Delivery Truck, Shuttle Bus or Ambulance?

We have another group of folks from Southern Georgia in this week.  Yesterday I got them started painting walls and putting together tables for the school in Jubilee.  We put the new tables in the classrooms and pulled out the old bench / desk units.  Amos and I loaded up all of the benches in the back of the truck to store in our yard for a while.  All of our guests were finished with their projects, so they needed a ride home also.

The back was full the top with benches, the inside was full with 8 of us.  On the way out of Jubilee, a man flagged down our truck to tell us that his pregnant wife was having some pains.  Sure!  Pile on in!  Some people moved around...up on laps...squished together...made room for the pregnant lady.  Through the interpreter we found out that she thought she was at 9 months and has been hurting off and on all day.  Her husband rode on top of the load of benches.  Off to the hospital.

The roads in Gonaives are not at all condusive to a speedy trip.  Considering that I had more than a full load, I had to take it real easy.  About halfway to the hospital, I felt a problem...flat tire!  I pulled over to the curb at one of the main round-about thingies in town.  About 5 minutes later with help from Amos and the opposite of help from Ritaud we got the tire changed.  We got to the hospital and our friendly nurse Martha got her admitted.

A couple of blocks away, we dropped the tire off to the tire guy on the side of the road for repair.  A couple of blocks further, we dropped the daddy off so he could grab a tap-tap back to Jubilee.  A few blocks later, we were home!

This morning, I followed Amos and Martha on my dirt bike up to an orphanage on the edge of town.  Martha was putting a feeding tube up the nose of a 3 week old baby that the hospital in Port au Prince had given up on.  He is a fighter and he is hanging on, helped by the strength of his mom and help from the community.  In the states, he would be in the middle of all kinds of contraptions and have constant medical supervision.  His mother pushes the formula down the feeding tube with a cyringe and he gets a visit from our nurse as often as he can.

I really appreciate those of you supporting my work down here.  I feel alive more than I ever have.  I see God working every day.  I start every day with a set of plans of what to I want to do, but He always changes them.  Today I think I got one thing done that I planned on doing, but in the process, I got to clean oil base paint off of a little girl that for some reason didn't understand me when I told her that the entire wall we just painted was still wet.  Maybe I should work on my Creole a little more!