Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Samaritan's Purse - The Aftercare
An e-mail letter from Samaritan's Purse Canada, received last week-
Dear M,
Although you have been back from Haiti for a number of weeks now, we just wanted to send you another email to thank you again for serving with Samaritan’s Purse in our medical clinics. I hope that you were blessed and encouraged as you worked alongside people from many backgrounds in our clinics and that you felt the Lord’s presence with you as you worked so hard. The staff based here in Calgary have certainly been praying for each of our volunteers, for the team in Haiti, and for the Haitian people. Although a short email cannot appropriately express our gratitude for your willingness to use the gifts and skills the Lord has given you to serve in this way, I still wanted to send you this message to say ‘thank you’ personally.
At Samaritan’s Purse, we recognize that everyone processes the intensity of an experience such as your time Haiti differently. We would like to give you the opportunity to connect with one of our team members, Becky Matchullis, who has a background in nursing and who has travelled to Haiti over the past year to support and encourage our Samaritan’s Purse team on the ground there. I have included a brief bio below and she will follow up with you over the next week or so. This may be a brief conversation, just sharing a few highlights and challenges of your time in Haiti, or it may be longer – it is up to you – and we just wanted to provide you with support as you have returned home and jumped back into your life here in Canada.
Well acquainted with life changes, cross cultural adaptation and international transitions, Becky was raised in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Canada, where she attended boarding, international and public schools. She spent 6 years working as a nurse with critically ill patients and their families in ICU. She has lived in Indonesia, Cambodia, eastern and western Canada as an adult. Becky is a member of the Samaritan’s Purse Spiritual Care Team and often offers training and debriefing to field staff and volunteers who have served with Samaritan’s Purse Canada.
Thank you again for serving with Samaritan’s Purse and may the Lord richly bless you for your willingness to have done so!
Kindly,
C
Dear M,
Although you have been back from Haiti for a number of weeks now, we just wanted to send you another email to thank you again for serving with Samaritan’s Purse in our medical clinics. I hope that you were blessed and encouraged as you worked alongside people from many backgrounds in our clinics and that you felt the Lord’s presence with you as you worked so hard. The staff based here in Calgary have certainly been praying for each of our volunteers, for the team in Haiti, and for the Haitian people. Although a short email cannot appropriately express our gratitude for your willingness to use the gifts and skills the Lord has given you to serve in this way, I still wanted to send you this message to say ‘thank you’ personally.
At Samaritan’s Purse, we recognize that everyone processes the intensity of an experience such as your time Haiti differently. We would like to give you the opportunity to connect with one of our team members, Becky Matchullis, who has a background in nursing and who has travelled to Haiti over the past year to support and encourage our Samaritan’s Purse team on the ground there. I have included a brief bio below and she will follow up with you over the next week or so. This may be a brief conversation, just sharing a few highlights and challenges of your time in Haiti, or it may be longer – it is up to you – and we just wanted to provide you with support as you have returned home and jumped back into your life here in Canada.
Well acquainted with life changes, cross cultural adaptation and international transitions, Becky was raised in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Canada, where she attended boarding, international and public schools. She spent 6 years working as a nurse with critically ill patients and their families in ICU. She has lived in Indonesia, Cambodia, eastern and western Canada as an adult. Becky is a member of the Samaritan’s Purse Spiritual Care Team and often offers training and debriefing to field staff and volunteers who have served with Samaritan’s Purse Canada.
Thank you again for serving with Samaritan’s Purse and may the Lord richly bless you for your willingness to have done so!
Kindly,
C
So many disasters
Hi all,
A bit of a hiatus in the blog. Haiti was such a great experience, and an intense one as you have read.
Haiti still needs the world's support. I have heard through a few of my Haitian contacts that the Samaritan's purse Cholera Treatment centres are still operating, last patient census numbers from 10-40 patients each day. So pretty stable from when I as there serving. Time will tell when the rainy season comes to Haiti if cholera will rise again. Hoping that the water treatment systems and public education that Samaritan's Purse and other NGO's have put in place will keep the numbers down.
The world is seeing more than its share of misery..... The earthquake in New Zealand levelling Christchurch, the revolution in Egypt and other middle eastern countries. Libya, and of course the catastrophe in Japan. It is hard to where God would have you turn your attention and hand.
My daughter Robin and I have just finished watching Schindlers List - a remarkable and encouraging story about the difference one person can make. While onbviously the holocast in World War II was not a natural disaster, it is my hope that we become aware of the humanitarian disasters taking place around the globe, we take it to heart that one person, a regular person, can make a difference. And many regular people doing something can make a huge difference.
As Samaritan's Purse says: Pray. Give. Get Involved.
My next travel, unless God puts another mission in my path, will be to Scotland and maybe a side trip to Ireland. I am hoping to go the last week in April and first week in May. But you never know...last time I had the urge to go to Scotland (in January) I ended up in Haiti!!
A bit of a hiatus in the blog. Haiti was such a great experience, and an intense one as you have read.
Haiti still needs the world's support. I have heard through a few of my Haitian contacts that the Samaritan's purse Cholera Treatment centres are still operating, last patient census numbers from 10-40 patients each day. So pretty stable from when I as there serving. Time will tell when the rainy season comes to Haiti if cholera will rise again. Hoping that the water treatment systems and public education that Samaritan's Purse and other NGO's have put in place will keep the numbers down.
The world is seeing more than its share of misery..... The earthquake in New Zealand levelling Christchurch, the revolution in Egypt and other middle eastern countries. Libya, and of course the catastrophe in Japan. It is hard to where God would have you turn your attention and hand.
My daughter Robin and I have just finished watching Schindlers List - a remarkable and encouraging story about the difference one person can make. While onbviously the holocast in World War II was not a natural disaster, it is my hope that we become aware of the humanitarian disasters taking place around the globe, we take it to heart that one person, a regular person, can make a difference. And many regular people doing something can make a huge difference.
As Samaritan's Purse says: Pray. Give. Get Involved.
My next travel, unless God puts another mission in my path, will be to Scotland and maybe a side trip to Ireland. I am hoping to go the last week in April and first week in May. But you never know...last time I had the urge to go to Scotland (in January) I ended up in Haiti!!
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Prince George Citizen article January 7, 2011
A Prince George paramedic will be putting her skills to use in cholera-stricken Haiti.
For nearly three weeks, MY, 46, will be working 12 hours a day, six days a week, at a cholera relief station in Cite Soleil, a slum on the outskirts of Port -au-Prince.
Y, who will be flying to the Caribbean country tomorrow and returning to Prince George on January 28, made the move after her sister, a doctor living in Ontario, sent her an e-mail from Samaritan's Purse.
Best known for its Operation Christmas Child program, in which school children send shoe boxes of small gifts to less-fortunate counterparts in other countries, Samaritan's Purse also has a medical wing.
MY sent an application on Dec. 2 and a response came the next day.
"I was shocked and excited," she said.
A mother of four, Y, 48, decided against going over the Christmas break so she could be with her kids but is now ready to go though she remains a little nervous.
"I want to get going so I can stop thinking about it and just do it," she said and added she's purposely refrained from looking at videos on the internet about the situation.
"I don't want to really load myself up with a bunch of ideas and fears before (I go) that might in fact not be true," she said.
Y has been a paramedic for six years, and suspects that's why Samaritan's Purse responded so quickly.
For nearly three weeks, MY, 46, will be working 12 hours a day, six days a week, at a cholera relief station in Cite Soleil, a slum on the outskirts of Port -au-Prince.
Y, who will be flying to the Caribbean country tomorrow and returning to Prince George on January 28, made the move after her sister, a doctor living in Ontario, sent her an e-mail from Samaritan's Purse.
Best known for its Operation Christmas Child program, in which school children send shoe boxes of small gifts to less-fortunate counterparts in other countries, Samaritan's Purse also has a medical wing.
MY sent an application on Dec. 2 and a response came the next day.
"I was shocked and excited," she said.
A mother of four, Y, 48, decided against going over the Christmas break so she could be with her kids but is now ready to go though she remains a little nervous.
"I want to get going so I can stop thinking about it and just do it," she said and added she's purposely refrained from looking at videos on the internet about the situation.
"I don't want to really load myself up with a bunch of ideas and fears before (I go) that might in fact not be true," she said.
Y has been a paramedic for six years, and suspects that's why Samaritan's Purse responded so quickly.
Prince George Citizen Article - Return From Haiti
It may have been a trip to the Caribbean but it was definitely no vacation when Prince George part-time paramedic MY spent two weeks in Haiti last month helping to get victims of a massive cholera outbreak back on their feet.
For 14 hours a night, the 48-year-old mother of four, monitored the intravenous lines used to hydrate those who passed through the cholera treatment centre at Cite Soleil, a slum on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.
MY returned home on Jan. 26 a little worse for wear as she came down an unspecified ailment she eventually recovered from with some rest and recuperation but also full of stories about the courage of the people facing dire circumstances.
"It was really intense," she said. "The people of Haiti are fantastic, resilient, joyful which was nice because facing the day-to-day grind just to live, I'm not sure that we would be the same. I know I wouldn't."
Hit by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake a bit more than a year ago, the country suffered a cholera outbreak in late October. Cholera is a bacterial infection, usually contracted through contaminated food or water, and causes diarrhea so intense victims can actually die of dehydration.
MY volunteered to help out after her sister, a doctor living in Ontario, sent her an e-mail from Samaritan's Purse. Best known for its Operation Christmas Child program, in which school children send shoe boxes of small gifts to less-fortunate counterparts in other countries, Samaritan's Purse also has a medical wing.
By the time she had arrived, a centre large enough to accommodate 200 people was treating between 70 and 80 at a time and by the time she had left, the number was down to 30 to 40.
It meant the volunteers could concentrate on teaching local medical people how to best treat such victims and MY took to using a practice arm made out of diapers rolled up and wrapped in gloving material.
About 40 per cent were children and most stayed about three days. But the more severe cases stayed a week went through as much as 80 litres of fluid by the end of their stay. "We'd be putting in [fluid] desperately fast and they'd be laying on the cholera cots, which had a hole with a bucket underneath, and you could hear it pouring out a litre at a time."
The volunteers got a day off after six days of work but rarely ventured off the compound.
"There was a really violent night one night where you could hear the gunshots and the other sounds accompanying that - people being wounded - but then the same night the people very close to the compound decided to have an all-night prayer singing," she said.
"You could hear the drums and the hymns and the Haitians rock it out, they like to dance and they sing. It was great because at first we thought it was somebody getting wound up to do something bad and then we realized it was praise music, it was pretty sweet."
The only side trip they took was to an old quarry turned into a mass burial site in which MY said between 100,000 and 200,000 people were buried following the earthquake to prevent the spread of disease.
"They planted hundreds of small black crosses in this quarry rock and it was powerful and disturbing and sad," she said.
It was anything but a holiday at an all inclusive but she said she'd do it again because it was so rewarding.
"Everyone stepped up their game," she said. "When you first go in you think 'oh, I'm such a pretender, I'm really not what they need' and then everyone becomes what's needed."
For 14 hours a night, the 48-year-old mother of four, monitored the intravenous lines used to hydrate those who passed through the cholera treatment centre at Cite Soleil, a slum on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.
MY returned home on Jan. 26 a little worse for wear as she came down an unspecified ailment she eventually recovered from with some rest and recuperation but also full of stories about the courage of the people facing dire circumstances.
"It was really intense," she said. "The people of Haiti are fantastic, resilient, joyful which was nice because facing the day-to-day grind just to live, I'm not sure that we would be the same. I know I wouldn't."
Hit by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake a bit more than a year ago, the country suffered a cholera outbreak in late October. Cholera is a bacterial infection, usually contracted through contaminated food or water, and causes diarrhea so intense victims can actually die of dehydration.
MY volunteered to help out after her sister, a doctor living in Ontario, sent her an e-mail from Samaritan's Purse. Best known for its Operation Christmas Child program, in which school children send shoe boxes of small gifts to less-fortunate counterparts in other countries, Samaritan's Purse also has a medical wing.
By the time she had arrived, a centre large enough to accommodate 200 people was treating between 70 and 80 at a time and by the time she had left, the number was down to 30 to 40.
It meant the volunteers could concentrate on teaching local medical people how to best treat such victims and MY took to using a practice arm made out of diapers rolled up and wrapped in gloving material.
About 40 per cent were children and most stayed about three days. But the more severe cases stayed a week went through as much as 80 litres of fluid by the end of their stay. "We'd be putting in [fluid] desperately fast and they'd be laying on the cholera cots, which had a hole with a bucket underneath, and you could hear it pouring out a litre at a time."
The volunteers got a day off after six days of work but rarely ventured off the compound.
"There was a really violent night one night where you could hear the gunshots and the other sounds accompanying that - people being wounded - but then the same night the people very close to the compound decided to have an all-night prayer singing," she said.
"You could hear the drums and the hymns and the Haitians rock it out, they like to dance and they sing. It was great because at first we thought it was somebody getting wound up to do something bad and then we realized it was praise music, it was pretty sweet."
The only side trip they took was to an old quarry turned into a mass burial site in which MY said between 100,000 and 200,000 people were buried following the earthquake to prevent the spread of disease.
"They planted hundreds of small black crosses in this quarry rock and it was powerful and disturbing and sad," she said.
It was anything but a holiday at an all inclusive but she said she'd do it again because it was so rewarding.
"Everyone stepped up their game," she said. "When you first go in you think 'oh, I'm such a pretender, I'm really not what they need' and then everyone becomes what's needed."
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Encourage others
A little note of encouragement left by my friend HA. I found this on my bunk after working quite a few night shifts in a row. I was tired, and my enthusiasm was flagging. But..... when I found this small note, I felt a renewal of energy and purpose. Thanks H - its a good reminder that we all need to encourage each other in what we do.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Fantastic dinner!
When the coutry director of Samaritan's Purse Haiti was leaving for another challenge, the staff put on a celebration dinner for him. Absolutely fantastic lasagna dinner!! The mess hall was decorated, and there were even candles! A special night!
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