Ain't Complicated

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!

You Walkin’?

10,000 steps daily? Be sure to count each step with a pedometer! --

I’m almost persuaded to buy one of these things: 🙂

If the journey toward fitness begins with a single step, make sure it’s counted with a pedometer.

These little step-tracking gadgets now have a solid track record when it comes to motivating people to exercise. And their popularity is growing.

Inside this small-as-an-egg device are the keys to exercise success that have eluded far more complex and expensive fitness programs: accountability, goal-setting and being able to monitor progress. If the objective is to reach 10,000 steps in a day the recommended amount, seeing a tally of 4,000 steps at 3 p.m. is a wake-up call to start walking. Read it all

Restaveks in Haiti

God bless those who help these children:

Unprecedented levels of poverty have driven almost 225,000 Haitian children into slavery. According to Eva DeHart of For Haiti With Love, parents desperate to feed and clothe their starving children are easy victims for child predators.

“Most of those parents are not deliberately selling those children into slavery,” she explained. “They’re selling them to people who promise that those children will eat regularly and have a better life.”

The enslaved children, known as “restaveks,” are taken from poor homes to the homes of families that are less poor. The family takes responsibility for raising the child in exchange for unpaid domestic service.

Source: Poverty forces kids into slavery

What Do You See?

I’m prone to see the ominous dark clouds of the gathering storm. Storms, really — religious, societal, political, military, cultural, financial, spiritual.

I also notice the diminishing space as the dark tunnel’s walls close in at an alarming, hope-crushing rate.

Then yesterday morning I saw the January 6 entry on our day-by-day For the Love of a Friend flip calendar:

A great deal of what we see
still depends on what we’re looking for.

Oh my! 😳

I went back again and again to have another read.

And below the above quote, this from Psalm 39:7….

But now, Lord, what do I look for?
My hope is in you.

How easily I forget! 😥

Last night I read this comment by Crusoe:

I think you can see much farther
through a tear
than you can through a telescope.

(No, not that Crusoe; rather, the one in Flight of the Eagles, the first book of the Seven Sleeper Series by Gilbert L. Morris.)

Oh, and another clarifier: tear above is the kind that comes out of our eyes.

So…I am thankful for all these reminders. And for the hope I have in Jesus Christ.

January 4

1486 — To guard against impure literature Berthold of Henneberg (Archbishop and Elector of Mainz) establishes in his diocese the first known censorship of the press.

1493 -– That “white European non-female” Christopher Columbus leaves the New World, ending his first journey.

1528 — Ferdinand of Austria, younger brother to “Holy” Roman Emperor Charles the Fifth, issues the first secular mandate forbidding the Anabaptist religious movement.

1949 -– A silent disc-shaped object circles Hickam Field near Honolulu (Hawaii) at 2:07 pm. It blinks once every second and flies away climbing into the northeast sky. The sighting is listed by the US Air Force as an “unknown.”

1952 — My good friend and ex-fellow-missionary JoeM is born.

1965 -– President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaims the Great Society during his State of the Union address.

1974 -– President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over materials subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.

1975 -– Elizabeth Ann Seton becomes the first American-born saint. (I don’t know when she was born, but I can assert with confidence that there were thousands — if not millions — of American-born saints before.)

2007 -– Nancy Pelosi is elected the first female Speaker of the House in US history.