Last Thursday, we were doing consultations in Martissant, a Haiti neighborhood that we had not visited before. As we pulled in, it looked cleaner and the apartments around us were undamaged, although the road leading to the apartments showed quite a bit of destruction. 

Near the end of the day, a mother and small baby sat down in front of me. The baby looked to be about a week old but the registration card said she was 5 months old. I asked the mother how old the baby was and she said 5 months. I then asked if the baby had been born premature. She said no, she had been born at 9 months. When I asked what the birth weight was she told me 8 pounds....the same weight the baby was today...5 months later! I began asking questions about nutrition and what the child was eating, how much, and if she had recently lost weight. The mother told me, almost with embarrassment, that the child had recently lost a lot of weight. When I asked her why she said that she couldn't afford to feed her formula, that she didn't have any breast milk. She had actually only been able to feed the baby carrot juice and mashed bananas for at least the last month! More probing found that the mother was alone...no family, no friends helping her....and that she lived in a makeshift tent in one of the tent camps. When I asked her how she found money for the food she ate or for her baby, she just shrugged and dropped her head. She said, "I do what I can."

At that moment, I realized that what we are doing in these medical clinics is so much more than giving out medications and treating diseases. Here sat a young woman with a malnourished baby who had absolutely no idea how she would feed her child that day and we arrived with formula, food, clothing AND medical care. We were able to offer counseling and pray with her.   We connected her to a women and children's food and educational program through a local hospital so that she could get some help.  And we offered her hope that she was not forgotten.

Hope....what led her to us and what we shared with her. As she sat in front of me and I looked at her daughter, it was all I could do not to cry. My heart ached. All I could think of was that this is exactly why we come; this is why we sacrifice and this is why we continue to bring help. Hope. Plain and simple, but oh so powerful in the life of just this one. And the next one, and the next and the next...

 

• Pray for Kristy and for our IM missionaries, staff, volunteers and all who are laboring to bring help in the name of Jesus to the people of Haiti.
• Pray for the people of Haiti.
• Pray for IM missionary Deliris Carrión-Rosa, previously serving in El Salvador, who is starting a new ministry in occupational therapy in Cap Haitien