So many people!!! Hot! Dirty! Smelly! No one seems happy. So much noise. Will I ever understand this language? Life is hard here. Laughing out loud, some things never change!! Sickness, illness, disease and death are part of every Haitians everyday life.

My first heart-break at BMC was when we told a young teenager and her mother that she had AIDS. She didn't have long to live as every breath was a struggle. As I write this prayer letter, I have no doubt that she is now in heaven with her Saviour. There have been a myriad of diseases that I have seen and treated. I have been blessed by the thankfulness of the people, when they know you just want to help. I held a 7-month old little boy as he took his last breath and then the angels swept him away. They took with them a piece of me. I have seen a horrible case of Anthrax. The man came to the clinic with the face of the elephant man. He was treated daily for a while and now he is being treated weekly. He looks like a human being again. His smile melts my heart. Last week, he took my hand and blessed me and thanked me. What a sweet soul he is. I love "well baby clinic" day. Mums and Dads come in with their healthy beautiful babies and there is such love all around. It has been very dry here the past few weeks and so we have seen very little typhoid, but when the rains start again, we will be inundated with typhoid.

Filariasis (elephantiasis) is very common here. We are starting a clinic just for the treatment and support of people with this problem. We have TB clinic on Fridays and see a few hundred TB patients each month. Along with free medications, we give the TB patients food. Rice, beans and oil. It is important that they eat right.

The fees we charge are very reasonable. Last week, I paid for a clinic visit for someone who had no money. For the visit, 3 lab tests and 4 medications it cost me less than US$5.00 Not too bad. We see anywhere from 100 to over 200 patients in one day. We have no doctor. All the patients are seen by a nurse, who orders the labs and then the treatments. We have a pharmacy and we barely charge them our cost. We get most of our medications from Europe. Most of it is dirt-cheap. We start our day with devotions, while the patients are in Chapel. Then the day begins. Each patient is weighed and their temperature taken. Then they wait to see the nurse, then they wait for the lab and then they wait for the nurse again. Then they wait to pay for their medications and then they wait for their medications. As you can tell it takes up the biggest part of their day to come and see us. They start arriving at 4am, as it is first come, first served.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this letter. I have enjoyed writing it. There is so much more I want to tell you about.I guess you will just have to visit me and experience it for yourself!

I appreciate your prayers. Please pray for our Haitian workers here. They work so very hard and then go home and work hard again. Remember: Prudence, Marilinie, Job, Enel, Marcot, Jacqulin, Nickette, Judith, Mary Mart, Edwise, Kennyson, William and many more.

These are just a few of those who have come to mean a lot to me. Keep my family in your prayers as my grandchildren grow up without me. I miss them. I miss you. I love you all.

Mercia was born after the floods of 2000. To the delight of her mum and dad, she smiled, sang and hopped toward her third year of life. Felizmina had given birth at 17 and questioned whether she was ready to be a real, full-time mum. Though her young husband, Nelson, had received a new, two room house through flood relief, she longed for another life, for a new chance, for fun and freedom.

Mercia felt torn between her Dad who had trusted in Jesus as his Saviour, and her Mum, who chose to live with family and friends holding to the old traditional ways of spiritualism and ancestral worship. I met twice with Nelson and Felizmina to speak of their difficulties. We met both times with her mother and grandmother, an appropriate way to honour the family. They told of unemployment, hunger, poverty and sickness, of transportation fees and the high cost of education. Nelson often prayed with tears in my presence, asking for God to reach his wife. He grew deeply in his love for God and for Felizmina through times of studying God’s Word and personal worship. He grew in his love for her despite his longing to see Mercia, his beautiful two-year-old, who had moved out with his wife. 

The past few weeks have been ones of extremes.  On a high note was the trip to the mountain village of Roque.  A few of us headed into the hills with some donkeys laden with supplies and held a medical clinic for a couple of days. 

One patient who stood out among the others was Jean, a 2 year old boy.  He had had meningitis for 2 weeks and was in extremely poor shape.  His grandmother was a witch-doctor and had tried to cure him.  Her treatment included putting a hot iron to the back of his neck – resulting in some horrible burns.

She talked to the local pastor and before long accepted Jesus as her Saviour.  She had seen that there was no hope in Voodoo.  Meanwhile her grandson was still very sick.  At home he would have been immediately rushed to Intensive Care.  Instead he was lying on a dirt floor at the back of a very basic church building.  The bottle of intravenous fluids was hanging on one of the sticks that held up the tin roof.  That evening after the clinic there was a church service in the same building.  About 150 people crammed into the cramped area – many standing outside looking through the gaps in the walls.  At one stage everyone turned round and prayed out loud for the child.