Cherlie and I want to take this occasion to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We hope that as you enjoy the blessings of your wonderful country you will pray for the people of Haiti who feel blessed as well, but make do with much less. For those in all walks of life and all places on the globe, this is a time to celebrate the birth of our Savior and Lord and we are grateful.
We’re also grateful for you, our donors, supporters and friends and the encouragement you give to us with your gifts, letters and prayers. We appreciate your partnership with us and pledge to be faithful to the mission to which we have been called – the mission of providing health care to those in need in the name of Jesus Christ.
The Moon Group came to Haiti
Early December brought us a visit from Ray and Donna Moon accompanied by Yvonne DuCharme, Lin McKinney, Jeanette Schweitzer and Jodi Hundt. All but Jodi had been down here before and we were delighted to have the group work with us for a week. They came loaded down with medications for our pharmacy, toys for our children and suitcases in which they packed craft items that they transported back to Milwaukee for our annual fund-raising banquet to be held on April 25, 2015.
Our dining room table loaded with medications brought down for the clinic pharmacy
Young girl with sickle cell anemia holds her new beanie baby during a visit to the clinic
One of the delights of their week was a visit to two churches near the clinic site, where they did some health teaching, gave out hygiene kits and participated in singing and joyful dancing.
Welcome sign in the front of the Baptist church in Duchene where the group did health teaching
With the help of a translator, Yvonne and Jodi do health teaching in the Duchene church
Jodi, Jeanette, Yvonne and Donna hand out hygiene kits to those participating in the teaching sessions
Local Haitians leave the church with their hygiene kits and newly acquired knowledge
Adrien Jean Jacques and church members sing and play instruments for the visitors in their church after a teaching session
The group also helped us out in the clinic itself. Donna and Yvonne jumped right in and helped Cherlie stabilize a young woman who came in as an emergency with a high fever probably due to malaria.
Young woman brought in to the clinic on a stretcher because she was too ill to walk by herself
Donna taking the blood pressure of the ill young woman in clinic
Yvonne draws blood for malaria testing on our emergency patient
In addition to helping provide medical care, the group assisted with several other projects, including putting facings on shelves that had been built by a group from my home church in NJ earlier in the year, organizing the Emergency Room and storage area and packing medications in bags for our patients.
Ray and Yvonne cut wood strips for facings for pharmacy shelves
Jeanette and Lin work hard sanding the shelf facings before staining them
Lin and Jeanette organizing supplies in the clinic Emergency Room
Ray, Jodi and Yvonne have fun packing medications on the porch of our house in Jeremie
Ray and Jeanette brought down some baseball caps with the FHH logo to show us in hopes of starting a promotional program selling FHH products. Would you buy one of these beautiful caps????!
Ray and Katie show off their new FHH logo caps
Much thanks to the Moon group for their camaraderie and hard work on our behalf. We and our patients are grateful!