February 9th Meeting The prayer will be led by Jerry Crawford
The Pledge and 4-Way Test will be led by Mark Cleveland
This week, our speaker will be Dr. David Vanderpool who will be speaking about his experiences in Haiti. The following is an article that references Dr. Vanderpool's trip:
Churches send doctors, medicine, food to Haiti
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MOBILE MEDICAL DISASTER RELIEF
Healing Haiti
- Dr. David Vanderpool of Mobile Medical Disaster Relief listens
to the heartbeat of a Haitian victim of the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Vanderpool, a member of the Harpeth Hills Church of Christ in Tennessee,
is assisting at a hospital in Jimani, a city in the Dominican Republic
near the Haitian border.
Dr. Robert Whittaker spent Tuesday afternoon rummaging through boxes of
medical instruments in the Nashville, Tenn., offices of Healing Hands
International.
The British-born physician left most of his tools back in Africa, where
he served for nearly 25 years at a mission hospital. He leaves Wednesday tomorrow
for Haiti — five months after he suffered a gunshot wound to the arm
during a 48-hour kidnapping ordeal in Nigeria.
Whittaker and Dr. Mark Pearson, a former missionary in Haiti, will
arrive in the Dominican Republic and join a convoy of supplies headed
across the border into Haiti.
Whittaker, still recovering from a nerve graft back in November,
said he and Pearson plan to work in a suburb of Haiti’s capital,
Port-au-Prince.
Church members traveling to Hispaniola — the
island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic — face a herculean
task. Estimates of the death toll in Haiti after the Jan. 12 earthquake
have reached 200,000, according to news reports. Hundreds of thousands
more are injured. Many have received no medical attention since the 7.0
quake struck near Port-au-Prince.
Dr. David Vanderpool, a
physician and member of the Harpeth Hills Church of Christ in Brentwood,
Tenn., is lending his skills to a hospital in Jimani, a city in the
Dominican Republic near the Haitian border. Vanderpool, who oversees
Mobile Medical Disaster Relief, makes regular trips into Haiti and
brings backs truckloads of patients for treatment, said Randy Steger,
chairman and president of Healing Hands International.
Several
ministries, including Healing Hands and Louisiana-based White’s Ferry
Road Relief Ministries, are using the northern Haitian city of Cap
Haitien, undamaged by the quake, as a command center for funneling
supplies to the south, Steger said. The ministries are distributing
filters that will provide clean water for 12,000 people, and hope to
provide additional filters for to help at least 200,000, Steger said.
“Without help, contaminated water will cause more deaths in the long term than the earthquake,” Steger said.
‘WE JUST REJOICE AND KEEP ON WORKING’
In
Florida, Christians from Haiti continue to wait for news of their
families and friends near the quake zone, said Pierre Etienne, minister
for the Church of Christ of Sunrise, Fla.
Before he moved to the
U.S. about 16 years ago, Etienne was a minister for the Delmas Church
of Christ, a congregation of nearly 2,000 members in Port-au-Prince. The
church’s building was damaged badly in the quake, and its members met
outside for worship on Sunday, Etienne said. At least nine members died
in the quake. The Sunrise church, a congregation of about 80 Haitian
immigrants and their children, is collecting funds to help the Delmas
church.
“At this point in time it is very painful to even think
about asking for financial help,” Etienne said. “But, as Christians, we
cannot close our eyes on this huge catastrophic disaster that hit
Haiti.”
Roberta Edwards, who oversees an orphanage and feeding
program near Port-au-Prince, returned to Haiti recently. She was in the
U.S. visiting relatives just before the earthquake. A wall of the Son
Light Children’s Home and Nutrition Center collapsed, killing Nicky, a
15-year-old boy who lived at the home.
“I was able to get some
cement so we could properly bury Nicky,” Edwards said in a recent e-mail
to friends and supporters. She also has started making trips to the
Dominican border, meeting workers with groups including Manna Global
Ministries and loading food and supplies on a truck to take back home.
Thomas
Edwards, the oldest of the children living at the home, accompanied
Roberta Edwards on one of the supply trips, As they approached
Port-au-Prince, a bag of dog food fell off the truck.
“Some men
came by, picked up the dog food off the ground and ate it in front of
us,” Thomas Edwards said. “So that can show you how hungry people are.”
Roberta
Edwards said she’s also trying to help treat her neighbors’ wounds.
Many Haitians sustained cuts during the quake that have become infected.
Hospitals are open, but have little or no medications and supplies.
“We
are doing what we can do,” Roberta Edwards said. “I continue to praise
God as I look around at the destruction and disaster. … I know it is
hectic and crazy, but things are coming together — and for that reason
we just rejoice and keep on working.”
ONE DOCTOR’S STORY
Back in Nashville, Whittaker said he’s eager to “clean up wounds and start healing.”
The
physician has seen — and lived — his fair share of trauma in a
quarter-century at Nigerian Christian Hospital. Car wrecks are common
along the busy road that runs past the medical mission in the West
African nation.
The doctor himself was a patient at the
hospital in August, after enduring two days in captivity at the hands of
kidnappers who held him for ransom. As he was abducted from his home, a
bullet damaged a nerve in his arm.
He spoke to his own doctor
recently about the proposed trip. “I told him, ‘Is there any reason to
forbid me to go?’” Whittaker said. His doctor gave him the green light.
Whittaker
said he’s still unsure whether or not he will return to Nigeria full
time to work in medical missions. Right now, he’s concentrating on the
task at hand.
“We’re going over there to save lives and take
care of suffering people,” he said. Whatever happens in the future,
“that’s good enough for me.” |
