Eventful Day

Today was actually quite an eventful day for our team in Haiti, which is probably why it took so long for me to get an update. The group coming back from St. Marc had some car trouble, but they manged to get all the food safely to the church in Petionville. The car trouble involved the Montero that Jeremy was driving, which had been having transmission problems all day. It went dead in the middle of an extremely busy four lane road in downtown Port-au-Prince. It finally started again and they continued their jaunt across the city, but it went dead once more. They decided that the food needed to get to the church, so Jeremy sent the other vehicles ahead except one. The guys who stayed with him included Roy Gilbert, Jimmy Sitton and Dickens. They managed to fashion a tow cable out of some rope they had and Jeremy drove his vehicle while Roy towed it. The rope broke once, but they were able to rig it again and finally made it back to the church. At one point Jeremy was crawling around in the street in the middle of massive amounts of traffic, attaching the rope to his truck. I think he had a pretty rough day.

When they unloaded all the food at the church and decided it was distribution time, they cleared the courtyard around the church, except for a few kids who were playing there. There were four officials from the Ministry of the Interior present to make sure everything went well, and food distribution began. The people who were waiting at the gate got a little rowdy and loud, but there were no fights or violence involved in the process. This had been a concern since we had heard reports of rioting and violence at other food distribution sites. The government officials who were there were very nice and Jeremy was able to speak with them at length. They even sat down and ate some of the rice and beans which had been prepared by the cooking team and women from the church. After about half of the food had been distributed, the officials told the team they were doing good work and then left. They had absolutely no problem with anything that was going on.

Here are the numbers on the food which was given out today. If you remember, Kids Against Hunger donated seven pallets of food, each pallet containing thiry-three boxes. Each box contains thirty-six bags of food and each bag contains six servings of food.
Two pallets were sent to the city of Jacmel,which has received no aid so far, and the remaining five pallets were taken to Petionville. Today each family was given one box of food, which is enough to feed the entire family for a month. Half of the families were church members and the other half were not. A few boxes were left at the church for the orphans. We realize that this is not a permanent fix for these people, but we pray that they have seen the love of Christ in action and were able to hear the gospel while waiting for food or to see the doctor. We also pray that the local Christians will be strengthened by knowing that there are other Christians in the world who care about them and that they have not been abandoned by their brothers and sisters in Christ.

Today the extra prescription medications which the team brought with them were taken to the hospital where American doctors are working. Tomorrow the guys will be cooking the rest of the food that they bought and spending as much time with the local people as possible before they prepare to leave on Saturday. Some of the vehicles are in pretty bad shape because of the driving conditions on the island. Jeremy said that Roy and Dickens are going to get them all fixed up and ready for the long drive on Saturday.

Hopefully tomorrow will go smoothly and there will not be as much drama as they have seen since they have been there. I am not sure what time I will update tomorrow, especially since my little ones are out of school for a snow day! If it snows where you are, enjoy it!


Who among the gods is like you, O LORD ? Who is like you—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders? Exodus 15:11