Fabulous Friday

Friday - Last full day at Christ the King Lutheran Church

All week long I've been trying to prepare our team for the level of desperation we would see. As we got ready to enter our final day of clinics we prayed for a couple of things. We prayed that the people who needed the most help would make it into the clinic. We also prayed that God would somehow expand our efforts and do beyond what we were physically capable of doing. I am confident that God answered those prayers in ways we are not even aware. I do know that we had many people come into the eyeglass clinic today who were very difficult to test because their eyesight was so poor. Looks like God said, "yes". We also saw just over 500 people this week, 502 to be more accurate! Looks like God said "yes" to that petition as well! I was walking near the table where people receive their glasses, when I saw quite a bit of commotion. The noise was coming from the team who were sharing in the joy of a woman who looked like she was seeing clearly for the first time in her life. I've posted her picture on my Twitter feed @HellyerLisa. Go check it out.

The work on the roof moved along fairly slowly again today. I think they are gearing up for pouring the concrete all in one day - Saturday! It will be a lot of work, but it will feel really great to get it all done. Our roofing crew did go up on the roof this morning to help lay conduit and run electrical in hopes of the church and school having electricity someday. I asked Jacques, the church's leader about that and he didn't think that was going to happen anytime soon. With work on the roof being a little slow, our roof team worked on a couple of other small projects. There wasn't much we could do to keep them busy though. Needless to say they are well rested for their day tomorrow!

I think I mentioned in a previous blog about a mom, Cyll who brought her 18-month old daughter, Julika into the clinic. While we don't know for sure what the child's physical future looks like, we wanted to give her the best chance in life we could with our limited capabilities. Susan Jones suggested that if we could help her sit up that Julika could see and learn from the world around her. Chris Drews put her mind to work and began envisioning what this might look like. She drew a rough  (very rough, actually) sketch for Mike Dalton of a baby seat. Mike and Paul built the frame. We used t-shirts and duct tape for padding. Warene and Lauren fashioned a seat from Nancy's skirt and sewed it onto the frame. The final donation was the elastic from Nancy's skirt which was used as the strap to hold the baby in place. Pictures will be posted on my Twitter feed. Susan met with Cyll to teach her ways to stimulate Julika's brain activity. Craig evaluated Julika and talked with the mom. Chris Drews then set out to patch Julika's good eye after her email correspondence with Dr. Kelly back home. The mom was very touched by the work of the team on her child's behalf. Once all the teaching was done, Dorlus and Chris talked with Cyll about Jesus. As it turns out she did not know Jesus as her Lord and Savior. Dorlus presented the Gospel to her, and she knelt down in front of him and gave her life to Christ! The team that was still present in the meeting layed hands on her and prayed with and for her and Julika! It just doesn't get any better than that!

Tonight is lobster night! We are excited!

Can't wait to tell you all about tomorrow!

Until then...

Lisa :)
On Behalf of March Team Haiti