CURE International

One of the guys that you often see in my videos/photos related to my recent trip to Pestel is Alix. He's our translator as we go from village to village. He's quite good, and a really neat guy. Anderson and Alix got along so well that it broke up some of the boredom Anderson otherwise would have experienced.

Alix's fiancee, Sherli, is in need of hip surgery. She was born with a bad hip and it's now at the point where she can hardly walk. I was able to put her in touch with CURE International--Dr. Scott Nelson has agreed to do the surgery in the Dominican Republic. He'll wave his fees but she'll need to pay about $3000 for the hospital stay and 'hardware'.

If you know of anyone who would be interested in helping out financially, please let me know. As I find out more information I can share it with you.

BTW--that is not a normal x-ray.

Updates

For those of you who have dearly missed my emails  :)   I have been in the habit of posting on my Haiti Medical Blog

http://haitimedical.blogspot.com/

Ben

Keynote speaker

I was asked yesterday if I would be the keynote speaker at this year's Primary Care Day at the Hershey Medical Center.
I thought it was a joke.
Nope...they were quite serious. This is a one-day event in late October that presents many different faces of primary care. It's sponsored by the medical center with invitations to med students, pre-med students, and interested high school students.
Apparently the planning team (faculty and students) were kicking around names of who they might like to invite, and someone tossed in my name as a speaker on "Global Health".
What a kicker! So of course I quite graciously accepted. Should be fun!

I also have the opportunity to speak again to the Kiwanis group in September. That's always a really neat evening. They've also "been there" from the start. I had spoken to them in July 2007, a couple months before taking my first trip to Haiti...well before I had ANY clue of where God was REALLY taking me. They've been a great encouragement to us.

ALSO, I'll be giving an update to my church in two weeks. I'm working on a video for it, and I'll probably post it online once I finish it.

Pierre

This is Pierre. He's about 9 months old now, but he came to the US with Angel Missions Haiti at around 4 months of age for repair of his cleft lip and palate.

However, there were complications. In particular Pierre was found to have several other medical problems, including "diabetes insipidus" which requires him to take a medication every day, and to have regular blood checks.

The big prayer request here is for wisdom. He still needs to have the surgery done, and there's been a delay in that. After surgery, though, we are not sure whether or not he will be able to survive in Haiti. This comes down to the very practical problem of finances and lack of resources.

You can see this same photo of Pierre as well as some other kids (including Pharah--the girl with hydrocephalus I took back to Haiti in June) at Angel Missions Blog.

Dr. Warf, Neurosurgeon

This is a really good article written about Dr. Ben Warf, a neurosurgeon now working over in Philly/Wilmington. He's been doing free hydrocephalus surgeries for kids from Haiti. The group responsible for organizing this has been Angel Missions Haiti--the same group that has been involved with many of the Hershey heart surgeries.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/weekly/20080804_A_better_way_.html

Dr. Warf worked for a number of years with CURE Intl in Uganda with good friends of ours, Charles and Melissa Howard (who are still working as missionaries in Uganda). An email from Charles provided the open-door for Angel Missions Haiti to begin this wonderful partnership with Dr. Warf.

Haiti Happenings

A few intriguing things on the horizon...

I visited a migrant worker camp down in Gettysburg a couple of weeks ago and 'happened' to hear that there is also a smaller group of migrant Haitian workers that comes up to PA every year. This caught my attention. I'm pursuing this further. What I'd love to see develop is this: I could take several medical students down to the camps during the students' first and second years. We could interview the workers, provide some medical care (because no one speaks Creole in Gettysburg, so any medical care that is provided is definitely based on a best-guess). Then, in the students' 4th year we would go down to Haiti for a week or so. More to come on this front, I believe.

Our neighbor across the street came over yesterday and in the process mentioned that she has a number of Haitian American friends who go down every year, have helped to build water systems in Haiti. So we asked her to give them our names and phone number. An amazing piece of this puzzle. Have you noticed yet that these puzzle pieces just come flying in out of no where??


I've contacted a half-dozen organizations so far by email and just yesterday heard back from one of them that is working up the road from Pestel. They are interested in opening up a line of communication, so to speak.

My church has agreed to include Haiti Medical in next years' budget!! That's really cool, and very encouraging. A good number of people in the church are interested in becoming involved in various ways, and I'm extremely grateful. The church wants to adopt this as one of its outreaches and for that I could not be more thrilled!

I have never had the delusion that this is Me doing this work, or that it is My program...my 'mission'. I am being pushed, prodded, and moved by God to participate in His good work. I have not engineered this (because frankly, whatever I have tried to engineer usually either falls flat or pales in comparison to what God brings out of His treasure chest). And I am so excited to see others that God is stirring up to take part in this.

Why Haiti? Why Pestel? Only God knows.
God is Good and what He designs is Good. And it is a great joy...an invigorating, inspiring joy...to participate in this way.

Nakeysha cleared to go home!

Nakeysha had her final cardiology (post-op) appointment yesterday and everything looks great! They cleared her to return to Haiti! Her parents are very excited. We're in the process of working out the travel arrangements. Here are a few photos of her after surgery (with a few "bonus" photos thrown in!):