February 25th - Haiti 2010 trip 2 update 2

Greetings from the Central Plateau. We arrived yesterday after the longest trip ever. We got to see Santiago and the road from there to the border at high speed. Once at the closed gate it was waiting and waiting until the Haitian side of the border bridge woke up and opened shop. In the meantime we were able to watch all the illegals cross through the river from Haiti to the DR: people who cannot pay the 10 dollar entry tax. Funny to see all the law abiding folks wait in a line for hours and the ‘smarter’ ones just wade through the river and get in for free. Oh well. We arrived safely in Bohoc in the afternoon and within the hour we started a clinic and treated a lot of patients who had come from Port-au-Prince. Most of them have no money to go to clinics or hospitals. Ivan and Kyle are getting their Haitian experience and are doing well with it.

Today Mark and Ski stayed behind to work on the electrical system and they made good progress. It looks like we might have light before the weekend is over. I know that will make a lot of people happy. There have been some fires in the past caused by orphans who took candles to their bedrooms. Hope we can avoid that.

Lauren, Kyle , Ivan and myself went on a clinic trip and saw about forty to fifty people that had all kinds of ailments. Reason we did not see more was that our truck did not start and it took 4 hours to get another one. This is Haiti! The one patient I cannot get out my mind was a young man who had a triangle of loose skin about the size of a silver dollar (yep I know those are round) at his tail bone and it was kinda rotting out. AUCH ! He was in such pain but had no money to go to the hospital. Ivan took care of him and we pray he will heal soon.

It is very visible that there are more people roaming around without aim. Hopefully that will change soon because it will cause problems sooner or later. Tomorrow we expect a large crowd in the clinic set up at the orphanage. People who live hours walking away have been notified and will be coming to get free help. Many earthquake victims from P-au-P who need ongoing care, are expected too. It will be quite a day. Early, before they come, we will go to inspect the land once more before we’ll sign the contract on Saturday morning. I want Mark to see it before we go ahead with the plans. I just can’t wait to talk with the local leaders tomorrow night and get their input. After that we can start the building process as I believe the people here need to see new things happening for encouragement.

Spirits are still high although everyone knows that hard times are around the corner. Well that’s it for now. I will try to get some news out every day or at least let you know on Saturday what happened with the land project. Thank you for all you do for us.

Love in Christ, Hein

For donations and more info about the orphanage please visit matthew28.org - you will find a PayPal button there or you can send checks to:

Matthew 28/Hein Vingerling

241 Willow Way , Warne NC 28909