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For the last week the Leadership here at the YWAM base has been coordinating and leading out a refugee relocation effort with the capacity to move 300 Port Au Prince victims per day until a limit of around 8000. This has been a massive coordination between NGO’s, the UN, Civil Protection, and Churches. This whole relocation exodus began this morning and went really well today! One of the main issues however has been working with anything government oriented because it is almost invariably corrupt. Yesterday we found out that Civil Protection who promised to provide food, water, eating wears, and sleeping mats told us that they “could not organise that” and would not be able to provide the food for the refugees that we would be bringing up in the morning!
When Johnny and I got in the country Terry Snow had just bought some of the last gas in the country and had bought the last bag of rice in the region! And now looking to have to provide food for these refugees was not looking good! However today, a huge order of rice and beans showed up!! Terry does not even know where this supplier got this rice! Here is the video of us unloading the truck and stacking it in the building.
Some of this rice is going tomorrow directly to an orphanage that YWAM is associated with! This was such a key breakthrough at such a key time! praise God!
(Feel free to re-post this blog anywhere and check out www.johnnyandjenni.net for John’s perspective on our trip!)
When John and I arrived in St Mark after an exhausting 10hr ride in from the dominican republic, we approached Terry Snow about helping him to administrate the relief efforts. He gladly received and put us to work helping him to move from crisis mode and into a better logistical flow. Sense this morning we have spent over 12hrs lining out how we are going to facilitate a giant 3000 person Port Au Prince refugee relocation. We are going to be bringing them here to St Mark to live in 4 emptied out public schools to get them away from the utter chaos, gangs, and impending disease. We are working in conjunction with Civil Protection, Acted, and several other organizations to make this happen. We met at the Mayors office today getting this all coordinated. Then the whole day culminated in a heart pounding Go Kart ride racing through the potholed dirt streets of St Mark with Terry Snow to the UN headquarters. I thought to myself:
“I never thought that this january I would ever be responding to one of the worst disasters in the last decade in Haiti Go Karting around St Mark meeting with UN Officials.”
That didn’t make it on my plans for 2010!!
After Meeting with the UN we established that we are going to be taking 2, 52 passenger busses running 3 trips a day down to Port Au Prince airport where there is armed security and will register and Identify Haitian refugees who have relational connection with family or friends in St Mark. Then we will bring them here 300 per day until the schools and our make shift hospital are full. Tomorrow we meet with all the pastors in the area to help mobilize their resources to house and spiritually care for these homeless hopeless people.
This is a small snapshot into what we were doing today. I am actually still in a leadership meeting with Terry snows staff where he is catching up his staff with what we came up with!! I am going to go for now. Keep praying for us. We really need wisdom faith and perspective. Read my previous blog post, “now I am in the headlines” to see how you can get involved.
YWAM’s rescue efforts report 1/18/2010: (yesterday)
-They pulled a 4 month old baby from the rubble alive!
-they then found that her mom was also trapped and even though she was thought to be dead they dug for her and found her barely alive severely dehydrated with kidneys shutting down. Both are now safe in the hospital.
YWAM’s rescue efforts report 1/19/2010:
-They worked with a small hospital working with amputations
-cooperations with the UN doing medical work
-They are still looking for the people under the rubble
-They are going to be picking up people off the side of the street who have not had medical care. People that have not been to a clinic because they could not move and are getting infected. They are going out for them tomorrow then they will triage.
-They are staying at the UN HQ in Port Au Prince.
-they are using a newly bought vehicle as a make shift ambulance.
Goodnight for now,
Jer
(Feel free to re-post this blog anywhere and check out www.johnnyandjenni.net for John’s perspective on our trip!)
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