the ayars affairs

Our field leader returned today from Port-au-Prince, and stopped here on his way back to OMS’s main compound. He had with him several women who had been working on relief efforts but whose necessary medication was dwindling. Hoping they can get out through Cap-Haitien tomorrow.

Meanwhile, today the last gas stations closed in Northern Haiti, out of fuel. We fueled up the truck yesterday, and Matt is currently making trips from here to Cap-Haitien with as many students and staff members as possible so at least they can be home and in communication (for many, the FIRST) with their families. This also means we cannot get more fuel for the generator (which powers everything and gives us water), so it is best to get the students all to their homes and run on as little as we can here.

Our field leader said that OMS’s guest house in PAP is still standing, though the wall around it is down. Next to it is an Adventist College, which is largely down but has a large yard. He told us that literally hundreds, thousands of people are living and sleeping in that yard, and that they have dwindling clean water, many injuries, and almost no food.

Tomorrow this truck, Lord willing, will take supplies to the Villa and distribute them to these people in this yard.

There is a supposed great need for translators for the UN medical efforts in Port-au-Prince. We are waiting to hear more about this, as that this is a service Matt and several others could provide. He also told us that there are many, many people leaving PAP on foot, heading throughout Haiti to find cousins or family or friends that could take them in. Already today we are seeing many busses full of people coming from Port.

The phones are still down, though somehow my dad got through for the first time for a few precious minutes this afternoon.

The inability to communicate, on top of everything else, is just overwhelming. SO MANY PEOPLE could know if friends or family were alive or dead or safe or in need if they could JUST CALL. SO MANY PEOPLE could send help if people could communicate what is needed and where. Please continue to pray that the internet/phone systems would get back up.

We are in the midst of a great mission field, family.

We are continuing to do all we can do where we are, right on the road between Port and Cap-Haitien, and we don’t know what the coming days could hold. Please pray for fuel, as that without it, Port will not be the only city in major shut-down.

Our field leader went looking for the Bensons, but said their entire road, their entire area, was so entirely unrecognizable that he didn’t even know where to begin. Please continue to pray for Greg and Cathie Benson, and Christian Service International as they have no guest house, no orphanage, 20 orphans, but a clinic that is miraculously still standing, and I’m sure, working overtime. Knowing that we could help them, that we could help so many of our brothers and sisters in Port and not being able to is just excruciating. …we know you understand.

We are seeing and hearing and experiencing more than we can emotionally handle. Please keep letting us know of your prayers and hopes that the Lord is giving you and of your love and desire to help and pray, and we would be blessed to not receive any more horrific photos or overwhelming statistics. We are very aware, and are hearing and seeing, and will be hearing and seeing, more than we handle, as is.

Our students and, well, everyone we meet, actually, continue to speak of this as the judgement of the Lord on their people who have had hard heads and hard hearts and served other Gods and lived wicked lives. They continue to cry out for undeserved mercy on behalf of their people.

This morning, just desperate for a tiny sliver of peace in the midst of heart sickness and overwhelmed tears, I opened to Jeremiah, and grew more and more full of doom reading through chapters 24,25,26, reading about the Lord's great anger.

"Again and again the Lord has sent you his servants, but you would listen or even pay attention. Each time the message was this 'Turn from the evil road you are traveling and from the evil things you are doing. Only then will I let you live in this land. Do not provoke my anger by worshipping others.'

'But you would not listen to me,' says the Lord. 'Because you have not listened to me, I will...bring all your enemies against your land, I will completely destroy you, I will make you an object of horror, I will take away your happy singing and laughter, your millstones will fall silent, the lights in your homes will go out...."

The horrific descriptions of what the Lord will allow because of their unfaithfulness makes you shudder...Just as the news and the photos of what is now LIFE in Haiti make us shudder. "Lord, have mercy" I have begged many times these last days, and praise the Lord, He kept me reading.

Chapter 31. Read it. I pray it gives you the comfort it gave me in the face of the death many are experiencing but ALL have deserved, me most of all.

"I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love.

With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.

I will rebuild you, my people.

You will again be happy and dance merrily with your tambourines.

Tears of joy will stream down their faces, and I will lead them home with great care.

They will walk beside quiet streams and on smooth paths where they will not stumble.

Listen to this message from the Lord, you nations of the world; proclaim it in distant coastlands:

The Lord, who scattered his people,

will gather them and watch over them

as a shepherd does his flock.

I will turn their mourning into joy.

I will comfort them and exchange their sorrow for rejoicing."

STANDING on the Word of the LORD which is FOREVER. All men, like grass. Each breath, like the fading flower. What an easy time to remember. But His Word is forever, and it promises to bring us in with joy.

Until that day, I find myself smiling at the knowledge that so many of His faithful children are being led by those bubbling brooks and green clean pastures, full and whole and overwhelmed by the joy of His presence even now.