A NEW DAY

It is 5:49 in the morning, I and others are getting ready to go to the clinic to begin our day.  It appears that we are going from a clinic to what Dr. Tom McKnight has called the Heartline Hospital as we now will be housing the patient for a while.

Beth wrote the blog below as well as took the pictures that are posted.  I will try to get her many pictures uploaded on Flickr sometime today.

"The house is quiet.  Morgan
and I are up doing night duty so I have time to write.  Patients who
are afraid to be inside are sleeping in the driveway.  Others are
tucked in on cots for the night.  Some have lost body parts, houses,
family, belongings but not hope.  Hope lives. 
A team of doctors,
nurses, paramedics and lay people worked from early morning to late at
night addressing the needs of the wounded.  Broken bones and open
wounds have been untouched for six days.  Hospitals are full.  We sent
some to a hospital who were beyond what could be done here and they got
sent back to us. 
It was an exhausting day where everyone worked
hard using their skills.  I am touched by those who dropped everything
and jumped on a plane with me and came to Haiti to help.  Nine of us
came in yesterday morning and got right to work.  No one expects
comfort and no one is complaining.  We see so many who have lost so
much.
Jonna
remarked today that so much destruction happened in just one minute of
time. One minute of time changed Haiti forever.  It also changed us.  
All of us are stunned.  Yesterday afternoon John took all nine of us
around the city to see the destruction first hand.  Some wore masks.  I
chose not to because I knew the smell of death would make this more
real for me.  I had to shake myself into reality.  Piles of broken
cement lay where houses used to be, where I used to shop for groceries,
where we lived our lives.  Broken cement, broken limbs, broken lives.
And
yet the human spirit survives.  God brings light into darkness.  He
brings miracles and we weep at His goodness in all of this
destruction.  We see answers to prayer.  He is holding us up. 
The country is
full of brokenness but in our little corner we have a team of people
who care, who are mending bodies and giving hope.  This team is saving
lives!  The most critical have died already but these folks would die
of infection if their wounds and broken bones were left untreated.  I
am grateful to be part of a team that is here to heal.  And that is
what we will look for over the days, weeks and months ahead.  Healing."

Beth