Mission Trip Report- June 16-23, 2016
Mission Focus Area #2 – Health Care for our Sister Parish
Clinic/Health Care Workers/Nurse
Malnourished Children Program
1. Bonnie was able to spend significant time with our Haitian nurse Germain on the malnourished children program.
2. We continue to be very impressed with how this program is going.
3. Germain is tracking weight and the health of the children very well. Nearly everyone is gaining weight.
4. All her documentation was in order.
5. Several children were ready to come out of the program.
6. The program seems to be working well.
7. For cases where the patient is extremely malnourished and very sick we transfer patients to the Missionaries of Charity in Jacmel. During this trip we had a
couple patients that needed to be transferred. The picture below is one of these children. He was transferred during our trip, but not long after we returned to
the USA we got an email from Father Voltaire that said this patient had died. Please pray that we can improve our heath care in Gandou and better help
these people so that precious children like this one don’t die.
Referral Patients
1. On the first night in Port-au-Prince we took some time to talk to Dr. Andre about how the referral patients were going.
2. Dr. Andre gave us an update on Pierre Virgin who he helped to get surgery done on his jaw.
3. This was a huge amount of work but through the Grace of God it was accomplished and Pierre Virgin came back to the clinic looking so good and so happy
and thankful. He could not stop saying great things. See the before and after pictures below.
4. Pierre Virgin also asked us while he was in the clinic not to forget about him and his knee problems. To see him walk with his crutches will make you cry.
Truly this guy has been in all kinds of severe pain for many years.
5. Dr. Andre reported later in the trip that the testing done on the mass that was removed from his jaw had metastasized and was cancer. We need to pray for
a miracle for him.
6. Dr. Andre has greatly helped us with a very significant amount of patients. He has completed the care of several patients that needed help with neurology
consults that never before were we able to find care for.
7. Dr. Andre was also in process with several patients for goiters. Again these are patients that have been waiting for years and cannot be cared for outside of
Port-au-Prince.
8. We spent significant time with the nurse, health workers, and Father talking through the referral patients and the process.
9. There are still some bugs to work out in the process, and some better defining of responsibilities and limitations of each person in the process, but we are
encouraged that we may be able to continue to work with Dr. Andre some.
10. Here are the results for the referral patients completed since the last trip.
A. Oscal-20 referral patients accomplished. Most all of them were done in Lavallee.
B. Ricgo-3 referral patients complete.
C. Xavier-1 referral patients complete.
D. Wilbert- was traveling and was not available for our discussion.
11. There was some talk with the health care workers about how to pay their bonuses for the completion of referral patients.
12. A small bonus is paid for each patient completed. However some patients are fairly easy and straight forward others might take years to complete.
13. Some of the health worker felt that often times things happen and they are really sharing patients….one trip to town one worker may take the patient and the
next trip a different health worker might take them. Also some of the health workers have like 60 blood pressure patients and others have less than 10.
14. So at first I thought we had all of them in agreement that we would add up the total number of patients completed and provide the bonus to be shared, but
later I found that not all the health workers agreed with this and at least one was saying that he works harder to get more patients done.
15. So since we did not have total agreement among the health workers I gave father the list which told how many patients each health worker completed and I
let it up to him to decide how to provide the bonus payment.
16. All the details of which patients were cared for and all the details of what was done, total costs, and receipts were written down in the referral binder.
17. During the referral meeting the nurse reported that house in Jacmel needed cleaned. The nurse reported that she would clean it but she needed a key. I
asked Father to get her a key.
Referral Patient Transportation and the Motorcycle
1. One of main challenges of the health workers in getting the referral patient work done has been transportation.
2. Each trip we continue to monitor the use of the motorcycle we purchased for the parish.
3. They reported that Wilbert has been the only one to use it.
4. Father reported he was soon going to help Oscal and Rigaud get trained and using the motorcycle.
5. I told father I would be emailing often to check on how this is going.
6. Our team members checked out the motorcycle and they said it was in good condition and ready for use.
Lavalle Surgery Team and Surgeries for This Trip
1. We continue to praise God for the wonderful connection He has made for us with the wonderful mission team that goes to the city of Lavalle Haiti which is
about 2 hours from our sister parish in Gandou this connection has yielded so many wonderful things.
2. Again this trip we lined up our trip with their trip and it felt like the matching of our trips was about as good as it could have been.
3. On our first day of clinic we lined up a large number of patients to travel to Lavalle on Monday to be there to be seen first thing as the Lavalle team first
opened their clinic doors.
4. Everything worked out well with the patients showing up earlier than they were even told to show up.
5. We filled 2 trucks including father’s truck and sent something like 20 patients to Lavalle.
6. Organizing this many patients and getting all their referral sheets organized to send with them takes something like 2 hours to do. I would have never
imaged it would take so long, but there are lots of little details. Next time we do this we should tell the patients to show up at 5am or before and we should
prepare their referral sheets the night before so we have them copied/printed and ready when the patients show up.
7. It is important to get the patients on the road to Lavalle by 5:30am or a little after to ensure the patients are there before 8am. Dr. Charles also stated on this
trip how important it was to get our patients there by 8am.
8. There are many great things about doing surgeries in Lavallee including the costs being so cheap. Typically a complete hernia surgery is less than $100US
including food, transportation, medicine, and everything for the patient.
9. The other great thing is that during our June trip when we line up our dates with the Lavalle team’s dates we can use our rental trucks and Father’s truck to
transport patients. This makes the whole situation better.
10. Yet another great thing about doing surgeries in Lavalle is that we can organize the patients and their paperwork and then send them to Lavalle with a health
care worker. Our health care worker Oscal has become very good at helping our patients in Lavalle and we have found that he stays right with the patients
and he work to help them through the process in Lavalle. Furthermore Dr. Charles, the leader of the Lavalle group respects Oscal and likes working with
him.
11. At the request of Dr. Charles this time before the trip we asked Oscal to find a place to house the patients in Lavalle over the night so the patient could stay
there and be ready for their surgery the following day. This worked great during this trip.
12. The one thing we need to continue to work on for the Lavalle mission is refining who to send and who not to send. It is a challenge to know who the Lavalle
mission team will do surgery on and who they will not, but as we work with them we will better understand. For this trip we understand that a significant
number of the patients we sent down for surgery were turned down for surgery because they were lower priority than others.
13. We continue to learn from them and follow their example. We are still planning on using their example to have our first surgeries in Gandou during the winter
2017 mission trip.
14. We also plan to send more patients for surgery by their team during the November mission and then again during their winter mission. Their winter mission
however does not line up well with our winter mission because their dates are well into February and we try to keep our dates earlier otherwise the time
between our winter mission and the summer mission gets too short.
Extremely Poor Mothers/Families Fund
1. This is a program we have that helps the families that come into clinic where the doctors take a look at them and find the family especially the children to be
malnourished and with nothing to give the kids to eat.
2. Very consistently again this trip when I ask these families what they had to eat today (even when it is 6pm at night) they respond that no one in the family
had anything to eat all day.
3. When I then ask what they ate yesterday 95% of the time they responded that they had one meal yesterday of ground (field) corn.
4. Clearly these people are poor beyond measure when they are forced to live like this.
5. We are working to reduce the number of people receiving money from the poor families’ fund. There are more poor families in Gandou than the fund can
provide for.
6. Families with children are being given school scholarships rather than cash whenever possible. However, Father had told us on the last trip that in many
cases even if the family had all the children sponsored they would not have any money to buy food for the small kids or the kids that can’t go to school as
well as the mother and father. In these cases a school sponsorship cannot end the poor families fund project for them.
7. Father will begin paying families to do projects, such as work on the road, whenever possible rather than just giving them funds.
8. Families who have land will be included in the goat project. Once a family receives 5 goats, they will no longer be part of the Poor Families program.
9. We will be working with Father, and possibly Daniel Noel, to identify which families would benefit from a micro loan to enable them to provide for themself
and no longer need money from the poor families fund.
10. During this trip we added more families to the poor family because we had no choice when the family was sitting in front of us and the doctors told us the
children’s lives were are risk because they were so malnourished.
11. We plead with the Lord to have mercy on us for our poor attempts to help these people. We pray we can better serve our Lord Jesus in the poor.
Clinic Building Construction and Land We Purchased for the Clinic
1. For several years now we have been talking about building a new clinic.
2. We explored a new piece of land during our previous trip as a potential site.
3. It was right next to the piece of land we purchased a few years ago.
4. Father was strongly suggesting we purchase this new piece of land. He did not feel that a better piece of land will be available any time soon.
5. Father reported that the people that own this land now were going to build three buildings on it, but he asked them not to and they are holding off until we
decide what we are going to do.
6. Father reported that we had purchased 6 centiums the first time we purchased land and this new piece of land is 7 or 8 centiums.
7. Father said he would get us a price on this new piece of land.
Jean Aymond – Little Boy Who We Brought to the USA for Skin Burn Surgery Care
1. After about 4 months in the USA Jean Aymond was able to return to Gandou with us. He was reunited to his family.
2. He had had surgery at Shriners Hospital in Cincinnati, OH and the Geer’s family in Batesville, IN graciously hosted him and took care of his therapy.
3. The whole situation with this case turned out wonderful. He is such a wonderful child and such a joy to have in the USA.
4. Everyone’s Child International who helped with everything on this case are so wonderful to work with.
5. Shriners Hospital was wonderful to work with. Everything just turned out great.
6. It was very sad for so many of the people to say goodbye to Jean Aymond because his love has taken hold of our hearts and we look forward to seeing him
each time we go back to Gandou.
Medical clinic/pharmacy
1.Clinic Results/Numbers
2. Totals were about 1060 patients that went through our 4 days of clinic.
3. We also sent about 20 patient to Lavallee on Monday, about 7 on Tuesday, and about 5 on Wednesday.
Dental clinic and extractions
1. Please pray that God will send us some dentist from the USA to help us improve and grow our dental clinic.
2. For this trip we just had 6 Haitian dentists.
3. We had all 5 members of the Haitian dental team.
4. We also had our Haitian dentist leader…Dr. Peterson as usual.
5. Fran Grebel from St. Louis also joined us on the trip as our much needed hygienist.
6. The total numbers are as follows for this trip:
A. Total Patients about 400
B. Repairs 39
C. Extractions 353
D. Cleanings 82
7. Last Trip
A. Patients: more than 450
B. Extractions 334
C. Cleanings: 93
D. Repairs: 71
8. The Haitian dental team did not have a dental repair unit this time and the previous times it broke during the clinic.
9. We asked them about this and they said they will have one before the next mission.
Nurse Needs
1. Our nurse, Germain, asked for a laptop on our previous trip as a small raise after working for us for 4 years without a raise.
2. This would be her personal laptop to use as she wishes, but she agreed to send two emails per weeks to us with this laptop.
3. She told us more about her need for a mega phone, which she has been asking about for a couple years now.
4. She said she does two mobile clinic per year.
5. She goes to areas of Gandou where it is very difficult for the people to get out and come to the Gandou clinic.
6. As she goes walks there she would like to speak on the Mega phone to get the word out where she is going to set up the Mobile clinic.
7. Also after she sets up the Mobile clinic she would do some training for the people and a mega phone would help with this.
8. We need to do everything we can to find her a Mega phone.
9. The nurse asked us to look at the medicines we use for the blood pressure patients. There was some talk about using Amlodipine rather than Licenapril.
There was also some talk about starting with HTCZ.
10. We are reviewing this as we have done in the past, but there were several reasons in the past we decided to stay with our current approach, one of those
reasons is because of the risks involved with starting and stopping some of the other medicines.
11. The nurse talked about the need for more eye glasses for the clinic. We need to bring more on the next trip.
12. The nurse and Father also talked about the great need to bring an Optometrist on the future trips. We need to pray and beg God to guide us to one.
13. The nurse asked again about the project to but better doors on the clinic. We need to work harder on this project. The best would be to have the people that
are welding up the doors for the Church to also do the same for new doors on the clinic.
Generator Needs
1. During our mission trips we completely depend on the functionality of a small gas 3500 watt generator we sent down several years ago to power all the
dental and medical equipment that we use including the lighting in the clinics.
2. On our previous trip the governor spring on the generator were rusted and broke causing the engine speed to be unstable which causes the output voltage
and frequency to be impacted. This caused high and low voltage and current spikes out of the generator.
3. One of the men from the previous trip found a spring from something else in Gandou and used some wire to change the length and install on the generator
to get us by that trip.
4. For this trip we found the spring and wire still in place and we used the generator again. See the picture below.
5. However we also send a 6,000 Watt diesel generator on the sea container and it arrived in Gandou.
6. Before the next trip we need to decide how to deal with this generator. If we are going to use it we need to figure out some way to transfer electric from this
generator to the clinic or carry it down to the clinic and leave it. It is too heavy to move back and forth. See the picture below.
7. This will be especially important with the surgeries we plan to do on the January 2017 visit.
Mission Focus Area #3 – Team Members Experience Haiti and Especially Our Sister Parish
Port-au-Prince and Travel to Gandou and Rental Trucks
1. Our travels to Haiti went very smoothly and all team members met in Miami for the final flight into Haiti. All flights were on time. When we got to Port-au-
Prince we were just missing one bag.
2. This was dental bag that Fran has brought. One of her bags came in and one did not.
3. We praise God because when Fran packed her bags she said this is the bag she packing thinking she could live without it if it did not come in.
4. However the bag still had many thing in it that she could have really used during this mission.
5. At first American Airlines told us they thought it would arrive the next day. We formed a plan for Laikaard to go to the airport and check on it and bring it to
Gandou with him later in the day on our travel day because he had planned to come later anyway.
6. However the bag still did not come in.
7. Laikaard waited another day and it still did not come in, by this time American Airlines started to think they may have lost the bag.
8. We went the whole trip without the bag.
9. We just praise God because we were still able to work without the bag.
10. Father Voltaire had all 3 rental trucks waiting on us at the airport. All were very nice trucks.
11. Father Voltaire left the trucks at the airport with the translators because he was feeling sick and he stayed at Matthew 25 House and we just met him there
that night.
12. We were able to load one of the trucks the first night. This was a huge help.
13. The next morning everyone showed up by 7:30am or so.
14. We were able to pack everything up and be ready to leave Matthew 25 earlier than any other trip I believe I have ever been on.
15. Once we got everything packed we found one of the trucks had a flat tire.
16. We drove just a little down the road and found a place that could fix it.
17. We then found two of the trucks had tire troubles.
18. This stop took us at least 40 minutes, but we praise God that everything worked out.
19. We were able to make good time and made it to Gandou before dark and without any rain. This was probably the most important day for the road to stay dry
so we could travel and I believe it turned out to be the only day of the trip that there was no rain. Again we praise God!
20. We were so happy with the rental truck situation. Everything worked out so well having Father take care of this.
Travel back to Port-au-Prince
1. We worked late most of the nights we did clinic.
2. The last day there were many patients that had to be turned away because we could not see them.
3. We ended up working late the last night which was not the plan, but we wanted to see as many people as possible.
4. This mission team was super notable for their wonderful helpfulness.
5. Everyone pitched in to help with everything. It was absolutely great. No one stopped working until everything was done and put away.
6. I can’t thank God enough for the wonderful team He provided to us.
Exposure to Haiti
1. Our team was so busy they did not get to see the market.
2. On Sunday, most of the group got to go out into the countryside to either visit the family of Jean Aymond or the family of Roseberline.
3. We feel these Sunday visits are so important for the people of the USA to see because it gives a much better perspective on the real life challenges and real
life sufferings of these people.
4. Like the flower perfectly paired below so too our team with the Haitian people.
Clinic/Health Care Workers/Nurse
Malnourished Children Program
1. Bonnie was able to spend significant time with our Haitian nurse Germain on the malnourished children program.
2. We continue to be very impressed with how this program is going.
3. Germain is tracking weight and the health of the children very well. Nearly everyone is gaining weight.
4. All her documentation was in order.
5. Several children were ready to come out of the program.
6. The program seems to be working well.
7. For cases where the patient is extremely malnourished and very sick we transfer patients to the Missionaries of Charity in Jacmel. During this trip we had a
couple patients that needed to be transferred. The picture below is one of these children. He was transferred during our trip, but not long after we returned to
the USA we got an email from Father Voltaire that said this patient had died. Please pray that we can improve our heath care in Gandou and better help
these people so that precious children like this one don’t die.
Referral Patients
1. On the first night in Port-au-Prince we took some time to talk to Dr. Andre about how the referral patients were going.
2. Dr. Andre gave us an update on Pierre Virgin who he helped to get surgery done on his jaw.
3. This was a huge amount of work but through the Grace of God it was accomplished and Pierre Virgin came back to the clinic looking so good and so happy
and thankful. He could not stop saying great things. See the before and after pictures below.
4. Pierre Virgin also asked us while he was in the clinic not to forget about him and his knee problems. To see him walk with his crutches will make you cry.
Truly this guy has been in all kinds of severe pain for many years.
5. Dr. Andre reported later in the trip that the testing done on the mass that was removed from his jaw had metastasized and was cancer. We need to pray for
a miracle for him.
6. Dr. Andre has greatly helped us with a very significant amount of patients. He has completed the care of several patients that needed help with neurology
consults that never before were we able to find care for.
7. Dr. Andre was also in process with several patients for goiters. Again these are patients that have been waiting for years and cannot be cared for outside of
Port-au-Prince.
8. We spent significant time with the nurse, health workers, and Father talking through the referral patients and the process.
9. There are still some bugs to work out in the process, and some better defining of responsibilities and limitations of each person in the process, but we are
encouraged that we may be able to continue to work with Dr. Andre some.
10. Here are the results for the referral patients completed since the last trip.
A. Oscal-20 referral patients accomplished. Most all of them were done in Lavallee.
B. Ricgo-3 referral patients complete.
C. Xavier-1 referral patients complete.
D. Wilbert- was traveling and was not available for our discussion.
11. There was some talk with the health care workers about how to pay their bonuses for the completion of referral patients.
12. A small bonus is paid for each patient completed. However some patients are fairly easy and straight forward others might take years to complete.
13. Some of the health worker felt that often times things happen and they are really sharing patients….one trip to town one worker may take the patient and the
next trip a different health worker might take them. Also some of the health workers have like 60 blood pressure patients and others have less than 10.
14. So at first I thought we had all of them in agreement that we would add up the total number of patients completed and provide the bonus to be shared, but
later I found that not all the health workers agreed with this and at least one was saying that he works harder to get more patients done.
15. So since we did not have total agreement among the health workers I gave father the list which told how many patients each health worker completed and I
let it up to him to decide how to provide the bonus payment.
16. All the details of which patients were cared for and all the details of what was done, total costs, and receipts were written down in the referral binder.
17. During the referral meeting the nurse reported that house in Jacmel needed cleaned. The nurse reported that she would clean it but she needed a key. I
asked Father to get her a key.
Referral Patient Transportation and the Motorcycle
1. One of main challenges of the health workers in getting the referral patient work done has been transportation.
2. Each trip we continue to monitor the use of the motorcycle we purchased for the parish.
3. They reported that Wilbert has been the only one to use it.
4. Father reported he was soon going to help Oscal and Rigaud get trained and using the motorcycle.
5. I told father I would be emailing often to check on how this is going.
6. Our team members checked out the motorcycle and they said it was in good condition and ready for use.
Lavalle Surgery Team and Surgeries for This Trip
1. We continue to praise God for the wonderful connection He has made for us with the wonderful mission team that goes to the city of Lavalle Haiti which is
about 2 hours from our sister parish in Gandou this connection has yielded so many wonderful things.
2. Again this trip we lined up our trip with their trip and it felt like the matching of our trips was about as good as it could have been.
3. On our first day of clinic we lined up a large number of patients to travel to Lavalle on Monday to be there to be seen first thing as the Lavalle team first
opened their clinic doors.
4. Everything worked out well with the patients showing up earlier than they were even told to show up.
5. We filled 2 trucks including father’s truck and sent something like 20 patients to Lavalle.
6. Organizing this many patients and getting all their referral sheets organized to send with them takes something like 2 hours to do. I would have never
imaged it would take so long, but there are lots of little details. Next time we do this we should tell the patients to show up at 5am or before and we should
prepare their referral sheets the night before so we have them copied/printed and ready when the patients show up.
7. It is important to get the patients on the road to Lavalle by 5:30am or a little after to ensure the patients are there before 8am. Dr. Charles also stated on this
trip how important it was to get our patients there by 8am.
8. There are many great things about doing surgeries in Lavallee including the costs being so cheap. Typically a complete hernia surgery is less than $100US
including food, transportation, medicine, and everything for the patient.
9. The other great thing is that during our June trip when we line up our dates with the Lavalle team’s dates we can use our rental trucks and Father’s truck to
transport patients. This makes the whole situation better.
10. Yet another great thing about doing surgeries in Lavalle is that we can organize the patients and their paperwork and then send them to Lavalle with a health
care worker. Our health care worker Oscal has become very good at helping our patients in Lavalle and we have found that he stays right with the patients
and he work to help them through the process in Lavalle. Furthermore Dr. Charles, the leader of the Lavalle group respects Oscal and likes working with
him.
11. At the request of Dr. Charles this time before the trip we asked Oscal to find a place to house the patients in Lavalle over the night so the patient could stay
there and be ready for their surgery the following day. This worked great during this trip.
12. The one thing we need to continue to work on for the Lavalle mission is refining who to send and who not to send. It is a challenge to know who the Lavalle
mission team will do surgery on and who they will not, but as we work with them we will better understand. For this trip we understand that a significant
number of the patients we sent down for surgery were turned down for surgery because they were lower priority than others.
13. We continue to learn from them and follow their example. We are still planning on using their example to have our first surgeries in Gandou during the winter
2017 mission trip.
14. We also plan to send more patients for surgery by their team during the November mission and then again during their winter mission. Their winter mission
however does not line up well with our winter mission because their dates are well into February and we try to keep our dates earlier otherwise the time
between our winter mission and the summer mission gets too short.
Extremely Poor Mothers/Families Fund
1. This is a program we have that helps the families that come into clinic where the doctors take a look at them and find the family especially the children to be
malnourished and with nothing to give the kids to eat.
2. Very consistently again this trip when I ask these families what they had to eat today (even when it is 6pm at night) they respond that no one in the family
had anything to eat all day.
3. When I then ask what they ate yesterday 95% of the time they responded that they had one meal yesterday of ground (field) corn.
4. Clearly these people are poor beyond measure when they are forced to live like this.
5. We are working to reduce the number of people receiving money from the poor families’ fund. There are more poor families in Gandou than the fund can
provide for.
6. Families with children are being given school scholarships rather than cash whenever possible. However, Father had told us on the last trip that in many
cases even if the family had all the children sponsored they would not have any money to buy food for the small kids or the kids that can’t go to school as
well as the mother and father. In these cases a school sponsorship cannot end the poor families fund project for them.
7. Father will begin paying families to do projects, such as work on the road, whenever possible rather than just giving them funds.
8. Families who have land will be included in the goat project. Once a family receives 5 goats, they will no longer be part of the Poor Families program.
9. We will be working with Father, and possibly Daniel Noel, to identify which families would benefit from a micro loan to enable them to provide for themself
and no longer need money from the poor families fund.
10. During this trip we added more families to the poor family because we had no choice when the family was sitting in front of us and the doctors told us the
children’s lives were are risk because they were so malnourished.
11. We plead with the Lord to have mercy on us for our poor attempts to help these people. We pray we can better serve our Lord Jesus in the poor.
Clinic Building Construction and Land We Purchased for the Clinic
1. For several years now we have been talking about building a new clinic.
2. We explored a new piece of land during our previous trip as a potential site.
3. It was right next to the piece of land we purchased a few years ago.
4. Father was strongly suggesting we purchase this new piece of land. He did not feel that a better piece of land will be available any time soon.
5. Father reported that the people that own this land now were going to build three buildings on it, but he asked them not to and they are holding off until we
decide what we are going to do.
6. Father reported that we had purchased 6 centiums the first time we purchased land and this new piece of land is 7 or 8 centiums.
7. Father said he would get us a price on this new piece of land.
Jean Aymond – Little Boy Who We Brought to the USA for Skin Burn Surgery Care
1. After about 4 months in the USA Jean Aymond was able to return to Gandou with us. He was reunited to his family.
2. He had had surgery at Shriners Hospital in Cincinnati, OH and the Geer’s family in Batesville, IN graciously hosted him and took care of his therapy.
3. The whole situation with this case turned out wonderful. He is such a wonderful child and such a joy to have in the USA.
4. Everyone’s Child International who helped with everything on this case are so wonderful to work with.
5. Shriners Hospital was wonderful to work with. Everything just turned out great.
6. It was very sad for so many of the people to say goodbye to Jean Aymond because his love has taken hold of our hearts and we look forward to seeing him
each time we go back to Gandou.
Medical clinic/pharmacy
1.Clinic Results/Numbers
2. Totals were about 1060 patients that went through our 4 days of clinic.
3. We also sent about 20 patient to Lavallee on Monday, about 7 on Tuesday, and about 5 on Wednesday.
Dental clinic and extractions
1. Please pray that God will send us some dentist from the USA to help us improve and grow our dental clinic.
2. For this trip we just had 6 Haitian dentists.
3. We had all 5 members of the Haitian dental team.
4. We also had our Haitian dentist leader…Dr. Peterson as usual.
5. Fran Grebel from St. Louis also joined us on the trip as our much needed hygienist.
6. The total numbers are as follows for this trip:
A. Total Patients about 400
B. Repairs 39
C. Extractions 353
D. Cleanings 82
7. Last Trip
A. Patients: more than 450
B. Extractions 334
C. Cleanings: 93
D. Repairs: 71
8. The Haitian dental team did not have a dental repair unit this time and the previous times it broke during the clinic.
9. We asked them about this and they said they will have one before the next mission.
Nurse Needs
1. Our nurse, Germain, asked for a laptop on our previous trip as a small raise after working for us for 4 years without a raise.
2. This would be her personal laptop to use as she wishes, but she agreed to send two emails per weeks to us with this laptop.
3. She told us more about her need for a mega phone, which she has been asking about for a couple years now.
4. She said she does two mobile clinic per year.
5. She goes to areas of Gandou where it is very difficult for the people to get out and come to the Gandou clinic.
6. As she goes walks there she would like to speak on the Mega phone to get the word out where she is going to set up the Mobile clinic.
7. Also after she sets up the Mobile clinic she would do some training for the people and a mega phone would help with this.
8. We need to do everything we can to find her a Mega phone.
9. The nurse asked us to look at the medicines we use for the blood pressure patients. There was some talk about using Amlodipine rather than Licenapril.
There was also some talk about starting with HTCZ.
10. We are reviewing this as we have done in the past, but there were several reasons in the past we decided to stay with our current approach, one of those
reasons is because of the risks involved with starting and stopping some of the other medicines.
11. The nurse talked about the need for more eye glasses for the clinic. We need to bring more on the next trip.
12. The nurse and Father also talked about the great need to bring an Optometrist on the future trips. We need to pray and beg God to guide us to one.
13. The nurse asked again about the project to but better doors on the clinic. We need to work harder on this project. The best would be to have the people that
are welding up the doors for the Church to also do the same for new doors on the clinic.
Generator Needs
1. During our mission trips we completely depend on the functionality of a small gas 3500 watt generator we sent down several years ago to power all the
dental and medical equipment that we use including the lighting in the clinics.
2. On our previous trip the governor spring on the generator were rusted and broke causing the engine speed to be unstable which causes the output voltage
and frequency to be impacted. This caused high and low voltage and current spikes out of the generator.
3. One of the men from the previous trip found a spring from something else in Gandou and used some wire to change the length and install on the generator
to get us by that trip.
4. For this trip we found the spring and wire still in place and we used the generator again. See the picture below.
5. However we also send a 6,000 Watt diesel generator on the sea container and it arrived in Gandou.
6. Before the next trip we need to decide how to deal with this generator. If we are going to use it we need to figure out some way to transfer electric from this
generator to the clinic or carry it down to the clinic and leave it. It is too heavy to move back and forth. See the picture below.
7. This will be especially important with the surgeries we plan to do on the January 2017 visit.
Mission Focus Area #3 – Team Members Experience Haiti and Especially Our Sister Parish
Port-au-Prince and Travel to Gandou and Rental Trucks
1. Our travels to Haiti went very smoothly and all team members met in Miami for the final flight into Haiti. All flights were on time. When we got to Port-au-
Prince we were just missing one bag.
2. This was dental bag that Fran has brought. One of her bags came in and one did not.
3. We praise God because when Fran packed her bags she said this is the bag she packing thinking she could live without it if it did not come in.
4. However the bag still had many thing in it that she could have really used during this mission.
5. At first American Airlines told us they thought it would arrive the next day. We formed a plan for Laikaard to go to the airport and check on it and bring it to
Gandou with him later in the day on our travel day because he had planned to come later anyway.
6. However the bag still did not come in.
7. Laikaard waited another day and it still did not come in, by this time American Airlines started to think they may have lost the bag.
8. We went the whole trip without the bag.
9. We just praise God because we were still able to work without the bag.
10. Father Voltaire had all 3 rental trucks waiting on us at the airport. All were very nice trucks.
11. Father Voltaire left the trucks at the airport with the translators because he was feeling sick and he stayed at Matthew 25 House and we just met him there
that night.
12. We were able to load one of the trucks the first night. This was a huge help.
13. The next morning everyone showed up by 7:30am or so.
14. We were able to pack everything up and be ready to leave Matthew 25 earlier than any other trip I believe I have ever been on.
15. Once we got everything packed we found one of the trucks had a flat tire.
16. We drove just a little down the road and found a place that could fix it.
17. We then found two of the trucks had tire troubles.
18. This stop took us at least 40 minutes, but we praise God that everything worked out.
19. We were able to make good time and made it to Gandou before dark and without any rain. This was probably the most important day for the road to stay dry
so we could travel and I believe it turned out to be the only day of the trip that there was no rain. Again we praise God!
20. We were so happy with the rental truck situation. Everything worked out so well having Father take care of this.
Travel back to Port-au-Prince
1. We worked late most of the nights we did clinic.
2. The last day there were many patients that had to be turned away because we could not see them.
3. We ended up working late the last night which was not the plan, but we wanted to see as many people as possible.
4. This mission team was super notable for their wonderful helpfulness.
5. Everyone pitched in to help with everything. It was absolutely great. No one stopped working until everything was done and put away.
6. I can’t thank God enough for the wonderful team He provided to us.
Exposure to Haiti
1. Our team was so busy they did not get to see the market.
2. On Sunday, most of the group got to go out into the countryside to either visit the family of Jean Aymond or the family of Roseberline.
3. We feel these Sunday visits are so important for the people of the USA to see because it gives a much better perspective on the real life challenges and real
life sufferings of these people.
4. Like the flower perfectly paired below so too our team with the Haitian people.
