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Haiti
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Jan. 29, 2010
God Glorified Amid Suffering, Surgeries in Haiti
Sources: HCJB Global, Samaritan’s Purse (written by Ralph Kurtenbach)
For the weary HCJB Global Hands team that returned home to Ecuador this week after quake relief work in Haiti, the hum of turbo jet engines replaced the steady drone of generators.
At the Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM) Hospital in Port-au-Prince, team members had grown accustomed to rationed electricity and shortages of diesel, water and surgical supplies. As well, they’d grown to expect God to undertake on their behalf during long hours of saving people’s lives by removing crushed and infected limbs.
The team’s return to a world in non-crisis mode followed 10 days of too little sleep, too much pain and too many deaths, tempered with the joy of being the hands of Jesus to many hurting Haitians.
Their two-day return trip carried the team through airports in Port-au-Prince, Turks and Caicos Islands, Fort Lauderdale and Miami before landing in Quito on Tuesday, Jan. 26. While en route to Fort Lauderdale, HCJB Global family physician Steve Nelson anticipated a culture shock ahead.
“People will be talking basketball and Super Bowl … or is that over already?” Nelson journaled as the team’s transition from ground zero to the outside world awaited them some 12 hours away.
Nelson’s description of both sorrows and joys reached thousands who upheld the team in prayer. His short missive described the emotional ties formed with the hospital’s overworked staff and the patients whose lives the team worked to save. Crossing language barriers, smiles, gestures and a shared faith in Jesus bonded the seven-member emergency medical response team with their Haitian hosts and patients.
“Said goodbye to my patients last night,” Nelson wrote. “Brave little kids with amputations and fractured limbs and pelvises. The most hurting ones squeezed out a smile anyway while those feeling better had a glowing one fixed on their beautiful faces already.” A veritable microcosm of Port-au-Prince’s suffering and death, the BHM Hospital nonetheless has been a beacon of Christian care and the message of the gospel.
For team leader Sheila Leech, a British nurse, the trip began in comfort as the team awaited clearance to fly from Miami to Haiti, on Friday, Jan. 15, three days after the quake struck. Late that night in BHM’s operating room, she cradled a dead baby the team managed to deliver to a mother with eclampsia. “I watched my colleagues continue to battle to save the mother’s life,” she wrote to prayer supporters.
“We had tried hard to save the baby,” Leech explained. “But at 30 weeks with no special care unit and not even an incubator, we knew it was hopeless. She was to be one of the first patients we could not save.”
Chaplains from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association shared the gospel with patients in the wards, and dozens of people prayed to receive Christ as Lord and Savior while the HCJB Global team worked at the hospital in conjunction with Samaritan’s Purse.
But the specter of death was never far off. Asked to photograph a small girl who had died, Nelson later wrote, “The lady who translated for me whispered into my ear, ‘This is the sixth of their nine children who has died from this earthquake. They just want a picture.’” Meanwhile, British water engineer Martin Harrison photographed a mass grave being hurriedly dug on the mission compound.
Before departing Haiti, Harrison’s visit to a church service gave a sample of proof that the Haitian church plans to forge ahead in faith. “I was truly struck by the strength which God has given this congregation to carry on despite loss of family and property,” he wrote.
“One of the pastors had lost four of his children and another his eldest son, yet they stood up to lead the service and to preach the Word of God. The sermon was on the theme of suffering and how we should respond to it, based on passages from the book of Job.”
“Amid all this suffering and loss, about 70 people got a good look at the loving, compelling face and person of Jesus and decided to follow Him,” Nelson added.
“Some of those 70 might get to see Him face to face in heaven soon. We lost two young men this week to pulmonary embolisms after successfully treating their injuries,” Nelson said, acknowledging that others, too, may die. “More will follow, so it’s a joy to add these 70 to the equation regarding why this is so worth it.”
In addition to Leech, Nelson and Harrison, the team included surgeons Leonardo Febres and Eckehart Wolff, anesthesiologist Paul Barton and family physician Mark Nelson. While Samaritan’s Purse continues to stand in the gap at BHM with physicians and nurses, HCJB Global Hands is making plans to send another team to Haiti in several weeks. |
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Jan. 22, 2010
HCJB Global Voice Stations, Partners Rally Behind Medical Response to Haiti
Source: HCJB Global, Radio Lumière, World Gospel Mission (written by Ralph Kurtenbach)
Internet program streaming by HCJB Global Voice’s partner in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is offering online users the station’s French, Creole and English programming to help listeners keep abreast of developments after a 7.0-magnitude quake struck the Caribbean island on Jan. 12.
World Gospel Mission (WGM) engineer Paul Shingledecker resurrected Radio Lumière’s (Radio Light) streaming after working with a local Internet service provider and shifting to a different tower. Tim Rickel, WGM’s vice president of communication, said the new tower “is not as reliable as what they had, but you should be able to get the programming intermittently on the radiolumiere.org site.”
A Jan. 22 program, monitored in Ecuador, was hosted by a male announcer. It streamed consistently for 45 minutes with a strong signal.
With announcers using a makeshift tent studio beside Radio Lumière’s only slightly damaged AM station, ambient sound added local color to the morning show—a pastors’ discussion around the microphones. Planes landed nearby during the show as the host and his guests talked, prayed and laughed together.
Relief flights loaded with reporters, rescue crews, health workers, international aid staff and supplies have clogged the Haitian capital’s besieged airport for more than a week after the quake devastated Port-au-Prince.
The temblor struck while engineer Alan Good from the HCJB Global Technology Center in Elkhart, Ind., and three others were at the ministry’s FM station, Stereo 92, to make repairs and hold radio training. All four escaped injury, but three of Radio Lumière’s employees were killed by the quake elsewhere in the city.
Radio Lumière’s program schedule “is constructed in such a way as to keep a balance between the spiritual and the physical,” according to the station’s website.
“This is consistent with Radio Lumière’s philosophy that the Creator God is interested in man in his entirety, body, soul and spirit,” the site stated. “To this end the program day includes evangelistic programs and programs to encourage Christians to grow in their walk with the Lord. However, it also has many programs designed to inform, teach and entertain. The belief is that all of these are important and part of God’s care for His people.”
“They are doing open microphone [programs], letting people come and tell about problems in their area and requests for help in various areas,” said Paul Shingledecker, who directs the Caribbean and Latin America for World Gospel Mission. “They are now also beginning to do news and announcements. One a few minutes ago was about the availability of buses provided by the aid organizations.”
“There was beginning to be a panic in this sense and local buses and trucks were being dangerously overloaded with people who wanted to get away,” Shingledecker added. “This way they can leave in a safe manner.”
Another HCJB Global cooperating ministry, Radio Station 4VEH, operated by One Mission Society (formerly OMS International) in Cap-Haitien, was undamaged.
At the other side of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, staff members at Radio Eternidad (Eternity Radio) in the Dominican Republic launched their own Haitian relief effort. Begun in early 2006, Eternity Radio hosted a training group from Radio Station HCJB a year later, with 25 people receiving personalized training in production and technical work.
In Ecuador, both Radio Station HCJB in Quito and HCJB-2 La Conexión (The Connection) in Guayaquil have appealed to listeners to pray for Haiti’s quake survivors and the aid workers assisting them. Both stations aired interviews with the HCJB Global Hands’ multi-skilled team working at Baptist Haiti Mission in Port-au-Prince.
Interviewing Dr. Eckehart Wolff via satellite phone, Radio Station HCJB newsman Edwin Chamorro asked, “Could you tell us a bit about your experience of donating blood for a patient?”
“Oh, that isn’t anything special,” the self-effacing German surgeon replied. “What is bad is how we do not have the blood bags or the blood. We have to do whatever is possible; that’s why we’re here. It’s incredible the way God gives us strength. We have 16 hours of work every day—a bit less now, 12 hours. God gives us strength and this [work] is the norm for us.” |
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Jan. 22, 2010
Haiti Quake Victims Find Salvation Amid Suffering
Sources: HCJB Global, Samaritan's Purse, Associated Press (written by Ralph Kurtenbach)
With each faint scent or sound of life beneath the rubble, rescue workers call for total silence, but their hope of hearing a tapped or shouted reply is fading with each day following the Jan. 12 quake that shook the Haitian capital.
Already, noisy earthmovers in northern Port-au-Prince have carved out mass graves on a hillside where the site manager said he had interred thousands of corpses—including many children’s bodies—in a single day.
Amid the stench of death, civil chaos looming, and heart-stopping aftershocks, an HCJB Global Hands medical team from Ecuador continues saving lives even as patients’ limbs are lost to amputation after crushing injuries.
Team leader Sheila Leech and Ecuadorian orthopedic surgeon Leonardo Febres have returned to Ecuador, but their five colleagues who also arrived at the Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM) hospital on Jan. 15 are staying on for a few more days. Working tiring days, they witness terrible tragedy at many turns. Nevertheless, they persist amid suffering and sorrows within this haven of hope—a hospital where patients and their relatives hear the gospel.
For a week now, the Ecuador team of HCJB Global Hands has assisted at BHM where local chaplains and those from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) circulate among the patients. The chaplains comfort those grieving and share the news that God is love, even in times of trial.
For the Haitians, many whose lives are marked by financial struggle, this love is palpable and within grasp, even if worldly wealth is not. Many embrace the biblical account of a Savior who, by Western standards, was born, lived and died poor. Amid the suffering, the Haitians smile; they sing; they busy themselves with alleviating the pain of others.
Observing the Haitians, physicians, chaplains and support staff blending to form an effective Christian body, water engineer Martin Harrison arrived at two summarizing words: resilience and improvisation.
“Many staff have lost family members and close friends,” he wrote in a quiet moment. “Yet they have not downed tools since the first day, as they seek to help others live. The surgeons, doctors, nurses, water engineers and caretakers each play their own vital part, tirelessly working from dawn until late into the night, improvising with whatever comes to hand as certain medical supplies run low.”
With two operating rooms now treating patients at BHM, surgical plates, pins, casting material and other supplies are all needed, along with blood. German physician Eckehart Wolff donated blood to one patient, Alexis, during a surgery he was performing. It helped her survive . . . but only for a short while longer. To extend scarce supplies, staff members have begun cutting the pins in half.
Reports indicate more than 400 makeshift camps have sprung up near Port-au-Prince with nearly 400,000 people in shelters bed sheets and clothing scraps stretched over tree branches. U.N. assessments claim a significant percentage of this population continues to lack access to clean water.
The city’s airport can now receive nearly 200 flights per day, but the flow of aid flights bottlenecks on the ramps as truck transport of supplies to the city is lacking.
The risk of epidemic runs high with camps overcrowded and unsanitary and shortages in both medical care and clean water. Public health officials are closely monitoring this risk.
While being prepped for surgery at BHM, 14-year-old Marcelus was evangelized by Cesaire Elusmond, a Haitian chaplain, and BGEA’s Jack Dowling. “Then and there,” Harrison recounted, “just minutes before going to surgery under HCJB Global surgeons, he prayed and gave his life to the Lord. As doctors were saving his life, Jesus was changing his heart.”
“We give thanks for the miracles God is working each and every day,” the British engineer added, “not only saving lives, but changing hearts.” |
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HCJB Global Press Release For more information contact:
Jan. 20, 2010 Michelle Sorak, Communications Director
msorak@hcjb.org; 719.388.2227
Aftershock Rattles Haiti as HCJB Global/Samaritan's Purse Team Continues Work
Sources: HCJB Global, Baptist Haiti Mission, World Gospel Mission, Associated Press, BBC (written by Ralph Kurtenbach and Harold Goerzen)
A 5.9-strength aftershock early Wednesday, collapsing already-damaged buildings, but the HCJB Global Hands emergency medical team working at the Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM) hospital in Port-au-Prince reported they're all fine.
The seven-member team continues working 12-hour surgical shifts, treating those injured in the Jan. 12 quake that devastated Haiti's capital.
The powerful aftershock, centered about 35 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, sent Haitians screaming into the streets, collapsing buildings, cracking roads and adding to the trauma of a nation stunned by an apocalyptic quake eight days ago. At least one woman, traumatized by the aftershock, died of a heart attack in Port-au-Prince. The jolt matched the strongest of the tremors since the original 7.0-magnitude quake.
The multi-specialty team, working in conjunction with Samaritan's Purse, a North Carolina-based Christian aid group, arrived Friday, Jan. 15, from Ecuador. While two surgeons, an anesthesiologist, a nurse and two family physicians have worked at the hospital with the BHM staff, water engineer Martin Harrison set up a Water Missions International (WMI) filtration plant that is now chlorinating pond water for use at the hospital compound.
"Supplies are now improving as the WMI unit produces 10,000 gallons of drinking water per day at full output," Harrison said. "We are taking water from a fishpond of all places, passing this through the WMI water filter and filling a cistern beneath the hospital."
Family physician Steve Nelson said the team is giving priority to the most severe cases. "We non-surgical types were out on the floors trying to triage which cases were most likely to get complicated if left longer," he explained. "Sepsis, infected compound fractures and little kids made up our priority list." With more complicated cases, the surgical workers totaled 15 operations in one day, finishing after midnight.
"They are not seeing any simple breaks or fractures," Krys Baker, the hospital administrator, said of the surgical teams. "Many bones are crushed, making surgeries very difficult. They are also seeing a lot of infections. Many people have waited to come to the hospital and as a result they are having to do amputations." Infectious diseases have not shown up yet, according to a BBC report, but tetanus and gangrene are a threat to the injured.
Several days after HCJB Global's team arrived, another 17 physicians and nurses arrived from Samaritan's Purse. Upon staffing a second operating room, the 100-bed hospital can now treat more injured Haitians.
In spite of limitations on fuel, water and Internet connection, the team members' contact with their families in Ecuador has been constant. Missionary Kim Barton said from Shell, Ecuador, that her husband, Paul, "mentioned the aftershock because it woke him up. He was calling to try to find more tetanus [vaccine]." The Bartons serve at HCJB Global's jungle hospital in Shell where Paul is an anesthesiologist and his wife, Kim, is a pediatrician.
Also from the Shell hospital, German surgeon Eckehart Wolff lay on a surgery table to donate his own blood to a patient named Alexis who was suffering from severe internal abdominal bleeding. "The lady was stable this morning; however, sadly, she died this afternoon. She must have been crushed by something in the quake," said Harrison.
There is joy amid such suffering, Nelson said, recounting how family physician Marcos Nelson's patient, a young girl, began to sing even as the physician cleaned her wound. Anesthetized from pain but still conscious, the girl had a wound that revealed something serious enough for her to be placed first on the list for the next morning.
"Then we all heard her start singing," Steve Nelson related, "first in sort of a low voice and later stronger ... and it seemed happier! It was in Creole, so of course none of the Spanish and English speakers could know what she was saying ... but a translator brightened up nearby and said she is singing, ‘I am saved, I am saved, I am saved!'"
The aftershock also rattled the nerves of people at partner ministry Radio Lumière, which only suffered minor damage in the original quake, although three of the staff members were killed while they were away from the station.
"Everyone there was OK [following the aftershock]," said Timothy Rickel, vice president of communication at World Gospel Mission (WGM). "Most people are sleeping outdoors anyway."
WGM engineer Paul Shingledecker helped put the station back on the air Sunday, Jan. 17, enabling the Radio Lumière to aid in communications and send out a message of hope to beleaguered Haitians.
"There is no city power, and it will be some time before there will be any," Shingledecker added. "I've seen lines down all over the city, including major high-tension lines. The station is entirely dependent on back-up generators. Some diesel is available, though not a lot yet. But money to buy it is the major factor."
A call to Radio Lumière's satellite service produced wider bandwidth for the station to stream audio on the Internet. "This is a major praise," said Rickel.
An HCJB Global engineer and others working at Radio Lumière when the Jan. 12 quake struck decided to "ride out the earthquake in the building," according to David Russell who heads the HCJB Global Technology Center in Indiana.
Alan Good had traveled to Haiti on Jan. 6 to work on the station's FM, Stereo 92. "He spent two nights there following the quake, awaiting news from his Haitian host family," Russell said. "It turned out that they also escaped injury."
With help from a Mission Aviation Fellowship pilot, Good re-established contact with Russell and was flown back to the U.S. on Sunday.
The most recent news can be found at www.twitter.com/hcjbglobal. In order to donate to the relief efforts, please visit www.hcjbglobal.org. |
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Jan. 15, 2010
HCJB Global Physicians Arrive in Haiti for Relief Work with Samaritan’s Purse
Sources: HCJB Global, Samaritan’s Purse, World Gospel Mission (written by Ralph Kurtenbach and Harold Goerzen)
As relief teams attempt to reach earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince, a multinational medical and water sanitation team from HCJB Global Hands in Ecuador is praising God for its arrival in the Haitian capital Friday, Jan. 15.
“The situation is really desperate, and safety is an increasing problem as people get more frantic for water, food and medical help,” said Martin Harrison, a British water engineer on the seven-member emergency medical response team in Florida, on Thursday. “We want to get on with the job but we’re are daunted by the very serious nature of the situation. Please pray for the team and that God would protect us and get us there in his perfect way and timing.”
“We are certain that the medical people we are slated to relieve are so very tired after this now 48-hour marathon in the hospital,” said family physician Steve Nelson on Thursday as the team waited to catch an emergency flight at the airport in West Palm Beach, Fla. The team arrived in Port-au-Prince Friday morning.
Another ministry, Samaritan’s Purse (SP), is sponsoring the HCJB Global team in Haiti and handling its logistics. SP is centering its medical relief efforts at a 100-bed hospital in Port-au-Prince operated by a local partner, Baptist Haiti Mission. The hospital, 20 miles from the quake’s epicenter, suffered only minor damage and has electricity from back-up generators.
Members of the HCJB Global team include Ecuadorian surgeon Leonardo Febres, German surgeon Eckehart Wolff, U.S. anesthesiologist Paul Barton, U.S. family physicians Steve Nelson and Marcos Nelson, Harrison and International Healthcare Director Sheila Leech, a British nurse who heads the group. Most have assisted after previous disasters elsewhere such as in quake zones of Indonesia and Pakistan, Lebanon after war, and flooded areas of Mexico and Ecuador.
Likewise, the SP team consists of veterans of many disaster responses, but even they were shocked by what they encountered upon their arrival. “The streets are full of people who have no homes to go back to,” said Dr. David Gettle, a medical adviser. “They’re running out of food, fuel and water. The situation is desperate and tense, and there is tremendous suffering.”
A cargo plane chartered by SP has made several flights to Port-au-Prince since Wednesday, transporting 11 members of its own disaster team along with rolls of plastic for temporary shelters, blankets, hygiene kits, jerry cans, flashlights, water purification sachets, water purification kits and two community water filters.
The primary goal of HCJB Global’s team is to bring medical aid and clean water to the injured while also addressing the spiritual needs of the Haitian earthquake victims. “This is an opportunity to show God’s love in a tangible way,” said HCJB Global President Wayne Pederson. “We feel privileged to play a small part in this emergency operation.”
The 7.0-magnitude quake struck on Tuesday, Jan. 12, even as an HCJB Global Voice engineer was in Port-au-Prince to do technical work for partner ministry Radio Lumière. The engineer and three others (two from the U.S.) escaped injury.
World Gospel Mission (WGM) is sending Paul Shingledecker to Haiti on Saturday to assess the damage at Radio Lumière, get it back on the air and meet with church and radio leaders to begin building a long-term strategy for assisting Haiti. Shingledecker, who served as a missionary in Haiti for 23 years, will also be checking on radio staff members, some of whom are feared dead.
“The station is still standing,” said Tim Rickel, WGM’s vice president for communication. “It is structurally sound, although many things have fallen off the shelves. All of the radio towers are also standing.” He said the station has back-up generators to supply electricity, but they are dependent on diesel fuel which is in short supply.
Radio Lumière, a WGM partner ministry operated by the Evangelical Baptist Mission of South Haiti, consists of nine radio stations and a television station. It covers 90 percent of Haiti with the message of Christ’s love.
Another HCJB Global cooperating ministry, radio station 4VEH, operated by One Mission Society (formerly OMS International) in Cap-Haitien, was undamaged.
“We want to be able to show the face of Jesus as we work with our hands. We trust the name of Jesus will be lifted up in all that we do,” said Steve Nelson.
Support of HCJB Global’s efforts will help provide medical supplies and basic necessities such as sleeping bags, flashlights, tents and emergency water filters. Plans are under way to send additional teams in the weeks to come.
The most recent news can be found at www.twitter.com/hcjbglobal.
To donate to the relief efforts, please visit www.hcjbglobal.org/donate or click below
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