January 31, 2010

NEWS FROM THE BRUMLEY'S...ON THE FIELD IN HAITI

email received from them today

Hi Everyone,

It's hard to know where to start with this update-so much has happened in the last week. We are so thankful for all your prayers and encouragement. It means so much to us. We are tired, and at times frustrated by so many logistical details, but we are encouraged by the progress we are making and prayerfully, the difference we are making in our community here. The aftershocks have greatly diminished. We don't think we have felt one now in 3 days or so. That is a wonderful blessing!! Please pray that none return again-it strikes so much fear in everyone when they happen.

We attended a church service a short ways from us this morning and it was standing room only. So many are coming to churches and people want to hear about hope and they are open to the Gospel now, more than ever. Our church in Titanyen did their service outdoors again at 6 this morning and they said the whole area was full of people, many more than they could fit inside the church. The Lord is using their fear to return inside a building in His favor. We do pray that we can at some point soon start repairing these buildings, so the church and school facilities will be used again. We are still awaiting a structural engineer to check out all our buildings, so we know what work will need to be done both on our own compound and also our buildings off the compound.

We are continuing with the medical care at the clinic and it is manageable now with cases usually done by 11 or 11:30 each day. There are 4 of us working in there every morning (Susan Bruns and Sheryl, one Haitian nurse and Mme. Frank, our helper) and occasionally other doctors/allied health people join us as well. We are still treating the 5 men burned from the flour mill and they are all improving. We are starting to treat skin infections, eye irritations, coughs and colds now from everyone sleeping outside on the ground and the windblowing dust every night. We have hygiene kits that we are giving out to each family (soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo. etc.) to help them with cleanliness. While we are not doing food distribution directly from the clinic (more about that later), we are keeping stashes of granola bars, peanut butter, etc, so we can give at least a little to those who come because they are hungry, not sick.

We have been able to set up a system of food distribution in our village of Titanyen, whereby the communtity has been divided into 4 quadrants and we have 3 people responsible in each quadrant plus people helping them and we have taken the big sacks of rice, beans, and cornmeal over to the kindergarten and some of our teachers and leaders in the church bagged up everything we sent and distributed it to as many families as possible in each quadrant. David Heady had our school director and some others do an informal census of Titanyen before we started this, and we have come up with abou 6,000 people that now live there (when we moved here 7 years ago, it was about 2,00 or so). We will work with Samaritan's Purse to continue this distribution so we acan keep feeding them for some time to come. We will also be able to do another large tarp distribution to several communities to replace the sheets that people have used to build shelters. Some organizations are passing out tents (mostly in Port-
Au-Prince, where the damage is much worse) and we wish we had some, but tarps are the next best thing.

Our campus is home to several displaced Haitian families, about 60 members of Samaritan's Purse, a group of Friendship International people that will be setting up tents and camping here, a missionary group out of the Dominican that are also camping here and using our space as a drop-off and storage area for fuel and food distribution to ministries in Port-Au-Prince, two different medical organizations that are coming in for 7-10 day stays and both groups are committed long-term. As one in each group rotates out, another rotates in. Josh says it feel like we are on an extended mission trip and in one sense we have lost that "Oasis in the Desert" that we had here, but we know the compound is being used to fulfill His purpose for this time.

In church this morning we sang (in Kreyol): My life is not my own, to you I belong....I give myself away, I give myself away, so You can use me. Pray that the Lord will give us the strength to do that each minute, each hour, and each day as we seve Him here.

Blessings,

Chris and Sheryl

PS....We appreciate the Brumley's are doing especially during these days of crisis.