Haiti

Last night I didn't sleep well. The images and words of the people in Haiti kept crowding into my mind and pushing away sleep. There are Americans living in Haiti working on missionary projects or for other humanitarian causes and some of them have written about the events of this week. These accounts and the pictures they have posted are heart wrenching. Many wrote that it was a comfort to know we are praying. There is little else we can do. Several wrote very honestly and said, "Please don't come unless you know the language and have medical training to deal with horrific wounds. We have no place to house you and no food to feed you."

Pray. I don't know what else to do. One women put out a plea for help in finding alternatives to baby formula as she had many babies in her orphanage and was rapidly running out of formula. People around the world quickly researched the problem and wrote several ideas. Even so, they all required access to some type of milk or some other food source that could be used to make a broth to feed the baby. They required access to clean water. I wonder if she has access to any of those things. I wonder if she even still has access to the internet to read these suggestions.

There were so many accounts, so many stories of suffering. One woman wrote of how wonderful her day had been, the day of the earthquake. She is part of a group that runs a medical school and clinic. She had been teaching nursing students all day and it had gone particularly well. Someone brought her lunch and she had so much food, she shared it with the watchman. A group had arrived from the states and restocked all their medical supplies. She had just arrived home when the quake happened. She returned to the clinic to find that the building had collapsed, all her students were inside. The watchman had also been killed. She felt so helpless. She knew there were lots of medical supplies inside, but now they were crushed under layers and layers of concrete. She said, "There are so many injured and I don't even have a bandaid to give them."

I got up this morning with a heavy heart to a world closed in by fog. The trees were coated with frozen water crystals, just beautiful. I don't know what this juxtaposition of beauty and suffering means. Pray. I don't know what else to do.