And lived to tell

Blog by Rick Radcliff

A few days ago our team took a 5 mile round-trip walk to Lake Trou Caiman (see below).   After some tough days of dealing with all the oppressive heat, the roller coaster of emotions, and the difficult extreme situations at each of the medical clinics during each day, many of us headed out to see something beautiful and peaceful to recharge and reset ourselves.  In the photo you can see our great friend and mission trip superstar Dr. Deanna Reinoso out in the water with some local boys from Chambrun who tagged along with us.

Only Deanna (out of the 15 of us that walked down there) would brave what is likely some very unsafe water at various levels.  There are surely microscopic organisms, bacteria, and potentially American crocodiles which inhabit some of the lakes in Haiti (but were weren’t certain if they are in this one).  Deanna was born in Colombia in South American to heroic missionary parents and actually lived amongst piranhas, anacondas, and (I’m not kidding) blowdart shooting natives as a child.  Some unclean water isn’t going to deter Deanna (that’s another full blog).

When our son Trey (19) watched Deanna walk out into the water, he said he thought it looked like someone was going to get baptized.  Like a baptism is symbolic of a saved life (or soul) our team was literally saving lives this past week.

In the photo below, we see my wife Kitty holding a special needs child as Deanna is kneeling on the rocks attending to the child.  This child was in fine condition on this day, but our team and Deanna probably literally saved the lives of 2-4 individuals.  On one day as I was working in our rural version of a pharmacy I observed Deanna pleading and begging for a mother to continue to nurse her child.  Deanna had given the baby (who came in very weak) some formula that we had brought with us, and then implored the mother to breast feed.  In Haiti mothers are often told that if they are sick or the child is sick or weak that breast feeding can be harmful to either the mom or child.  Deanna was telling her to breast feed or your baby is going to die. 

[Note:   This photo also depicts exactly how our mobile medical clinics work.  There are usually 4 folding chairs on rocks at each station under a circus tent pre-established by NVM.  In this photo, Annie (in blue) is the provider at this station (Annie is an ICU nurse from Riley). Next to her is a Haitian interpreter which we have at each station.  Next to him are the patients.  Deanna would often roam from one station to the next as needed for her expertise with children.]

When you go on a short-term mission trip you know you’re doing the right thing.  You hope you’re making a tangible difference — a lot of times the different seems subjective.  On these trips with the medical team we have, you know that God is working mightily through this ministry and our team in a fairly unprecedented way (Pastor Pierre setting that standard).  We have other team members like Deanna who have been equally gifted and called by God —

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon (them), he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…He has sent me to recover the sight for the blind, to release the oppressed” (Luke 4).