Not my will...

"But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those how are perishing..."

2 Cor 2:14-15

I am thankful for the time I was able to spend with the ultrasound tech from the states. Friday was my last day learning from him as he left Saturday morning. I was able to get a pretty good introduction to our machine and the basic concepts of obstetrical imaging. I am still praying fr God to send someone else who might be able to stay for longer and work with me daily on our machine. Our neighbors, the Yungbluts, know a friend from their church in Canada who is an ultrasound tech. Kelly has been emailing with him and he is thinking about coming to Haiti for a week and working with me on the ultrasound machine in the morning and doing maintenance work in the afternoons. So we are really praying that God will lay it on his heart to come and provide a way for him to do so. The guy working on our xray machine left Friday and we dont have everything up and running yet, but there was huge progress made and we feel it won't be long before we have xray capabilities. We have a mechanic who is a longterm missionary here and we are hoping to hear back from the manufacturers of the machine to give him more things to check and troubleshoot. We are expecting the new machine here before the end of next month, and we plan to have both machines up and running when all is said and done. The new aids clinic is almost finished and it looks beautiful! One of the rooms will be designated for our ultrasound and we have a brand new electric exam table to use in there as well. This is really exciting for the clinic, as having the imaging department fully functional will hopefully attract more patients and business, that will help keep supplies stocked, equipment running, and produce more opportunities to improve the healthcare and facilities at the clinic.

The new aids clinic

Inside the new building

Ultrasound machine
The days are getting hotter and hotter here, it's about time to start taking more than one cold shower a day. The Yunbluts have planted a garden in our yard. The corn has already sprouted and soon we will have tomatoes, beans, peas, and peppers. It will be nice to get our veggies out of our own garden, reminds me of my childhood days :) The pinapples are just about in full season and are SO delicious! Our cook, Elsie, makes wonderful pinapple juice that is perfect to quench your thirst on these hot humid days. I have been brushing up on my manual driving skills, but only around the compound so far. I am hoping to soon be able to drive myself to church, Milot, in to town, and drive other people places if they need me to. I am planning on driving myself and a few people out to Milot one day this week so after that I should pretty much be a pro :) But I would appreciate your prayers for safety during for this maiden voyage!

Our lovely gardin
Julie and I have been planning to put together mobile medical clinics in towns and villages that have little or no access to medical treatment. We have talked to our teachers at the seminary, Matt and Stacey Ayers, and they want to send evangelism teams with us on each clinic. We have received sufficient funds from the Canadian disaster relief fund to be able to do many clinics during our time left here. In order to do these mobile clinics, our number one need right now is to have a doctor with us. We are also hoping to have a couple nurses as well, but as long as we have a doctor we will still be able to do a clinic. I have been coordinating with our a guy at headquarters who is in charge of sending in short term teams to see if he could find teams of doctors and nurses who would be willing to come for a week and participate in one of these clinics. We are planning one for the beginning of June at a church that one of our nurses in the clinic goes to and whose husband is the pastor there. We have another one planned for the end of July to go back to Diquini Port au Prince, and already have a team lined up to go with us. We are excited for how God has presented the opportunity for us to serve Him in this way and is opening doors right and left to allow this to come together. I know that the Lord is sovereign and His perfect plan will always prevail, just as He made the promise regarding His purpose for Assyria and Babylon in Isaiah 14:24, "Surely as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will stand." God is in control of everything and I know that He can and will do imaginably more than anything we could ever hope for or imagine. I am constantly learning what it means to fully surrender all of my plans and my agenda to the will of God. So often my agenda is not even close to what the Lord's is and I have come to find out over and over again, that His way is so so so much better!

A few of my friends:Wadner, Brightner, and Remy

*Prayer requests*
-For Jesus to continue to be the center of our plans concerning the ministry of mobile medical clinics.

-For God to provide teams of doctors and nurses who would be willing to come help us with these clinics.

-That the Holy Spirit would soften the heart of this ultrasound tech from Canada to step out in faith and be apart of His work here in Haiti. Also that the Lord would provide financially and be apart of all of the details that need to be worked out for him to come.

-That my computer would be able to get fixed, or that God would provide another means of communication for me, so that I can talk with my family and friends back home and keep them updated...it completely broke down Friday night and it isn't looking like it will be able to be a quick fix.

-Continue to pray for the status of our xray machine, that God would provide a way for the one we have to be fixed soon, and that the one that is coming would arrive on time so that it can be installed and running as soon as possible.

-For the Bethesda Medical Clinic(where I work) that the Lord would do a mighty work through the staff who work there, and that Satan would have no grounds to stirr up division and dissension between any of the staff. Please pray that we would be a unified body through the work of the Holy Spirit, so that we can portray an accurate and effective picture of the love of Jesus through how we care for the patients and how we love one another.

Ultrasound update

Julie and I were working in Milot Saturday where we met a new team who had just arrived. After meeting a few of the people and telling them a little bit about what we were doing here in haiti, we learned that they had brought an ultrasound tech with them. His name is George and we were able to meet and talk with him that morning. Julie and I both started to get excited as he explained to us that he is here primarily to teach some of the Haitian people in the hospital how to do ultrasound. We told him about what what we did, where we worked, and about our clinics great need for someone to teach us ultrasound. He is an extremely nice man and has willingly agreed to come here to our clinic and spend time teaching me all that he knows. He is in Haiti for 2 weeks and we are hoping he can come here a couple times to work with me on our machine. He brought with him current interactive CD's on every aspect of ultrasound to help teach the Haitians at Milot hospital. He told me we could just burn a copy of those CD's for me to keep. It was amazing to see how God has fully provided exactly what we need through our meeting this guy. We met him Saturday and he will be coming here Tuesday to start hands-on training with me on our patients...nothing is impossible with God! We give all of the glory, honor, and praise to Him for this huge answer to prayer! "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Mt. 19:26. Jesus promised us that if we believe, we will receive whatever we ask for in prayer and I am so thankful for everyone who has been asking in Jesus name that our clinic would be able to have ultrasound capabilities. We know God has greater things planned for us here, and I look forward to sharing with you many more testimonies of His faithfulness and power.

Psalm 34:8- He is so good!

"Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!" Ps. 34:8

On the road to PAP
Our team of 21 got home from an incredible trip to Diquini, Port-au-Prince on Monday evening. This is the place where the young man from the OMS seminary, Junior, has been living since February. He is in the process of planting a church in this city on top of a mountain in western PAP and has been working very hard at discipling new believers in this area(around 600 since the earthquake). He has been living in a tent by himself, makes frequent visits to the people in the community, leads bible studies every morning from 5 to 6, church services every night of the week, and then Sunday mornings as well. He would never complain to anyone, but I know he gets worn out and very lonely at times. Please continue to pray for his ministry there, for his physical, emotional and spiritual well-being, and that God would call at least 2 other people to Diquini to help Junior in continuing to carry out the plans God has for this area.

Our purpose during the 3 days we were there was to encourage and lift up Junior, to put on a VBS kids program, and to hold an evangelism crusade. On Thursday morning, 8 of us missionaries, and 13 of our seminary students loaded up in the back of an open-topped large truck. The rain had poured the entire night prior and all that morning and for the first 3-4 hours of our journey. This however did little to dampen our spirits. The minute we were on the road the whole group, which consisted of a mixture of Haitian/American/Enlgish/Irish folk, began praying, singing, and worshipping together in both English and Kreyol. It was beautiful! I can't say I enjoyed every one of the 8 hours that it took us to get there, but we were all excited and eager for what the Lord was going to do and it was a great first bonding experience together.

Our team

From left to right: Front row-Franz, Nicole, Hannah, Julie, Kate, Josephine, Jacob, Devicoeur, Bellonie, Seville, Jean-Baptiste, Yolen, Denny
Back row- Pam, Jean-Marie, Simeon, Waldeck, Rachelle, John, Rosalvo and Bonaime

The trip down

When we finally arrived in Port, we had to drive through most of town to get to Diquini. There are tents everywhere, some even in the middle of the road dividing traffic. What really amazed me most though was not the crumbled buildings, the number of tent houses, or the rubble everywhere. There were buildings that were completely demolished that were in the middle of perfectly stable, seemingly untouched buildings. It was a really bizarre sight to see.

View from Diquini

Diquini is located on the top of a mountain and the view from up there is amazing! At the very top there is a building that at one time used to be a guest house of some sort. It is basically empty and without electricity or running water, so most of us just pitched tents outside in the back. I was perfectly content with that, especially since as soon as you stepped outside of your tent you were hit with the spectacular panoramic view of all of Port-au-Prince. I was able to catch a couple gorgeous sunsets and sunrises and praised God for the beauty of His creation, even in the midst of ashes.

Sunrise/Sunset

Thursday night they showed the Jesus film in the church, using a projector and a white sheet. The church is located right outside of the gate that surrounds the guest house. The church consists of 2 tarps held up by bamboo poles, homemade benches, a table at the front, and rope holding it all together. Friday morning at 8 kicked off the Evangelism crusade and the kids club. Nine of the seminary students participated in the evangelism during the days, while the rest of us put on the kids program. Being that we are missionaries from a completely different culture, we had decided not to be directly involved in planning how the program should be run. We wanted to let them take ownership of this whole trip, and simply be there for support. We started off the sessions with singing, praying, then a bible story that included flanel board visuals, memorization of a bible verse, and then teaching them a song in English. Friday morning we learned about Abraham and his obedience to God, that afternoon we looked at Jonah and the result of his disobedience to God and then on Saturday morning was the story of Jesus life, death and resurrection that illustrated His obedience to his father. Our last session was Sunday afternoon and we had a special program where we did an overview of all the stories, revisited all of the verses, sang all the songs we had learned, and handed out treat bags filled with the gospel of John, coloring books, crayons, soap, sweets and crackers. We had a quiz time near the end and it was amazing to see how well these kids retian information! The majority of them had memorized all 3 of the verses and could recall most details of the stories we had learned.

During the time we were doing the childrens program, the rest of the seminary students were out evangelizing around the town of Diquini and encouraging the new believers. Then every night at 5:30 or so we had services that the students planned and led with singing, praying and the message. The church was packed with around 200 people inside and we think 100 or so gathered around outside of the church.

Side view of the church
It was so encouraging to see the seminary student's passionate love for God in everything they did and said. The Holy Spirit was so obviously evident during the entire trip, and the total number of people who surrendered their life to Christ was over 100! All glory and praise be to God alone!

We had the opportunity to get to know some of the students on a deeper level by listening to their incredible stories of how God had called them into ministry, and witnessing their authentic and surrendered hearts. They are truly living out what they believe and they encouraged and challenged my faith in ways I never had never experienced before. It felt like we were all family, and the type of bonds that we created can only be made through sharing something so deep as an intimate love for the God who created all things. I am so priviledged and blessed to have been able to experience God's presence and faithfulness through this trip! There are many other stories I could share with you to attest to this truth, but this is already a novel so I will just stop here. But I hope this gave you an idea of how God worked powerfully in and through all of us this weekend!

Junior with his fellow seminary friends

Buds