Dear friends and supporters,

Time for a personal update about Haiti.  First, I would like to say this has been an extremely difficult time for me.  My heart is in Haiti with these people, and I feel so helpless and small.  I know God will open the doors when it’s the right time.  So I wait and I pray and I wait and I pray.

I continue to speak to Pastor Louinet several times a week.  He has told me that people have left Port au Prince and are flooding into the smaller towns in the country in search of food, water, shelter and medical care.  We work in Dessalines and there is a small hospital there. Originally we had thought Dessalines only felt the quake and didn’t experience damage, but now we hear that it is overflowing with the wounded and homeless.

We have sent down significant emergency funds just raised to Pastor Louinet to begin caring for these people’s needs.  He will buy food and feed them; he can buy them clothes in the market, as they only have the clothes on their backs.  He will also help with medical needs and find shelter for some of them.  His own family has taken in six people to live with them.  Every morning and every evening many people gather in the new church/school for worship and prayer.  Pastor Louinet says that the people of Haiti are sad.

We are also sending emergency funding down to our friends at Heartline Ministries to help rebuild walls, repair houses, help with medical relief and give out food in Port-au-Prince.  They are doing an amazing job and have provided medical care for hundreds.  They actually have set up a clinic in one of their houses and are housing patients in two other houses.  They are driving to the poorest slums and picking up people and taking them back to their clinic for care.  Some they are seeing have not had follow up care and are filled with infection.  Others had limbs amputated poorly, and they are reamputating.  May the Lord bless these people for their serving hearts.

A small team of us are attempting to leave on February 17th.  We’re not sure where we will be staying or what we will be doing.  Our original plans were to go into the mountains of Kawo and build school desks.  We may continue with these plans unless otherwise needed.  It’s a nice thought to want to go down and help with medical and construction, which we are more than willing to do, but we certainly don’t want to be in the way or be more bodies to care for.  So we have been in much prayer about this and ask the Lord to open doors.  Many of you have asked to go with us.  I love your hearts, but feel that we need to go down first and see how things are.

And lastly, I thank you for your wonderful, giving hearts.  You have given money and supplies and I can’t say thank you enough.  Please continue to give and continue to be in prayer.  This situation is not something that is going away quickly.

We will continue to keep you updated as we prepare for this trip and when we are in Haiti. Please know that your gifts of money, supplies, time and your prayers are making a difference!

Blessings,

Dixie