Kendra’s Operation Blessing Haiti Relief Trip: Day #1

“The poorest of the poor will find pasture, and the needy will lie down in safety.” ~ Isaiah 14:30a

Its the end of day #1 in Haiti on a trip as Goodwill Ambassador for Operation Blessing (http://www.ob.org). It has been long, eventful and emotional, to say the least. I still haven’t quite processed everything I saw and experienced today…but will try my best to paint a visual of what its like here.

The flight down from JFK airport to Port-au-Prince was packed with a combination of U.S. based Haitians, doctors, nurses and amazing volunteers with huge servant hearts coming down to roll up their sleeves and do whatever is needed of them for a week, or maybe a month.

On the airplane, I sat across from a woman named Natalie – an attorney from Salt Lake City, Utah – who was bubbling with emotion and excitement. She’s here in Haiti to visit an orphanage and meet the child she will be adopting for the very first time! As we touched down, she got teary-eyed and said “I can’t believe I”m actually here and this is actually happening.” It was an incredible moment, and one I’m glad I got to share with her.

We snapped a photo before going our separate ways, and I asked Natalie if she would share her amazing story on my blog of how God lead her to this moment and this adoption, once she’s back home in Utah.

You’ll be hearing more of Natalie’s journey in weeks to come.

Bill Horan, President of Operation Blessing, along with his incredible Haitian Relief Team, met me at the airport and our journey began. As they drove me down the streets of Port-au-Prince, I was left absolutely speechless by the debri and devastation. The roads are cleared by now, but giant stacks of concrete building rubble line the sidewalk of the

downtown corridor. We stopped for a moment at Haiti’s equivalent of the White House, which was destroyed beyond recognition. Seeing a symbol of man’s opulence in total ruins was a powerful moment.

There are refugee-like tent cities all over Port-au-Prince. Some of them are miles and miles long. There are people absolutely everywhere. People ARE back to business though, selling their  goods and wares on makeshift shop tables and trying to eek out a $2 a day wage.

As Bill said, “Its business as usual here in Haiti, just with more congestion and confusion than before the earthquake.” This is not my first trip to Haiti, so I know from first-hand experience that Haiti was bad-off to begin with. It was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Cripple it with the world’s most devastating natural disaster, and the result is what I witnessed today: utter chaos.

Our first stop was Haiti’s largest hospital where Operation Blessing has joined forces with Partners in Health to solve the hospital’s clean water issue. Pre-earthquake the hospital housed 700 beds. Today it’s home to countless sick and injured. There are so many people here that tents have been set up outside the hospital for various wards, like post-orthopedic, ureology, pediatrics. The former pediatric building is on the verge of collapse, so mothers and their newborn infants are forced to take shelter in a tent only yards from the hospital’s sewage facility.

The staff is amazing. Most of the doctors I met today with Partners in Health are Harvard educated and wicked smart. There is arguably better medical talent at this hospital than at many hospitals home in the States. The challenge is that these incredible doctors are forced to work without the most basic of necessities – clean water, sterilizing kits, medicine. That’s where Operation Blessing swoops in as a behind-the-scenes hero, working to solve these and other logistical problems so the doctors can do what they do best: save lives.

Next we visited Camp Dadadou, a tent city where Operation Blessing has installed and operates a purified water system for 3,000 people AND started a school for 500 children right on the camp site. Here I met Rosalyn, a mother of 5 who, after losing 2 of her children in the earthquake, gave birth in the tent city to a brand-new baby only 12 days after the disaster. Despite all the tragedy she’s experienced recently, Rosalyn has a joy and peace about her, and served as one of the day’s many inspirations to me that “God is Greater Than Any Problem I Have”, as the license plate of the OB truck amply and truthfully states.

Much of the day was consumed  a wild-goose chase for a 40 foot freezer needed to replace a unit that had broken in the worst of places…the cadaver lab. Without getting into too much graphic detail, I will just say it would have been a bad scene if Operation Blessing’s heroes hadn’t saved the day by pulling off a MacGyver-worthy save and landing the needed freezer by the day’s end. No small feat, considering today is Haiti’s Labor Day, and virtually all businesses were closed.

We ended the day visiting Zanmi Beni (Haitian Creole for “Blessed Friend”), Operation Blessing’s newest project and a joint effort with Farmer’s Zanmi Lasante (Partners in Health). Its a home and school for approximately 50 handicapped orphans and abandoned children. There’s more to come tomorrow upon my return to Zanmi Beni.

These are the kinds of things that Operation Blessing does. Bill Horan put it perfectly when he told me, “Operation Blessing doesn’t come onto the scene and start telling our partners what to do. We ask what they need, and we simply go do it. We approach every day and every situation with a servant attitude. We are here to serve.”

More to come tomorrow….God Bless and Good Night.

If you would like to learn more about Operation Blessing’s Haiti Relief and Worldwide Efforts, or to donate, please visit www.ob.org