From the front lines in Haiti

One of my Sacred City friends grandmother is currently on mission in Haiti. Here is an email that she forwarded to us. Please join us in prayer and support to bring healing to Haiti in the wake of this terrible calamity.

Hi Everyone,

We did not get any sleep last night. We had a second quake that occurred about midnight and then tremors every 10 minutes all night long. Most of the women are afraid to sleep in the building so they brought mattresses and couches out and slept on the ground.

The grounds are packed with Haitian people and Pastor Rabrun came and got me about 1 a.m. because of a woman having a baby and I don’t know anything about birthing babies so they sent for someone to help deliver her but then a man and woman came to me and said their little boy’s arm was cut off in their home when the wall collapsed. He is 18 months old and all he had of a right arm was a stub above the elbow. I had to dress it and use duct tape for a pressure bandage as that is all we have and then I gave him some sleeping medicine I don’t know how he is this morning. I hope he didn’t die like the other one whose body is wrapped in a shroud and is laying in the hut! That precious little boy had his leg slit wide open and lost too much blood before he got here. The mother is here on the grounds somewhere.

We don’t have supplies to treat all the people here…they are coming here in large numbers with broken limbs and severe wounds. The Grand Goave Hospital collapsed too.

If the U.N. or someone can drop us some supplies we can begin working in clinic but since we are not typically a critical or urgent care center we don’t do much trauma work and have little supplies. So please see what you can do to get us some things.

We are going to try to get the school kitchen cleaned up and begin feeding the people of the community but many of our Haitian staff spent the night here last night due to damage of their homes and fear of them collapsing. Most of the school classrooms are gone! One truss has come down in the church. We have about 1 container full of KAH food here and 2 in customs. So we have to try to begin feeding people.

Peggy Wilson was able to walk out to the yard to sleep on a mattress because she didn’t want to stay in the dining hall due to tremors. So she apparently is a bit better. But still needs care that we can’t get for her since the roads are impassable.

A pipe broke in my bathroom here and it broke off right at the wall so we have no water in our mission house. And the water coming out of the pipes in the dorm is infiltrated and coming our brown so I don’t know how long it will be before Bobby can track that down and get it fixed.

Erma, Christi, Karen Lydick and I slept in the 2004 red Ford cab last night because again, our house shakes really bad and many things broke in the quakes. We still have electric but as I said, no water right now.

We still don’t have cell service so we can’t do much to find out how the kids are at our orphanage and I can’t contact Firmin to see if it’s possible to send containers in and bypass the usual customs clearance process like we did in the fall of 2008. Bob, I’ll let you know if we get news on this.

Please send this update to our entire bulk email list.

More later! And keep us in your prayers.

Gretchen L. DeVoe, Administrator

Lifeline Christian Mission

184 Olde County Line Road

Westerville, Ohio 43081-1034

Ph (614)794-0108

Fx (614)794-0109

Mobile (614)306-3372