From CBF field personnel Nancy and Steve James in Haiti:

The stories of suffering are overwhelming here in Haiti. We hear them everyday. Suze told us of a family member whose forearm and elbow was crushed by falling cement. Unable to find medical help day after day, the limb turned into gangrene. In pitiful desperation, she allowed a neighbor to cut off the limb with a machete without anesthesia. She was later able to be evacuated to the Milot hospital here in the north where an orthopediic team was able to perform surgical revision of the remaining stump.

Enos Payoute is the administrator and founder of the Ebenezer Health Center, here in Haut Limbe. His son, a medical student studying in Port-au-Prince was taking a shower when the earthquake struck. As the building collapsed under him, his life was saved when he jumped from the 3 story apartment, breaking his arm in the fall. Enos immediately drove to the capital city. He found his injured son, but also found a friend named Dessaline from the Haut Limbe community, trapped in a collapsed building. He could not find anyone in the surrounding chaos to help him dig him out from the heavy cement rubble. He told Dessaline, he would send help back to get him out. Dr. Manno Mareus from the Ebenezer Health Center immediately drove down in a truck to Port-au-Prince, a 6-hour drive, to try to rescue Dessaline, only to find Dessaline had already died in the rubble. Volunteer, Dr. Arch Woodard, cared for Enos’s son’s broken arm, but his son is plagued now with anxiety and depression. As the visible wounds of the survivors of the earthquake begin to heal now, the invisible wounds of the mind and spirit will only continue from this trauma for months, years, perhaps lifetimes to come, especially among the children of the earthquake.

It is rare to find someone in Haiti today who has not lost someone in their family in the earthquake. Mme. Lucienne, a retired Haitiian nurse, worked faithfully, humbly and lovingly for almost 50 years at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Limbe. We used to lovingly call her our Mother Theresa as she cared for the very sick children in the Pediatric ward saving many lives from dehydration and infection. We heard she lost her daughter and three of her grand children in the earthquake. She is one of so many we hear about every day now in our life in Haiti.

We who have been in Haiti many years have lived with hearing and witnessing terrible tragedies to so many. Yet this present disaster has shaken all of us in the scope and breadth of pain for so many. One almost does not want to ask the next person how they are doing, as the stories of grief and pain flow from everyone, when asked. There is little rest for any of us all, as we work to relieve each other’s pain in the micro-acts of Christic love, underneath our clouds of sorrow and mourning. What is God teaching us in this crucifixion?

We know without even having to ask, that you are keeping Haiti in your prayers for which we are deeply grateful. 

In the power of His Resurrection Love,

Steve & Nancy James