Driving to Port-au-Prince

We woke at five to try and beat the Santo Domingo traffic. The sugarcane field-lined roads looked good for the first few hours of our trip into Haiti today. But as we began to wind our way through assorted small towns, we found ourselves having to navigate myriad speed bumps, potholes and assorted obstacles.

 
Rudy was lucky to live when the building fell on top of him. He escaped with a broken leg. The nurse said, “He learned to speak English by watching the TV. Ask him to sing for you.”
 
When I asked him, Rudy jumped right into a soulful rendition of “Redemption Song.”* And when we were ready to leave, he offered to pray for us.
 
In Fond Parisien, we met Pastor Prophete and toured the hospital where our medical team has been bandaging the wounded. We stopped to talk with a woman who had been trapped in the rubble for two days. She spoke in hushed tones.
 
“When our house first begin to shake, I ran for my two baby boys. I grabbed them in my arms and tried to protect them. But then the walls fell and the cynder blocks crashed against them. Both of my boys were killed.
 
I couldn’t move in the rubble and my husband thought I was dead. He ran off somewhere out of his mind. But some man heard me calling out to Jesus and eventually they dug me out and brought me here.”
 
Her husband sat behind her stoically. I asked if we could pray for them both. It took a while, but the Spirit came and began to overwhelm him. He began to moan and then wail in grief as we prayed.
 
And everywhere we’ve gone, we’ve seen that piercing grief bubbling just beneath the surface. We ended the day talking to a group of about 40 pastors. I asked if they would share some of their stories with us.
 
The first man began to share about seeing his young wife die.
 
The stories continued. One of the last pastors shared that he saw God miraculously rescue his wife, carrying her through the air away from a crashing wall.
 
Why did one die and the other live? I don’t have answers, but we’ll keep offering our consolation and prayers.
 
Tomorrow we’ll spend the day helping the survivors in Port-au-Prince. Life goes on.