The inevitable bump in the road

All is well here at Canaan, finally! Unfortunately some kind of throw up/stomach bug spread among about 15 people here. It started sunday and slowly began to take out person after person, morgan and chelsea got it on monday and just when I thought I had escaped, I came down with it yesterday. Of course the only people that get sick are the people not from Haiti, the weaklings. Haitians have the most rockin immune systems. Luckily it only lasted about 12 hours and we are back on our feet today. The poor group from arkansas left here with some still feeling pretty miserable, we hope you all survived the trek home! One thing is true, being sick at home with a mom is so much more comforting than being sick while you are hot and sweaty and getting eaten up by bugs. I guess it made it a little better that we had been planning on being sick at one point or another, it was just bound to happen. Morgan and Chelsea were wonderful replacement moms though and went out of there way to be sure I had what I needed.

Before all of the sickness, we had a lovely weekend. Saturday we spent the day organizing the pharmacy. It was entertaining the things that we found in that place, including living things with tails, and actually very satisfying to clean and sort all the clutter. I feel like much of what we fill our time with when we are not in the clinic are odd jobs like this...cleaning out storage buildings, taking a kitchen inventory, filing folders, etc. I think once we began to realize that though these things seem unimportant and silly at times, it is what they need. And it is things that will help them function better. And that is why we are here, to be some kind of blessing and hopefully bring relief to them in any way possible. Having the opportunity to help the people at Canaan, like Sister Gladys and Pastor Henry, who spend there lives pouring out to others is an absolute joy. SG and PH are the two founders of Canaan, they are incredible people and it is such a treat to even be in their presence. They just both exude love for the Lord and have an aroma about them as if they know God in a way I can't imagine. Such great faith, so much prayer, living through countless struggles and victories, this has sculpted them into the wise yet so very humble servants of the Lord that they are today. I kind of wish I could just follow them around all day and hear what is going to come out of their mouths next. The first thing that I heard Sister Gladys say when she arrived was "The Lord told me once to start using the corners of my eyes, both physically and spiritually." And this was just a side note to one of her stories of God's faithfulness.

Saturday night was one of those memories that I will never forget. We have been having trouble with our toilet, you see, it does not seem to want to flush...ever. So Morg and I decided that we were going to try and fix it, bad idea. Here we come marching in the bathroom, tweedledee and tweedledum, and attempt to plunge our sad little toilet. In the midst of trying to put together every bit of plunging wisdom from our dads, the power went out because around 10 o'clock every night the generator shuts off. So it's pitched black, we are doubled over in laughter, totally disgusted with our hygiene, and in an effort to escape the madness we ran outside in the pouring rain. We might not have been successful in our toilet maintenance, but we did have ourselves one hilarious night and a ton of fun goofing off in the rain..with head lamps. If you could have only seen us.

On monday, while morgan and chels were sick, I headed down to the clinic to see some patients with a couple ladies from the arkansas group. While I was there I think I finally began to realize the point of helping sick people in Haiti, as simple as that may sound I have been thinking a lot about it. In this part of the world, good health care is not just around every corner. There isn't a doctor right up the road, and if there is it is hard to get there because you have to catch a tap tap, which requires money. Here at Canaan there are no doctors, there are about 4 amazing nurses that work 5 long days a week seeing patient after patient. Every week there are a handful of cases that they know are just too complicated to take on so they get sent to a hospital. At times the whole concept of health care here is really hard to wrap my mind around. Why does it have to be like this? Are we even doing anything here? Does prescribing medicines and bandaging wounds and getting vital signs do anything? My conclusion? Yes. It has to be yes. One lady came in that was having sharp pains in her ribs and had trouble breathing. After we got done talking with her, her eyes swelled up with tears and she said goodbye as if she was anticipating her death around the corner. We told her that she wasn't going to die, she was going to be ok. We were going to figure out what was wrong with her and she was going to get better. Just having someone tell her that changed her whole attitude, she was beaming ear to ear as if she had just been cured of whatever sickness she did have. And that is why we have to do what we are doing. Offering people hope and showing them that someone on this earth cares makes it all worth it. We just have to pray that they will see there is a hope greater than what we can offer, and eternal everlasting hope in christ that will give them a reason to live day in and day out.

We had a great mamba day yesterday, I'll let morgan fill you all in on that, I didn't make it. Craving some sonic ice today, make that any ice. Shall we try fedex-ing a cooler of ice to Montrois? Oui!

Aure voir!