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Homes for Haiti sends update on medical, home missions

Rachel Newville, To the Press

The Homes for Haiti Team has been working hard since they arrived in Haiti on Jan. 19. The team of 27 is working in Despinos, which is just outside of Port-au-Prince. The trip started at Imagine Missions Orphanage. The team is made up of two groups; a building group and a medical group.

The building group started by unloading a shipping container full of building supplies for the homes. The medical group started by organizing medication and supplies to take on a two day traveling clinic.

There were 10 total homes to build. In the first two days the building group completed four homes that will be used as classrooms at the orphanage. They also got two homes at other sites built for orphanage staff members. On Saturday the team built two more homes for staff members. There are two more homes to build that will be used for long term missionaries.

One of the cooks, Makila was moved into one of the houses. She previously was living in the team house. As she was handed the keys to her new house she danced about and said, “I am so happy with my home. It’s the most amazing thing that ever happened in my life.”

The medical group paired up with some local missionaries that run a permanent clinic. They took off for a traveling clinic trip at 5:20 a.m. on Thursday morning. They were headed to a town in the mountains. However the bus kept breaking down on the way up the mountains. Deciding it was too dangerous the group turned around and found a spot on the side of the road to set up shop. They ran the pharmacy out of the back of the bus and the doctors saw people on the side of the road.

The next day the medical group went to a rural village outside of O’Cay where they treated more than 300 patients ranging from a 19-day-old baby that had worms to a 91-yearold woman with high blood pressure.

On Thursday the medical team cleaned the clinic in the village and gave all the kids in the orphanage well child checkups.

Jeffrey Similien the team’s translator who was raised in an orphanage in Haiti and moved to the U.S when he was 23 said, “I was raised in an orphanage (starting) when I was three, to come back to an orphanage as a missionary and seeing kids that are there was an eye opener to me.

That was me. It’s pretty amazing to see the kids now.”

 

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