Sunshine's June Update

On June 26Th, We made the 6 hour trip to Batey Nueve. Batey is french for the word "camp". It is a community of about 1,500 people that is surrounded by sugarcane and most of the people who live there are Haitian. There is very little electricity and running water. Some of the houses are made out of concrete blocks while others are made from wood. All the houses have tin roofs on them, and most of the homes have dirt floors. By plane you are only 20 minutes from Haiti, and Batey Nueve looks alot like it. The roads are sandy, and greenery is sparatic. Every time I am there, I wonder how people of the community can survive without the hope and love of Jesus Christ.


When we arrived in Batey Nueve, we began to set up our pharmacy for the next day. This can be tedious work! It's a day spent counting out meds into plastic baggies, writing out perscriptions in spanish, and organizing about $30,000.00 worth of medicines. It is really is a long day! After we set up our pharmacy, we get everything ready to see patients for the next day.


There are so many stories to tell that happened through out the week. We saw alot of open wounds. People came in with wounds that had been simple injuries, like cutting their foot on a stone or a tree branch, but because of mal -nutrtion and poor wound care, they had turned into huge ulcers. Most of these people were under the age of 30. Now, when I worked in the states, I spent some time working in dermatology out patient surgery, so I love wound care! And these wounds needed some serious attention....so I was right in my element. Even better than, we had 15 second year med students would loved it as well. It gives you an awesome opportunity to love on the people and to pray with them. The wounds that we cleaned for the patients were really infected, and looked really painful. We spent alot of time cleaning dirt and infection , bandaging them, and praying with the patients. One little boy in particular had cut two of his fingers with a machette. The tips of his fingers had to be sewn back on. We he came to us, he had pulled alot of his stitches out( it had been closed with the wrong kind of suture), and his hand was caked with dirt and blood. We couldn't make out whether he had taken antibiotics or not. The whole time we cleaned it, he sat there very stoically and never said a word. They would have had to knock me out!! In two days of clinic, we saw about 850 people. We spent one day evangelizing in the community, and 4 people accepted Christ and 6 people rededicated their lives to Christ! It was a great week!!

There's another aspect of medical ministry that I would like to share with you all as well. We are also ministers to team members. Not everybody that comes on these trips are Christian's. From the beginning, I always assumed that. We are christian based missions group. When the teams arrive here for their mission experience, it is usually a life changing event. You are here in this third world country and most people have never seen this kind of poverty before. I have been asked the question several times, "What makes the poverty here worse than the poverty in the states.?..because there are some pretty poor places in the states." I have worked missions projects in the states, and to me what makes the poverty here almost hopeless is the fact that they don't have a welfare system like we do. There isn't a food stamp line, wick programs to provide formula and nutritious foods for the pregnant moms, no emergency grants. If I lived in this country ( and it could be any of us), I can't imagine living here and not knowing Christ. I would probably blame Him for my lot in life! For the team members who come here without the hope and comfort of Christ, they usually have a really hard week. You ask your self over and over "Why? If there is a God, why do people suffer as they do, especially the innocent little children?" That is such a tough question, even for me and I have been a christian since I was 8 years old. We know it originally begins with sin, and sin causes horrible things to happen in this world. And even bigger than that, we know that God could stop the suffering. When we except Christ, it's not always easy, but we know that He is omnipotent and faithful to complete His work. We are not going to have the answers to all the questions.....we just have to trust in Him. 1Thessalonians 1:3 says "We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ."