This and That

Haiti: “It will be up to baby Jesus.”

Jacqueline Thermiti (71) is one of 85 surviving residents of the Port-au-Prince Municipal Nursing Home (barely a mile from the airport, staging ground for the massive international aid effort).

“Of all the wars and revolutions and hurricanes, this quake is the worst thing God has ever sent us,” Thermiti said.

[…]

She predicted that unlike other pensioners, she could still hold out for at least another day.

“Then if the foreigners don’t come (with aid),” she said, “it will be up to baby Jesus.”

Source: Elderly and abandoned, 85 Haitians await death

With limited resources and overwhelming needs all around, will old people like Jacqueline be overlooked in favor of those much younger and with better long-term chances and options?

Or will the aged be honored?

What tough decisions must be made by those “on the ground” over there!

Haiti: Did He Recognize Any?

Steve Yoder of Christian Aid Ministries views heaps of bodies of Haiti's earthquake dead. --

As I understand this, Steve Yoder lives in Titanyen. I wonder how many people — some of them friends, perhaps — he recognized in the heaps.

Titanyen, Haiti—Down a rocky dirt road in a valley tucked inside green, soft-rolling hills, Haiti is disposing of its dead.

[…]

Steve Yoder, who is an administrator at the Menonite mission called Christian Aid Ministries in Titanyen, choked back tears as he viewed the heaps of bodies.

“This is heart-breaking,” he said. “It’s very grim. It’s very sad. But in this situation that’s the best that can be done.”

Source: No Burials for Haiti’s Dead (Warning: article includes a graphic photo or two)

This is a good reminder to pray for the people who know those being rescued as well as those who are being dumped. If the foreign teams that go to Haiti in response to the disaster are traumatized by what they see, imagine how this impacts those who live there — nationals as well as aid workers and missionaries. Wow!

Read a little more from Christian Aid Ministries’ people in Titanyen.

Christian Aid Ministries in Haiti

From CNN:

Christian Aid Ministries, an Amish-Mennonite organization, has had staff and a distribution network in Haiti for over 20 years. To help earthquake survivors, they are providing search and rescue operations, emergency supplies such as medicines and food, and later on rebuilding of houses.

From CAM themselves:

CAM-Haiti staff members spent much of the night helping dig people out of concrete rubble. They were traumatized by what they saw and heard — dead bodies strewn around, sounds of tapping from those still alive but trapped deep under the debris, dead and injured pushed in wheelbarrows, and much more. It is so scary digging people out; one wrong move could kill them, says Darvin Seibel, CAM’s staff member in Haiti. One lady’s head was pinched so tight, any shifting would instantly kill her!

[…]

Our Titanyen facility has been turned into a relief center and mini-hospital to feed and care for homeless mothers with young children. A USA CAM rescue team, including some EMTs, flew to Haiti to help look for survivors and do cleanup. Our staff in Haiti, including the La Source medical clinic team, is doing everything they can to provide emergency aid. Later there will be a lot of rebuilding to do as well.

As I recall, over 98% of donations to Christian Aid Ministries goes directly into their programs. That’s really good!! So please visit the Haiti page I set up for them and donate to their relief efforts.

Help Haiti?

You know about the 100,000+ death toll currently being reported as a result of yesterday’s Haitian earthquake.

Christian Aid Ministries (a well-established, of-good-report Anabaptist relief organization headquartered in Berlin, Ohio, USA) operates medical clinics there.

So they’re well-positioned to help right away.

You can help them help the Haitians. Click the Haiti earthquake link in the green box on that page.

Thank you!

Unsung Heroine

I don’t know the words to this song; I’ll just make them up as I go along. The tune will be up to someone else.

Yesterday was our niece’s bridal shower.

Though Ruby had no formal tasks or responsibilities for the planning and execution thereof, she was very involved in the preparations.

(I’m glad we didn’t have to experience all the blown gaskets and stripped gears had she not been.)

Decorating the night before. There she was.

Doing the cinnamon rolls. There she was.

Rounding up stuff before the launch. There she was.

Cleaning up afterward. There she was.

This, that, the other, something else — she helped.

Tired? Sure.

Meals to fix otherwise? Sure.

A household to keep running? Sure.

A second Christmas family meal and afternoon to host two days before? Sure.

She gives and gives and gives. Because she’s Mom.

Not for the gratefulness. Not for the acclaim. Not for the power. Not for the reciprocating good deed. But because she’s Mom.

Because Moms put their families first. (Or should.)

No wonder she was glad to have so major a project accomplished and finished.

Three cheers aren’t enough, nor three cheerers.

Nevertheless, listen to this single cheer from this single cheerer: WooHoo!!!

“Let her own works praise her in the gates.”

That’s how the Biblical book of Proverbs ends, speaking of the virtuous woman. Look it up for yourself in your own Bible. It’s right there in Proverbs 31:31.

A Cheery 2010

Good morning! Let me tell you some of what I’m cheery about and thankful for this morning. (I’ll leave some space at the end for you to add some of your own cheerful thankfulness.)

🙂 We made it to twenty ten. We’re ten years past the old projected end of the world (2000). Furthermore, we have yet to be struck by the fearsome Y2K bug.

🙂 The story in the EU Times is likely untrue. (You know the one about the Russians expecting “outbreak of civil war within the United States before the end of winter.”)

🙂 Only one of my business partners has dealt gracelessly with me.

🙂 Our immediate Roth kin are to show up today to celebrate our Christmas, sans the usual gift exchange.

🙂 I got a good night’s sleep last night despite the trials that have come upon me in the last month.

🙂 I finally get to put up the new calendar I got from Christian Light Publications. (I also need to find a place for the one I got from Rod & Staff Publishers.)

🙂 This new-to-me, hard-to-find, IBM trackpoint keyboard works wonderfully!

🙂 My two-year-old grandson Trenton just came into my office to show me a bulldozer he must have found in our toy box.

🙂 My body still works so that I can get up from here and go outside to feed the cat, lose the dog, and sing to the cows.

🙂 It doesn’t matter whether or not we have started a new decade.

Posts in the Bucket

In the brain bucket, that is.

Wow. I last updated this on October 12, 2009! What was then, I’ll put in a pink box below.

At the moment, I have three posts awaiting completion:

  1. Sweden vs Homeschoolers?
  2. tHEy
  3. Obama Orders 1 Million US Troops to Prepare for Civil War

I have two posts that are in the Wrap Up stage:

  1. Polishing Politics — done: September 28, 2009
  2. This Is Urgent! — done: October 3, 2009

And some others in the Gotta Do stage:

  1. Thirteen Things a Burglar Won’t Tell You
  2. “Proud of You”
  3. My Own Mortality
  4. Facebook Concerns
  5. Online Security and Privacy
  6. Than Expected — done: September 30, 2009
  7. Public-Assisted Homeschooling: What’s the Cost?
  8. “I See Nothing to Commend in So-and-So”
Above all, love God!