This is Haiti... (part 2)

Everything is Hard in Haiti.
It seems like everything in Haiti is more difficult than it should be. And this trip is no exception. Friday morning we went to the port to finish repacking the container. We decided to get a jump on distribution by packing some of the items in our dump truck so we could start delivering while we waited for the container to be delivered. Here is a picture of our container being lifted off of a stack so we could finish.

It is an amazing thing to watch a 60,000 lbs. container being pickup and moved around like a tinker toy.

First Stop
Our first deliver was 300 empty five gallon buckets that were donated to us by ER Systems. These buckets are used by Haitians to retrieve water for their families. They will be handed out by Father Rick from St. Damien's Children's Hospital in Tebarre.

Also in the truck for the hospital were medical supplies and stuffed animals for the children. Each of the workers asked if they could have a stuffed animal. It was amazing to see fully grown men, cling and hold their stuffed animals. Dave said "It just touched my very heart that grown men would cherish these toys... it almost brought tears to my eyes." We wondered if they ever had one when they were small. How can it be that we have so much and they have so little?

L'Athlétique d'Haiti
Our second stop was to Bobby Duval's Soccer Program in Cite Soleil. Bobby has a heart moving testimony. He was a professional soccer player for the Haitian National Team before being imprisoned for two years by the Duvalier's, ruthless dictators of Haiti in the 70's and 80's. He saw 180 people executed while in prison and had one die in his arms. Twelve days before his own execution, Jimmy Carter intervened and successfully obtained his release along with 12 others. Here is a picture of Dave and Bobby together.

During the worst violence in Cite Soleil, Bobby started a soccer program in Cite Soleil to give the children something to do instead of becoming a gang member. He taught them soccer, fed them and gave them mentoring and a safe haven from the streets. He now has several hundred children come to his soccer field every week.


We delivered water buckets and boxes of used school books that he will use to teach the children.


We also delivered food donated by Feed My Starving Children. It is wonderful to see someone who cares so much for the children of Haiti as does Bobby Duval.

A Painful Contribution
Everything in Haiti is hard including heavy lifting in a 100+ degree container three days in a row. During all the moving and lifting and loading of tens of thousands of pounds, Dave's back went out. Haiti is not the place to have a bad back (I'm speaking from experience). Here is a picture of Dave and our friend Fanfan hiking back to the hotel after a hard day's work and a bumpy Tap Tap ride... (can you feel his pain?).


To make matters worse, we received a call from Jean, our director that the container was not being released and we were to come down to port immediately. By the time we arrived, the problem was taken care of and were promised a Saturday morning delivery.

What is the worst that could happen?
Saturday we patiently waited with anticipation for the phone call telling us our container had been delivered. Little did we know what call we would receive. The phone rang and Kevin said "The container chassis just collapsed, knocked over Bobby's wall! Take a TapTap down here as soon as possible". I thought to myself, "sometimes doing God's work for the poor is really difficult"... this was one of those times. Here is a few pictures of our newly delivered container.



The load of 60,000+ lbs was too much for the ground under the right front leg of the trailer. The leg sunk into the ground two feet taking the container with it.

For the next few hours, we talked about many different options for securing and leveling the container but came up with none. Several small tow trucks heard about our dilemma and showed up willing to hook up and pull it straight but none of the ideas made any sense. We were now resigned to emptying the container on an angle. We didn't have time to wait for a crane... especially one that could pickup 60,000 pounds.

Plan B.
Believe it or not, there is life after your trailer collapses. It's what Dave calls "Plan B". We are so thankful and thank God that through this all, no one was hurt, nothing damaged except for the wall. While things are difficult in Haiti, it could have been much worse... and this was our blessing for the day.


We carefully opened the back doors on our container and pulled out buckets to load in our dump truck. It adds a certain amount of extra work and uncertainty working at an angle.

BioSand Water Filters
Our next delivery was to an organization that builds water filters for the poor of Cite Soleil. Charles Adams, a contractor from Queensbury, NY is working to provide clean water to the poorest of the poor by building concrete biosand water filters that filter bacteria and parasites form dirty water making it drinkable.


Last year, armed men grabbed Charles from his car near the Port-au-Prince airport. The gunmen took him to a house in the slum of Cite Soleil, near the international airport, where other kidnapping victims were being held. Adams was released within 24 hours, apparently without having paid the $500,000 demanded from his captors. The kidnappers reportedly told Adams that kidnap-for-ransom is their only means of support. The FBI, now says Haiti has surpassed Colombia as the riskiest country in the Americas for kidnapping.

Each one of our buckets will accompany a water filter for a family in Cite Soleil. We are grateful to ER Systems for their generous support.

Terra Promise Ecole
Elder Morland, Director of Terra Promise School in Cite Soleil, a school we fund, brought a taptap to pickup his food and buckets. To save room in the container, we packed 1000 buckets full of Feed My Starving Children meals. He was so happy to receive both food and buckets and thanks God for the support of our donors. We tell him, all the glory is God's... we are only blessed with the opportunity to do His work.


Sunday Service
I asked Dave if he wanted to go to church or deliver buckets. He said "We're here to serve God, I think that's the best Sunday service we can go to." So Sunday morning, bright and early we started to pack 280 five gallon pails of food for Titanyen.

Because Dave's back was out, we hired some of the street kids that we send to school to come and help with the buckets. They were very hard workers.

It was like a plan made in heaven. We estimated how many buckets we needed in Titanyen and when fully loaded, had zero room for even one more bucket... God is Good.

Titanyen, Haiti
Titanyen is where we are building Grace Village, a place where God's loving Grace can touch the people of Haiti. It is also the village where our orphanage and eldercare programs are.

Our first stop was at our orphanage to visit with the children and drop needed food. Food in Haiti has doubled in price since the first of the year making it very difficult for many Haitians to care for their families. Here Dave meets the children of the orphanage for the first time.


Here is a photo of the children celebrating the arrival of food and buckets.


Here is a photo of the children holding signs made by the children who packed the food at Feed My Starving Children back in Minnesota. These cardboard signs were on the tops of each skid of food. They contained, greetings, prayers, blessings and pictures for the Haitian children. We brought them along to let the orphan children know that children in Minnesota care about them. It's such a blessing to be the conduit for this.

Grace Village
In between deliveries, we stopped at the site of Grace Village, 16 acres of land on the outskirts of Titanyen, future home for the orphanage, eldercare and feeding programs.

When Dave first got out of the truck on the top of the land he said "This is just a perfect picture of God's beautiful artwork". Again... we are so blessed.

A difficult job...
Like being on the water truck, we knew going in that we did not have enough food for everyone. That's what makes this part of our job bitter sweet. It is a blessing to be able to hand out food to those in need but there just is not enough.

Most of the roads in Titnayen are too narrow for the dump truck so we off loaded buckets into the back of our pickup truck. Word spread fast and very soon we were surrounded by people desperately seeking food.

The anguish on some of the faces was heartbreaking...

A time for babies...
In between the chaos, Dave and I stole some badly needed hugs and kisses from the children. We needed them as much as they did.




Desperation as an Emotion.
These final photos are of some of the food distribution from the dump truck. It is completely incomprehensible to understand the feelings you have when you experience the utter desperation in Haiti. We are so blessed to be able to just go to the corner store, stocked with any and everything we can imagine. I cannot explain the feelings but only wish everyone, once in their life could experience it. It would truly change your life forever!




























When all the food is gone...
When all the food is gone, all we can do is drive away. The children continue to chase us hoping we will stop again and start distributing food again... please Lord, heal Haiti.































Blessings from Haiti...
Jeff & Dave

This is Haiti...

I wonder how many times I've heard this... "This is Haiti". It's a reply that is often used when things don't go according to plan.

As many of your know, we delayed our trip for weeks to make sure the container of food we shipped to Haiti would be out of customs. On Tuesday, Dave Kjonaas and I departed a snowy Minnesota and arrived in tropical Haiti. It was a welcomed temperature change. We booked our trip with the belief that our container would be immanently available. The first thing we heard when we arrived was "we were going to have patience", "things take time", "this is Haiti".

It is amazing, while the price of food in Haiti has doubled this year and children go hungry and are fed dirt cookies, the government red tape still chokes the supply of emergency food that awaits delivery in port. I know I sound a little dejected... I was so set to deliver these meals to the mission field. To make matters worse, we were told that the water truck was broken down and was being towed by our dump truck back to where we park it. So... "this is Haiti" and we do what we do... make another plan.

I opened my bible that night to 1James and began to read

"2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him."

That night, we asked God for wisdom, a wisdom that is so desperately needed down here in Haiti.

Wednesday Morning
Dave and I walked to Mother Theresa's home for sick and dying babies. It's such a moving place seeing these children so helpless and vulnerable. We held and hugged and loved these children with all our might. Here are a few pictures I took of Dave being the hands and feet of Jesus.
In this picture, Dave is holding a little girl bloated from malnutrition and the hand of a little boy, 8 years old so thin and frail he could barely walk.

Prayers being answered in Cite Soleil.
When we left Mother Theresa's, we received a phone call saying the Water Truck had been repaired. A fuel filter had been clogged and was replaced and it was now ready to run so the second half of our day was spent delivering water in Cite Soleil.

I know many of you have read my blog about Cite Soleil and the water truck. While some things do change, many, most of what we see stays the same. Dave commented "I can't believe people actually live like this" and "it's unbelievable that it's so close to the USA".



When I saw the last picture, I thought it said more than words could ever say. Children born into a life that often times constrains them with lack of food, education and opportunity. Looking at this child I wondered if he would ever be free of the poverty that might lock him up from discovering his God given potential.


A Sick Child.
Wednesday night, we received a call from the orphanage that one of the children was sick. They thought it might be Typhoid. We made a call to Father Rick and asked if he could see her. He is a Priest that has worked in Haiti for 20 years and became so frustrated by the lack of care that he went back to the US and put himself through medical school. He is now in charge of a new $5 million dollar children's hospital in Tebarre.

He told us to bring her in, first thing in the morning and that we needed to be there by 7am. For this little girl, it meant getting up at 5am and taking 5 different tap taps to get there. For us it was a three tap tap ride. The hospital is a half mile walk from the main road. As we waited for her to arrive, we saw Yvon, the orphanage caretaker carrying her on his back with a heavy sweat on his brow. He is such a blessing to these children. Life is definitely hard in Haiti.


The doctors told us her fever was caused by anemia. They said she has a heart murmur and will need to see a cardiologist on Monday and will need to see an orthopedic specialist for her legs. When her knees are together, her feet are about a foot apart. I do not remember her being like this and Yvon says it has developed in a very short time. We will await the tests to see what her needs are. Please keep her in your prayers.

Another Prayer is Answered.
This afternoon, we received word that the container was coming out of customs and we needed to go to the port and repack the container so it can be moved on Friday.

We were shocked and somewhat in disbelief learning the customs people had completely unpacked our container to inspect the contents and had just thrown most everything into another container instead of repacking it.

Here is a picture of Kevin when we opened the doors of our container... only 1/8th full...

Here is the other container with the other 7/8's of our contents....

...both containers side by side.

Dave and our workers humping 50,000lbs of material from one container to the other by hand. Imagine how hot these containers are under the Haitian sun and how much sweat there was doing God's work.

Well we were only able to move about 3/4 of the load back into our container before the port closed. So today we are going back to finish repacking and then the container will be moved to where we keep the water truck. Hopefully on Saturday, we will start to deliver desperately needed food to our missions in Titnayen, Lespinasse, Cite Soleil, Leogonne and elsewhere.

Please Pray for Strength.
Please pray for strength, both physical and spiritual for us as we continue to work to serve the poor of Haiti.

May God bless you...
Jeff & Dave.

A time for babies...

Today started out as a kind of sad day for me. Mike and I were heading to Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity... a home for sick and abandoned babies. The reason I was sad is because it is one of Alyn's (my wifes) most favorite places in Haiti. Her illness prevented her from coming on this trip and it was hard to go there without her.

What also made me sad, is as we left our hotel on foot, we passed one of the women who works at the place where we're staying. She asked if my wife was here and I told her of Alyn's illness. She responded with such sadness for her and said she would keep her in her prayers. So many have asked about her... including the nun's at Mother Theresa's who are praying for her.

Mother Theresa's is such a special place because they care for babies that are not only innocent and beautiful, but some of the poorest and most vulnerable children in the world. They have nothing to say about their life or the circumstances they were born into. They are all so precious and Mother Theresa's is God's hand working in Haiti.

Burned Scarred Children
If you ready my earlier blogs, I've posted about all the burn scarred children that I've seen and met in Haiti. I've wondered about the circumstances of their injuries but have no answers. Earlier this week, I was met at one of our watering stops by one of the burned children I met last year during my two month stay. Today, I was pleasantly surprised to meet another of these children again at Mother Theresa's. She was there to see her baby brother. I passed her in the hall and she looked at me and I looked at her. I turned around and said to her "Camion – Dlo – Bucket by Bucket" (camion = truck, dlo = water) and she immediately remembered me. We hugged, held hands and she took me to her little brother. Here is a picture of her... asking me for my cell phone number.... she wants to stay in contact.

If you click on her picture, you can see how terribly scarred her arm, face and hand are.

Dear Lord,
I pray that you keep the burned scarred children of Haiti safe from future harm and protect them from stares or comments from those that see them as anything other than your beautiful child. Give them strength and faith to live a life for you knowing that your unfailing love is enough. In your loving and precious name we pray, Amen.

Reiser Heights
In the afternoon, Mike and I took a ride up to Reiser Heights School in Lespinasse/Donte. This is the school that Father Resier started and the one which with God's grace we were able to add classrooms to. We knew the students were out for summer break but needed to pay teachers salaries and discuss the upcoming school year.

Mike was surprised with the wonderful view that is available from the school of the valley below.





Finally, here is a small video clip of the ride down the mountain. The roads are so rough and bumpy... see what you think.


We thank God everyday for his hedge of protection, keeping us safe and secure in our mission and blessing us with opportunities to be his hands and feet in Haiti.
Thank you for visiting and reading the Healing Haiti blog.
Blessings...
Jeffrey Gacek

Another beautiful day in Haiti.

Today we went back to Titanyen to visit the ElderCare program that we sponsor. We were able to visit with a few of the elderlies, but most were unable to make it because of the heat and physical limitations. I would guess it was at least mid to high nineties with high humidity.




As we met with them and shared our thanks to Jesus for bringing us here, they all joined in thanking him for the blessings they receive. Andrenoi, the director of ElderCare introduced us to each of them and shared a little bit about each of them. One of the women was 105 years old. Can you imagine the life she has lived?

One of the men was the person that we were able to help with emergency surgery, two of the women had dresses on that we had sewn for them. Mike Lindahl, my friend who has joined me here said "The elderly seem so kind and gentle spirited". How much more can God bless us than to have the joy of helping them have a better life...

Afterwards, we headed back to the orphanage and were treated to a beautiful, impromptu singing from the children. This was completely unplanned and came about as we were asking the children what they liked. One said she liked to sing, so Jean our director in Haiti asked her if she would sing for us. She came and sang a beautiful song. Afterwards a few others came up and did the same. Please take time to listen to these precious angels as they sing for you too!













Mike Lindahl was also a brave soul. He sang a beautiful song for the children that they really enjoyed. Most of the children hummed the song in the background. Enjoy!



Finally, here are a couple of pictures of Mike playing with the children. They love having someone fun like Mike to play with.

Another Day in Cite Soleil

Monday we returned to Cite Soleil to deliver more water to those in need. But before we got started, we stopped at Terra Promise, a primary school in Cite Soleil that we fund. We were greeted by Elder Morland, the director of the school and about 60 children that are taking summer school classes.

Some of the children were being tested to meet the requirements to go to the next grade, while others were being individually tutored while still others attended a full classroom setting. One of the benefits for these children of attending summer school is being fed a meal each day at school.

Afterwards, we were off to deliver four 3500 gallon loads of water to various neighborhoods in Cite Soleil. It is interesting going on these different water runs how different they are from each other... some being more orderly, some being more disorderly... but all having the same common thread of people desperately wanting the water we bring.

The other common thread is how much we all need to be noticed. Children are everywhere, just wanting to hold our hands, full of joy... smiling, laughing, tugging at us... they are our small blessing to us from our living God.




I've mentioned previously how many burned scarred children I've seen down here during the last three years. Here is another that just breaks my heart...

In an attempt to bring Haiti back to you, and let you see through our eyes, I've taken a few photos of our stop today and a few videos that I've uploaded to YouTube for your to watch.

Please continue to pray for strength and safety for Mike and I and for God's loving grace for the people of Haiti. We humble ourselves before the Lord giving him all the glory for the work that we do. It is only through the grace of our living God that we are able to be here and do what we do.






This is a video of an earlier delivery. I am under the truck filming trying to show the actual delivery of water into the buckets.

This is a video looking over Mike Lindahl's shoulder. I am trying to show you a view of what he sees as he loads the buckets.


Here is a video of our last water delivery.