Expect the Unexpected

Two weeks before we returned to Haiti, everyone was asking me if it was hurricaine season and if that affected us. We usually get extra rain and maybe some wind but they haven't been as devastating to us as the places around us.....until now. There seemed to have been a tropical depreesion that dropped a lot of rain on Carries in a very short amount of time. This in turn caused a mud slide/rock avalanche. We have the property where the church is and about two miles away where we stay and house our guests. This devastation happened in the two mile radius between our two properties.



Four people were killed, three of them being young children. Several houses were totally demolished. The water carried all kinds of furniture and personal belongings from their homes. Our preacher at Carries, Pasteur Audal, escaped the flood waters and deluge with his wife but his home was flooded washing away all his belongings. He had a small shed beside his house called a depot. Besides preaching and teaching school, he would fill this little depot with things like rice, beans, oil, tomatoe paste, butter, spaghetti and spices. His wife would sell these things to bring in some extra income. All of it completely gone but their lives were spared.

Jocelyn, one of the boys we raised at Berea, was around the night of the flooding to help those who were trapped or who lost their home or everything in it. He took pictures on his phone. He showed me the children's bodies they retrieved from under the mud. He showed me a woman who was seven months pregnant who was buried alive, up to her armpits while holding her two year old baby above her head, saving the babies life.

Sunday we went to see the devastation. I was amazed at the enormously wide path the rocks and mud had taken, leveling houses to the ground. I mentioned as I looked around that I had seen pictures of the pregnant woman that they had dug out of the mud and pulled to safety. They said she's standing right over there. I got out of the truck and went over to meet her and hear her story. I asked her if she had accepted Christ as her Lord and Savior. She said, "No". I asked her what she was waiting for, that there might not be a next time. She said she would have plenty of time to take care of that. I invited her to church anyway and said we would be waiting for her.

I got home from church and stuck my head out the gate to call someone. It was just enough time to let Locksen call me. He asked if he could come and talk to me and I said yes. He said that I had almost lost him because the flood/mudslide came so quickly that he was almost washed away. It took all of his belongings but not him personally and he was very thankful for that. Then he showed me his one pair of shoes he had left that weren't washed away. They were in shreds and he needed a pair and could I please help him. I asked how much some new ones would cost. He said he needed forty bucks to get the new ones and he reminded me that he had never asked me for money before. He said, by the way, I almost lost my sister too and she was seven months pregnant. She was buried in the mud, alive. I couldn't believe it was his sister that I had just talked to. Small world. I gave him the forty dollars to go buy his shoes and man was he ever grateful.

Came home realizing what an amazing life I have, thankful to be alive and praying for wisdom to somehow be able to dispense what things we have to those in need. Please pray for us, for God to bless us with a new source of food that will increase our ability to correspond with the need at hand.

Dee