Rhett Smith and Mark Oestreicher share a couple of stories from the field and Ian Robertson includes a video at the bottom…
Marko: Our first ministry stop was on the Dominican side of the Haiti border, where a complete hospital had been set up in tents on the compound of a ministry organization. The hospital was being run by “U.S. Aid”, a U.S. government funded agency. The nurses and docs were wonderful – all there as volunteers. And a highlight was sitting with a Haitian man who was healing from a broken femur. We listening to him sing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” (watch a video of this moment below). The man had taught himself English by listening to English-language music, and he had a beautiful voice. All of us, including the nurses, were in tears by the time he finished.
Rhett: Our second stop was in another church/hospital compound that was run by the pastor, his wife and lots of volunteer doctors and nurses. Again I found myself on the edge of the experience until we walked inside to take a tour of the hospital and talk with the patients. In the very back room we met a woman who was sitting on the edge of her bed recovering from her wounds after being buried for almost two days in all the rubble.
She told us about her house shaking, and how when the roof collapsed she was holding her twin baby boys (17 months old). Both boys died and she talked of one boy breaking into three pieces, and then having to “throw away”the other baby as he was crushed against her chest. In her eyes was such hope and peace as she talked about calling out the name of Jesus for help. She went on to say that her husband ran away because he thought she had died, along with his two sons, and his sister-in-law. When we asked about her husband, she said he’d returned and the quiet man, sitting in a chair behind her moved forward to sit on the bed with his wife.
She told us about her house shaking, and how when the roof collapsed she was holding her twin baby boys (17 months old). Both boys died and she talked of one boy breaking into three pieces, and then having to “throw away”the other baby as he was crushed against her chest. In her eyes was such hope and peace as she talked about calling out the name of Jesus for help. She went on to say that her husband ran away because he thought she had died, along with his two sons, and his sister-in-law. When we asked about her husband, she said he’d returned and the quiet man, sitting in a chair behind her moved forward to sit on the bed with his wife.
We began to pray for them both, we stood there, hands on them, praying for about things that none of us can ever understood. And then in the overwhelming grief of the husband he began to rock back and forth, shake, and cry out,“Why Jesus, Why Jesus, Why Jesus, Why Jesus” – over and over and over again. Iin all my years I have never witnessed someone so overcome by grief. It’s the type of grief that you picture an Old Testament character experiencing after the loss of their entire family, wherein they strip off their clothes to cover themselves in sackcloth and ashes and sit down in their grief. I stood in silence, stunned, unable to offer forth any words. We all stood in silence.
Then I knew…and I think we all knew…that this experience was just the beginning of what the rest of our time in Haiti would be like.
