see his smoke rising from his cooking fire from our porch every day. This week, we heard the sound of a machete chopping. We looked out and grabbed the camera with the zoom. Sure enough, there was the farmer cutting down his only and last tree. "Nooooo", we felt like screaming, "Don't do it!" All we could do was sit helplessly and watch him cut down the only shade he had left in order to use the wood for fuel or perhaps tools.

Haiti is 96.2% deforested.

It is easy for us to think, "how could he do that?" - easy, considering we are standing on the porch of a big house, with the shade of the roof. But what is so devastating is that this man was so desperate to survive, that he would cut down his only and last tree of shade in order to survive.

I have to admit, even though our living arrangements are not those that we had in Canada, it is still hard to swallow living comfortably here on the mission complex compared to the fields or the village. In the suburbs back home, people feel bad to show someone their home if it is not clean enough or big enough or rich looking enough. Here, when an orphan child from the village orphanage comes up to play on the playground outside our house and asks with wide eyes, "kay la ou?" (is that your house?) I almost feel embarrassed to say, "yes".

I pray that we may never get complacent.

God Bless

Clothes and the Beach

2008-09-28T22:51:00.008-05:00

Yes we were wearing clothes at the beach!

The title is 2 separate events, let me tell you about them:

Thursday, we went back to Cabaret to a shelter where we had done medical missions the previous week to distribute clothes. It was a fantastic experience for all of us. Our kids came along as well as Diana our teacher. Patrice and Jocelyn (2 people that work at the mission) helped us with crowd control and interpretation.

It was very rewarding to give out clothes to so many people who had lost so much in the recent flooding. Many people around here talk of their stories of waking at 2 am to yelling and screaming and the sound of rushing waters. Many talk about being slammed up again a tree, climbing on top of a wall or hanging onto a tree branch for survival. After what these people had been through, giving out clothes was the least we could do.

Giving clothes to 200 very needy people in a shelter is a very tricky thing to do. Imagine 200 people all crowding around wanting to get at the clothes. Well that is what we imagined too, so we planned it out in a controlled manor! We situated ourselves inside one of the school buildings with all of the clothes and had the people line up at the door. We then gave clothes out one at a time; men first, women second, and children third. It ran very well and Teagan was a huge help sizing up kids for their donated girl guide shirts!

It was kind of funny that many people got their shirt and then went back in line and tried to get in again. Some succeeded as we could not memorize every face, but some we caught in the act! At the end of the time, things started to get a little pushy as they knew we were leaving soon. Even though that all was a little frustrating, we could not blame them really, I think I would be pushy too if my whole family had lost everything.

The highlight for me (Cheryl) was at the end of the day, many of my patients who recognised me came up to me for various reasons. One old man who can not walk well and who's eye had ballooned out with a hematoma after falling in the flood, came to show me how well he was healing after our team stiched him up. I was particularly happy to see him as I had brought a walker for him to use. He was so happy and walked away so proud! On the sad side however, 2 mom's with newborns came over showing me their babies that were very sick. One in particular was burning up with fever, the hottest skin I had ever felt! She desperately needed care. I had nothing with me and so I gave them a slip to come to the hospital the next day on my bill. They never showed up. I pray the baby survived.

Now for the beach. Sat. we made it to a little resort not too far from here (40min) for Teagan's beach day birthday. We had a great time playing in the pool and enjoying the ocean. It was nice for a day to relax and let the kids have fun in the pool. We had a great lunch and met people from Haiti, France, Brazil and New York. Our kids have been fantastic and it was great to see them having so much fun in the sun for a day.

Tomorrow starts another week. I wonder what adventures await!!

Birthdays and normal days

2008-09-24T20:28:00.006-05:00

It is funny, the things that are starting to become normal to us here.

For example:

Riding an ATV to school and work : Normal.

Hearing donkeys braying at night: Normal

A cockroach here a cockroach there: Normal

No power during the day: frustrating but Normal

Brushing teeth with drinking water (NOT THE TAP): Normal

Scurrying mice at night: Normal

Seeing a rat: kind of normal

Seeing a tarantula: NOT QUITE NORMAL YET

As I sit here writing this e-mail with bugs flying all around me, I am sticky and hot. There is nothing better than a shower at the end of the day in Haiti.

Trickling water for your shower: Normal

No hot water: Normal

We took our first tap tap a few days ago. On Sunday we ventured out to Cabaret to go to a "restaurant" called Yoltis. We had a fantastic meal of chicken and rice and plantain. This is quite an experience and I am sure we will soon be able to put it on our "normal" list. It will get there when normal becomes eating in a shack like building, with stray dogs under the table, chickens running though and people who live in behind bathing and doing life. The funny part is we loved it!

Today is our beautiful daughter Teagan's birthday. She turns 12. As we are still living out of bags waiting to move in our house we have not gotten many groceries yet. We usually eat with mission teams but today there are no teams and the cook has the day off. Because we did not have any cake ingredients nor a lot of food for dinner we had the funniest birthday meal! For dinner it was a mish mash of mac and cheese, ravioli, freeze dried rice and chicken and tuna. Yum yum. The power was out so we ate by candlelight (great ambiance)!

After dinner we surprised Teagan with her "cake". It was a bunch of marshmallows with chocolate chips stuck in them. Along with Jello, it was a great birthday meal.

To top it all off Teagan got her hair braided by Nicole a beautiful girl from our hope house orphanage. We hope to go to the beach Sat. to celebrate a day off with the kids.

As far as the mission goes, things have settled down here a bit. Laurens has been very busy with construction work on our house. He is working with the plumber, electrician, engineer and concrete crew. He hopes to have us moving in by next week.

I have been treating lots of patients but also gathering lots of information on how the hospital is currently running and am starting to generate lots of ideas. I am excited about how we can make things happen.

On our container from Canada was also boxes of clothes. We have been busy sorting clothes and stacking them up because tomorrow we will return to Cabaret to drop off clothes to those in the shelters who have lost everything. We are excited that the kids will get to be a part of this too.

I have realized that it is way past sundown and sunrise comes early and so must go.

God Bless and keep your eyes focused on the eternal.

Cheryl, Laurens and kids

Happy Days

2008-09-20T20:30:00.004-05:00

Happy days in Haiti. Today our container arrived! We were so excited to see our contents being unloaded into our house and the construction team is hard at work building us a kitchen counter (there was not one before). We are not able to move in yet, but at least we have our belongings! Yea! (and we only had 3 cockroaches show up today...today is a good day!!) Thank you so much for all your prayers regarding our container!

Today is also is the last day of the kids first week at school. Overall they had a great week! They are loving Diana our teacher and getting slowly used to the idea that there is only 3 of them in their class. They are a little overwhelmed with all the kids down at the orphanage right now as it is hard enough for them to get used to 42 kids that they can't understand let alone over 100! Grayden is a bit shy with the kids but getting a little more open, Bridgely doesn't notice he is in a different country I think..LOL and Teagan has found the cutest little orphan boy named Johnny that won't let her put him down.

It has been a wild ride this week but fantastic. Please pray for the kids as they continue to transition and for speed of work so we can finally move into our home. Please pray also for balance as we try to balance all this with the mission work that we are starting.

God Bless

The van der Mark's

The Journey Continues

2008-09-17T20:57:00.010-05:00

Well, good news! They have started to build our kitchen. We may have a counter after all! And if we are lucky a few cupboards. Teagan's rat shower (as we call it) was ripped out today and will be replaced with a tile shower. We found the lovely home of about 5 rats under the shower consisting of old socks, medical gloves and scraps! (If you were on a previous work team and have lost a sock...let Laurens know and he will send it to you) Laurens has been hard at work alongside the Haitian construction team learning his Creole.

I have spent the last few days working along side the MD's in the clinic as well as visiting sick children in the villages and orphanages. I can only say that the days have been exhausting. I am getting used to the Haiti heat and boy do I sleep good at night!

I find that everyday, I have new stories to tell and I know that it will continue to be a regular thing. Let me again tell you of 2:

The other day right at the end of clinic in the village a mom came with her little girl. We were almost completely packed up, it was getting dark, and we we about to jump in the truck to get home before dark. She looked like any other girl we had seen and we had to stop clinic sometime, so we told her we were sorry but we had to go. Then her mom lifted her shirt up. What I saw both intrigued me and shocked me.

This little girl had what appeared to be at first glance a very large tumor on her back. As a Doctor of Chiropractic, I could not turn my back on this little girl, I went over to feel. I was amazed to feel that the mass was rock hard and appeared to be a deformity of her spinal column (severe kyphosis)! Unfortunately, without x-ray or MRI to confirm, there was not much I could do. We asked the mom if another doctor had ever looked at it before and she answered, "yes, but they say there is nothing they can do". This is true. For this lady, there is nothing they can do. She can not even afford the first step.. a set of plain films. The sadness and intense worry in her eyes was caught on film in the picture you see here.

This is where angel Angie steps in. Angie is a dear nurse that I have worked with this week from the US and she put forth the money to pay for the x-ray and the transportation to Port -au- Prince to get it done. We have now sent the money and requisition with the mom and all we can do now is pray that this mom, who has lost everything in the flood uses the money to get the x-ray instead of much needed food or clothing. Regardless of her choice, it was money well spent. I hope to have the film in my hands soon to know whether there is help to be had for this little 6 year old child.

The second story is that of a 17 month old baby. She came to the clinic today because she was "sick". This poor soul, was all of 10 pounds (the size of Bridgely when he was born!). She should have been walking, talking and laughing by now and she could barely lift her head. She had depigmentation all over her body, most of her orange hair had fallen out. Her legs were swollen from cell lysis, her skin sunken so you could see the outline of her skull. I have not included her picture as I have only taken it for medical purposes, but she was the worst case of malnutrition we have ever seen. Her mom only feeds her one time every 3 days .... if she has food.

As a rule, I always "keep it together" as a health practitioner but I almost lost my composure on this one. I think it was the horse desperate cry the baby had that clenched my heart. I pray for her tonight and thank God that this baby will improve with the food we bought her and the vitamins and iron we gave her. I can only pray that it lasts.

We love our work here and we thank God for this opportunity.

Dr. Cheryl

Devastation in Haiti

2008-09-15T10:26:00.017-05:00

Hurricane aftermath at Mission of Hope video

Good Samaritan orphanage video

(The links above are Mission of Hope's on the ground footage showing the devastation in the town very near to us called Cabaret. You will also see the home of the 100 orphan children we are housing temporarily here at the mission.)

It is a strange thing, the rains in Haiti, on one hand I have not seen the fields so green, on the other..people are suffering. We are in Haiti and we can't tell you in words what we have walked into. The recent hurricanes that have gone through the area have devastated many people's lives. If you have received our recent e-mail, you have a little feel for our first few days in Haiti. But now let me tell you about the last few days here.

The last few days, I (Dr. Cheryl) have been going out with a small medical team to shelters in Cabaret. In these shelters (schools that are still standing) there are thousands of displaced people. All who had to flee from their homes in the middle of the night due to the rising waters and mud. Imagine running through the dark, over mud and rocks, leaving all behind, carrying your children with you (perhaps you are pregnant or elderly too). When the rain stopped, you return to find everything you had, washed away from the flood.

We treated many people over the past few days, many who are severely malnourished and many who have been traumatized by what they have been through. There were so many who touched my heart but let me tell you of 2:

The first is a man who was carried in by others. He is an old man and he could not walk due to severe sciatica. He could not feel his left foot. He has no teeth but he explains that he has had pain for a while but after running from the flood, he can not walk anymore. At home, this man would be headed straight for the x-ray machine but here I let my hands do the talking. After working briefly on his muscles, I adjusted his back and sent him off with his friend half carrying him. He was just one of many stories that day. Yesterday, we were back at the same shelter caring for those that we did not get to see the day before. I was busy at work when an old man came up to me talking furiously in Creole with a smile on his face. I recognized him as the man who couldn't walk the day previous. He was now walking on his own with a cane! An interpreter quickly translated what he was saying, "I can walk today with only a cane!! Look, I don't need anyone to hold me" (a big grin on his face) I proceeded to treat him again this time with far more movement in his bones. After his treatment he proudly stood up tall and said, "I know you are from God and God can heal anything!" As he shuffled away, I could not imagine what this man has gone through in this past week and I know that God has used me to touch him in a small way.

The second was a young mom and her 4 children. There was no dad to be found. Her children ranged in age from 11 to 3 but they appeared to be 8, 6, 3 and 18 months. They were still covered in mud and they were missing a lot of their clothes. The younger two did not even have a full set of clothes if you combined their outfits. There hair was starting to turn orange a common sight of malnutrition. They were beautiful children but it was obvious they were in rough shape even before the flood. Our team treated all 5 of them and after I asked the mom, "Ou gen rad ti moun yo?" (do you have clothes for the children?) She replied, "No, I have nothing, all was washed away in the flood". As she was leaving, and it was time for me to put down her little boy, she asked in desperation, "do you want to take him?" I responded holding back my tears, "he belongs with you." He is after all, one of the lucky ones...he has a mom.

On Oct 1st, all these people will be displaced once again as all the schools need to open for classes. I don't know what this family or all the others will do then, but for now, we will be dropping her off a bag of clothes tomorrow. God will provide.

Cheryl and Laurens