Before the sun rose on a small Haitian mountain community, Ismene Alexis got up, took the water jar, and headed to the village pump for water.

A Haitian girl brings water home to her family.

Although it was still dark, Ismene had no trouble finding the pump. She’d walked these streets a thousand times. On returning, Ismene found her grandparents awake. Grandma was cooking breakfast.

“Good morning, Ismene,” Grandma said, smiling.

“Good morning, Grandma. Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, although I had an odd dream. You and I were working in the garden. I looked up and saw a man standing at the gate. I greeted him, and he told me he had special news. So I invited him into our house for tea. While we were sitting together, the man started to say something about you, Ismene, but then my dream ended,” said Grandma.

“That is an odd dream,” said Ismene. “What do you think he was going to say?”

Grandma shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Pondering her grandmother’s dream, Ismene swept the floor and straightened the blankets on the straw pallets that served as beds. When she came to her sister’s pallet, her sister was still sleeping.

“Get up, Nicole!” Ismene said, pulling her sister’s pillow out from under her.

Thwap! Ismene thwapped Nicole over the head before Nicole jumped up and grabbed the pillow from her. Giggling, the two girls wrestled for the pillow until Grandma told them to finish their chores.

Nicole went outside to feed the animals with Grandpa while Ismene finished making the beds. Grandma set breakfast on the table and the family gathered around to pray. After thanking God for the meal, Ismene and Nicole gathered their schoolbooks and left for school.

The sun was rising now, spreading golden light on the huts and houses. Nicole and Ismene chased each other between the houses until they arrived, breathless, at their school. After catching their breath, they went inside and sat down.

Ismene loved school. She loved learning how to work math problems. She loved learning how to combine letters together to make words. She had been so excited the day she read her first sentence.

Classroom in Haiti

But Ismene was worried. Her grandparents might not make enough money to buy food and keep her in school. Then either Nicole or Ismene would have to quit school.

I’ll enjoy school as long as I can, Ismene thought, then banished the thought of having to leave school. The girls sat down on the floor just as the teacher, Miss Lillian, entered. Then the rest of the students arrived and took their places. Miss Lillian prayed to God for a good school day, and class began.

When the sun was high in the sky and boiling hot, Ismene and Nicole trudged home from school. When they arrived home, they found Grandma working in the garden. Nicole took Ismene’s books inside while Ismene knelt and helped Grandma with weeding.

“How was school?” asked Grandma.

“I loved it,” said Ismene. “I got an A in math.”

“Very good,” said Grandma, tugging at an especially deeply rooted weed.

For a while they pulled weeds in silence. Ismene was about to say something when there was a polite “Ahem!” from the gate. Looking up, she saw a man standing at the garden gate.

“Grandma,” said Ismene.

Grandma had seen the man, yet she wasn’t getting up to greet him. What’s wrong with her? Ismene wondered. Then she realized this was just like Grandma’s dream!

“Grandma!” said Ismene, a little louder. Her grandmother got up and went to the gate.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Is this the home of the Ismene Alexis?” asked the man.

“Yes,” Grandma said. “I am her grandmother. Do you need to speak with her?”

“I have some special news for Ismene.”

“Come in then,” said Grandma, opening the gate. “I’ll make some tea.”

Grandma and the man entered the house, and Ismene followed. All Ismene could think was, Maybe now we’ll know what the man was going to say about me! Ismene went in and found Nicole. When the tea was ready, Grandma, Nicole, and Ismene all sat down at the table.

“Now what’s this news about Ismene?” asked Grandma.

The man, who introduced himself as John, answered, “You know that Ismene is a child of Compassion International, right?”

Grandma nodded.

“A family in the United States wanted to sponsor a Compassion child, and they picked Ismene,” said John.

Ismene jumped up and screamed. Then she started laughing. Grabbing Nicole, Ismene and her sister danced around the room.

“Now I don’t ever have to worry about being taken out of school!”

At last Nicole and Ismene sat down, and John asked Grandma to sign some papers. Then John told them what Compassion would do for Ismene.

Compassion International is a worldwide organization that enables people to sponsor children in poverty-stricken countries. When children are sponsored they can go to school, received healthy food at their child development center, and get medical care if needed.

When the shadows began to lengthen, John said goodbye and left Ismene and her family.

“Oh, I’m so happy for you,” said Grandma to Ismene after John left. Grandma spread her arms and hugged the two girls.

“You’re not jealous, are you?” Ismene whispered to Nicole that night as they lay on their straw pallets. Grandma and Grandpa were already asleep, but Nicole and Ismene were talking about everything that had happened.

“No, of course not,” said Nicole. “I’m not jealous. I’m happy for you, Ismene. Now that Compassion’s paying for you to go to school, Grandma and Grandpa will only have to pay for me. I’ll be able to stay in school too. It works out for both of us.’

“Oh, good,” said Ismene. “Good night.”

“Good night. I love you,” whispered Nicole.

Ismene turned over on her side, said a quick prayer of thanks to God, and fell asleep.

A week after first being sponsored, Ismene received her first letter from her sponsor family. The family’s name was the Dodges. They asked her about how she and her grandparents were, what her day was like, and if she had any siblings. Along with the letter, the Dodges sent a photo of their family. There was a mother, a father without much hair, and two dark-haired girls.

L to R: Jasmine (adopted after Ismene was sponsored), Liz, Danielle, Brent and Yani

I hope I get to meet them face-to-face one day, Ismene thought.

Ismene

When Ismene finished reading the letter and inspecting the photo, she got her own paper to write back. The Dodges wrote once a month.

It took a long time for the letters to reach Ismene because they first had to be translated and then delivered all the way to her mountain village. It took a while for her letters to reach her sponsor family too.

When the other families in the village heard that Ismene had been sponsored, they, too, signed their children up for Compassion International. Soon many more children got sponsored.

Two Years Later

Folding up the letter, Ismene took it to the special box where she kept all of her letters from the Dodges. Grandpa had built the box for her and by now it was getting very full. The lid could hardly close.

“How many letters do you have now?” asked Grandma as Ismene returned to the table.

Ismene smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know. Lots and lots,” she said.

“The Lord has been so good,” said Grandpa as he held out his hand to Ismene.

The whole family held hands and bowed their heads while Grandpa thanked God for another letter from Ismene’s sponsors. He prayed that her sponsor family was in good health and that God would watch over them and bless them.

Thanks, God, so much for all your blessings, Ismene prayed silently as Grandpa spoke.

“Amen,” Grandpa finished.

“Amen,” the rest of the family echoed. Grandma got up and went to the stove to start cooking dinner.

“Girls, please collect the chicken eggs,” Grandma said. “I need another egg to make dinner.”

The girls went to the chicken house and gathered the eggs from the nests. As they were starting back to the house, Ismene thought she felt the ground shake. It was a tiny tremble, so Ismene thought she’d imagined it.

“I’ll race you back to the house and we’ll see who’s really the fastest,” said Nicole.

Ismene burst into a run but she’d only taken a few steps when another tremor shook the ground hard enough to make both girls fall.

“What was that?” asked Nicole, picking herself up. “Oh, my eggs broke.”

Ismene stood up and looked around.

“I think it might be…an earthquake,” she said.

“We need to get home then,” said Nicole.

The two girls took off running. Ismene expected another tremor to shake the ground any moment and knock them down again.

“Are you all right?” asked Grandma when they rushed back to the house.

“We’re fine,” said Ismene. But in her hand her own eggs were broken. She’d been so frightened she hadn’t even noticed.

“I’m sorry, Grandma,” she said. “All the eggs cracked.”

“That’s all right. We can make do with one less egg,” said Grandma.

Just as Ismene had finished washing the egg off her hands, another tremor shook the house. Everyone gathered together on a straw pallet. Grandpa started to pray for their safety.

While he was praying, Ismene prayed silently: Please, God. We know that you’re the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Will you watch over us and protect us from this earthquake? Please keep our family — no, our village — safe from harm.

Tremors kept on shaking the ground, great big tremors that knocked things off the shelves. Pots and pans clattered to the ground. The water jar fell on its side and broke. Chairs tipped over. The table shook and Ismene and Nicole’s schoolbooks fell off.

Ismene shut her eyes and tried to calm her fear. She mentally quoted a Bible verse that she had memorized just that day. Psalm 23:4. “Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.”

Gradually the tremors began to decrease in strength and ferocity.

At last Grandpa said, “I think its over.”

The family quietly stood and began to clean up the house. Ismene grabbed her broom and swept up the remains of the water jar. Nicole sat the chairs up. She gathered up their school books and put them back on the table.

Then the family went outside and visited their neighbors to see if they needed help. Over the next few days news trickled in about the earthquake. It turned out that the center of the earthquake’s destruction had been in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti.

Whenever Ismene and her family gathered to pray at each meal, they prayed for the people in Port-au-Prince.

As the months passed, the count of those killed by the earthquake rose higher and higher. The death toll was as high as 316,000. The injured and homeless were even more numerous.

Earthquake devastation in Haiti

Compassion International families who sponsored children in Haiti were all frantically writing letters and sending emails, trying to find out if their children were all right. When the Dodges received a letter from Ismene, they were so relieved to know she was safe.

Although relief workers flooded Port-au-Prince, the healing of Haiti will take a long time. Yet there is much to be thankful for even in the face of this darkness and death. Both families –Ismene’s family and the Dodges – are thankful to God that through Compassion International, Ismene has an opportunity to succeed in life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Danielle Dodge is 13 years old and wrote this story when she was 12. Danielle’s semi-fictional story won second place in her local library’s annual writing contest and first place in VisionForum’s webinar, “Mrs. Morecraft’s Ps & Qs of Proper Writing.”

If you’re interested in writing a guest blog post, we are happy to consider publishing it. Read our guest blog post guidelines.

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I stood on a hill in Port-au-Prince just five days after the massive earthquake that shattered the city. As far as I could see — in every direction — rubble, dust, mayhem, shock.

My eyes saw things that no human being is meant to see. My nose smelled things we weren’t meant to smell. But my ears … my ears heard something that I never expected in the midst of the destruction.

Yes, there was weeping, moaning, groaning over the loss of life. But there was something far more powerful.

Worship.

There, in all the rubble, people were worshiping God. A cluster of families, forced into a tent city by the temblor, gathered around a man with a poorly tuned, dusty guitar, raising their voices to “God Is So Good … .”

That’s the moment the first line of this song came to me, “You are here in all the rubble, where the broken-hearted grieve.”

I believe there will be a day when the world looks back on this incident in Haiti and sees that God is still in control. God is still here. In the hearts of His people. In the hearts of those who cry out to Him. The world will see His glory. Yes, even in the aftermath of one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.

The World Will See

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Sunday, April 25 — I moved last week and it has changed my situation and my perspective. Instead of sleeping in a tent beside the main road of Delmas listening to trucks roar up and down the street all night, I go to sleep seeing stars, and awaken to bird calls. Some of the birds are roosters, which start crowing at about 4:30, but other than that it is amazingly quiet here.

Whenever the power is out, usually from the morning until 10 p.m. there are very few lights in the area. Although the houses are a million dollars in size, they are only about $100,000 complete.

People do have mortgages here, but many build with the cash that they save from year to year and pay as they go. They don’t owe the bank interest, but they also have to wait a really long time to move into the house.

My new home is at the top of a steep hill in a very nice subdivision with a guard and pavement, mostly maintained. Some friends I’ve met are letting me stay as a courtesy.

The situation at the top of the hill makes the views incredible, I can see out to the bay to the northwest and out to the border to the east. The most amazing contrast is the 3,000-to 4,000-square-foot mansions in my neighborhood staring into the Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps where people are sleeping in makeshift homes with U.S. AID tarpaulin sheets draped over flimsy wooden supports.

A new, “well designed” camp with terraced tent sites has just sprung up over the last week and already it is 25 percent full. The U.N. and other non-governmental organizations are trying to make life more tolerable for the hundreds of thousands who have lost everything.

Now that the rains fall three or four times a week, the misery level is increasing. The news that the international community has not forgotten them is comforting, but there is not much hope for the future when all you own is now in an 8-by-15-foot shelter perched on a hillside next to 10,000 of your closest friends.

The main road into our subdivision is paved and connects to one of three roads up to the area called Petionville. Named after the second president of the country, Alexander Petion, it is even higher up and has trees and cooler temperatures in the day and night. The lack of refrigeration makes the big marketplace in Petionville quite pungent during the day and even worse at night.

The traffic through Petionville is horrendous, and after a 90-minute commute home from the office I decided it was time to find an alternative route. There are many footpaths around and I found out that a four-wheel-drive vehicle can make it up and down them.

As I went down one trail yesterday, thinking that I’m the only one crazy enough to do it, a man in another 4×4 honked, telling me to pick up the pace. Apparently everyone wants to bypass the traffic on the main road. I made it to work in 30 minutes, but the new route does place a lot of wear and tear on the car.

During my first year of marriage, my Bible study group went on a four-wheel-drive camping trip over a mining road into Leadville, Colo. That road was built during the heyday of silver mining in the 1880s and is only used by off-road junkies now. My residential shortcut is used every day by very wealthy people, and it is in worse shape than that Colorado road.

I am getting so good at driving “off road” here in the city that I might just have to repeat the trip back home.

After the rain last night cleared the dust and smog out of the air, the sun is dawning over the city with fresh air and a bit lower temperature. As of 7:30, it’s 81 degrees. I’m sure the humidity is at least that high as well. It might be time for a quick nap before church, as earlier in the day I tried to run over to the new U.N. camp to chat with some of the early risers.

A’ bientot.

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Five-thirty comes early most days, but especially on a Sunday morning when you hope to get some extra sleep before church. Not this week, however. I was wide awake at 5. I forced myself to stay in the sack for another 30 minutes despite the rooster’s consistent crowing.

The high-pitched chirp of some baby doves asking for food and the soft cooing of their parents as they brought another tasty morsel to them brought back memories of 30 years ago when I was living in Limbe’ at the hospital where I worked. One of the other missionaries at that time was raising a pair of turtle doves for the eggs.

Calling my tent a sack is an exaggeration of for what I’ve been sleeping in the last three months. My tent living is nothing like what the vast majority of Port-au-Prince residents are living in at the moment.

As you’ve no doubt seen on the news, tent cities are all over town. More than 300 camps are registered in the city and more than 19 of them have 5,000-plus people living in them. The families are crammed together in muddy lots with only a sheet between them and the next family. Privacy is not a word in their vocabulary right now.

We are in the rainy season now, which means we get about an inch of rain on a light night and 3 inches on a heavy night. It rained during the day today for the first time; usually it waits until after dark to dump on us.

I’m located in the parking lot behind the office building Compassion owns and remodeled a few years back. It withstood the earthquake with only superficial damage. The building now stands over the “Haiti Hilton” as my location was christened by Bob Thorp, my earthquake buddy. He and I arrived in Haiti four days after the quake, but he returned to Colorado Springs several weeks ago.

Our parking lot is paved so we don’t have any mud or other problems, and it is close to my office which is just inside the back door. I’m calling this my “hoffice,” because “offome” doesn’t have much of a ring to it. I can’t really call this my home/office because it isn’t much of a home. We’ve discussed other options but until now haven’t found an acceptable solution.

There are a couple of restaurants around the area. One is like a food court in a mall, which is where most people go for fast food. It is a busy place and must make a killing, because fast is not usually used to describe restaurant service here.

The place is great because it has a crepe station, drinks, pizza counter, sub station, hamburger side and ice cream, all in one building. I go sometimes to meet Americans, but there are way more Haitians who go there.

I digress. I started out to describe the beautiful sunrise I got to see as a result of getting up so early. With all the buildings around there is not much sky to actually enjoy, but I decided to go for a run and found a gorgeous pink and yellow sunrise.

Here in Port-au-Prince, the mountains are in the east so they block a lot of the sunrise, but this morning with the clouds from the rain still hanging in the sky there was a great canvas for God to paint in many different hues. It was a great way to start my day, but I was a late starter compared to the local population.

I passed hundreds of people at that hour dressed up, on the way to church. The amazing thing is that everyone is wearing white shirts and ties, nice dresses and heels. You would never guess that they have just walked one or two miles on muddy roads until they get to our main road of Delmas, where the public transportation is constantly coming by to pick them up.

It puts me to shame on so many levels. I’m out of shape and under-dressed, but I’m here and doing my best to help out.

Please keep Haiti in your prayers because it will need lots of help for a long time. We are praying that all the mistakes of previous years are now exposed and that people will be able to learn from them.

Nou va oue’ ou pita (See you later).

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Food kits are put together in the Dominican Republic and delivered to our Port-au-Prince warehouse via large trucks. In high-risk areas, we use security assistance from the U.S. Army, though at times this draws unwanted attention. As food and relief supplies become more readily available, there will be less of a need for this.

Smaller vehicles from our Haitian church partners come to our Port-au-Prince warehouse to pick up the food kits.

Each food kit gives a family of five one meal a day for two weeks.

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Barry was leading a weeklong vision trip for six Canadian pastors and their wives. Their home for the week was to be the Hotel Montana. But less than an hour after landing in Haiti, it became clear that this trip would take a very different turn.

Instead of settling into the hotel at 4:53 p.m., they were still en route, traveling in a minibus with two Haitian staff. Barry recalls,

“We were driving on the back streets to avoid traffic congestion, and the bus had been bumping around a lot anyway, but all of a sudden it started heaving from side to side. We saw people who had been walking all falling. One lady fell right in front of us, and walls crashed down on both sides of us.”

As buildings shook and began to crumble before their very eyes, the passengers could barely process what they were seeing.

“From our vantage point, we could see the city of Port-au-Prince beneath us and all the dust that was blowing up. That’s when the gravity of the situation hit us.”

Miraculously, nearly three hours after the quake struck, they were able to text their families back home when one of their cell phones began working for about 15 minutes. As soon as everyone had typed out a quick message to report that they were safe, the signal was lost.

With people and debris filling the streets by the second, their vehicle could barely move forward. One woman was killed right in front of them, and bodies were already piling up as they inched toward their new destination, the Compassion office on Delmas Street. Still, the Haiti staff were determined to press on, even as their Canadian passengers pleaded with them to leave and go check on their families.

What should have been a 12-minute drive instead took three horrifying hours.

“We felt so helpless, but we knew the one tool we had was prayer. Our vehicle became a mobile prayer chapel. When we saw someone wounded, we cried out to God on their behalf.”

When they turned onto Delmas Street and saw huge commercial buildings flattened, they could only gasp, “There’s nothing left.”

At 8 p.m., they arrived at the Compassion office and were surprised to find it still standing. Also standing, across the street, was the Canadian Embassy, built just four years earlier.

As the first Canadians to arrive at the embassy, they were welcomed but told they would have to sleep outside since the building was still considered unsafe. They spent the night — most of them not sleeping at all — in a parking lot, trying to breathe through the thick dust that had hours ago been Haiti’s center of commerce.

Twenty-eight hours later they boarded a Hercules military transport that would take them to the Dominican Republic. By Thursday afternoon, they were home, where Barry sat glued to the media coverage of the country he had just left.

“The hardest part was leaving. Tears ran down my face as I asked God how I could leave my brothers and sisters at such a time. But I felt like God was telling me I needed to go back home and do what I could do here — be an advocate for these people, tell their story, raise money for their recovery. I haven’t stopped since I got home.”

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In some ways today (Jan. 28) was the most exhausting. Mainly the heat in our “clinic.” Once again, under tarps despite a respectable-looking church right next to us.

Our team used the church for sorting meds and eating lunch, and I hope that our occupying it might encourage the people to overcome the fear that the earth may shake it down at any moment.

Treated over 100 people again today, but the conditions generally seem less severe in the city, where people are getting access to health services.

The story that will most trouble me as I try to sleep in the parking lot again tonight is the two very young children (approximately 2 and 3 years old) whose parents both died in the quake.

These young children are registered in our Child Survival Program. Their aunt came to take them and is caring for them.

I just learned an hour ago that their aunt is 15 years old and they are sleeping in the street under a makeshift tarp tent. It’s night now and I wonder how that 15-year-old girl is going to find any food for herself or for those little ones.

I’ve only shared about the kids and people we’ve been seeing, but I want to say something about our staff in Haiti.

It just isn’t possible to describe the emotional burden they carry. I spoke with Jozue (Joshua), who works for Compassion and is pastor of the church where we set up the mobile clinic today.

Jozue told me that on the day of the quake his wife was getting ready to wash their two little girls. Their water is outside, like a backyard spigot, and when mom went out to get the water one of the girls saw her go out and began to follow. Then the second one followed.

Mom saw the girls coming out of the house and said “Get back inside.”

But the girl said “No!”

“I said go back inside!”

But the girl stomped her foot and insisted, “No!”

That happened a third time and then mom gathered her girls and began to bring them back into the house. And that’s when everything started moving side to side and the house collapsed along with both of their neighbors’ houses.

At that time, Jozue had just left the Compassion office, and the drive, which normally takes 30 minutes, took more than six hours.

He described driving past the collapsed buildings and houses and seeing dead people and hearing crying and frantically trying to make his way home to his family.

He had a friend with him who told him, “God is in control. If He wants them alive, they are alive. If He wants them dead, they are dead.”

Jozue maintained his strength and arrived at the scene of his collapsed house after 11 p.m. He searched with a flashlight and could not find them.

Then a man asked, “Who are you looking for?”

He answered, “My family.” And the man said, “They are there at the church.”

He told me he was strong until he saw them and then he was overwhelmed and “became sick.” Tears welled up as he told me several times how he loves his family.

He said he worked for 15 years to build that house but now he will need to live by faith. He said to live by faith always sounded good in a sermon but it was theory, and now he would need to really do it.

His wife was too troubled to stay in Haiti, and she left with the girls to be with relatives in Florida. I could see uncertainty in his eyes about his own decision to stay. But he said, “I’m a pastor. What words can I bring to my community?”

The bold, selfless blood of Jesus is alive in Jozue. Despite his opportunity to flee and be with his family, he believes that a pastor must serve in these very difficult times.

He and his church are the hope for Haiti’s future. So, today this man gave himself to the work of hosting our mobile clinic in an open lot next to his church where we treated more than 100 people.

Today I prayed with Dunia, a nurse who works for Compassion supporting the Child Survival Program. Dunia has been part of our team and doing an amazing job treating so many people. But her own father died and her aunt is critically injured.

This morning she had quietly separated herself from the group to cry because she had just been told her aunt would not live. She continued to treat others until we were able to secure her transport to the hospital treating her aunt.

Her aunt may make it after all – keep praying.

There are countless stories. Everyone of them matters. Lifting the burden of a physical injury or infections is pretty easy compared to lifting the burdens of sorrow so heavy in the soul. We need to pray for and generously support our brothers and sisters in Haiti.

They not only need to continue the ministry to Haiti’s children, but they need to piece together their own lives and homes as well. I would ask you to give until it hurts, and count it a privilege. There will never be a day when we regret an act of generosity or kindness.

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Last night’s (Jan. 25) arrival – in the dark, no lights in the airport, Humvees and Marines roaring around, bags thrown on the tarmac, smell of jet fuel, shouting, chaos, can’t find our pickup, pulling out over 30 duffel bags and boxes, driving through the chaos of Port-au-Prince with three of our guys on top of each pickup “guarding” baggage.

Touring our office at night with flashlights, framed mission statement on the wall tilted, leadership principles tilted, warning to walk clear of certain walls which are collapsing – pitch tent in parking lot, spray some DEET, take some Malarone, sweating from hauling stuff.

Today (Jan. 26), our medical team worked under tarps because the people are afraid to go inside buildings. Within an hour we were up and running and saw approximately 100 patients.

Each patient registered at entry through a gate with name, basic info including height, weight etc… and took a number. Some were triaged. Others waited to be called to one of four (sometimes five) stations. Each station had a doc, nurse and translator (though some of our Haitian nurses also served as translators).

The cases were not as severe as I expected with some very serious cuts and abrasions that were infected and needed dressing, some dislocations, a few bone issues. Many were just overwhelmed and needed someone to look at them and tell them they were okay. We prayed with some of them.

The spirit of the team is wonderful – encouraging, humble, aware of the complexity of treating the whole person. No one became impatient or frustrated (despite many reasons to be so). The day was a success in my view.

We sleep in a parking lot and listen to trucks and generators and dogs. We have access to one of the two buildings which has been deemed safe. The other is not safe.

The IT guy has set up wireless that seems to work reasonably well. My phone does not call but does text – weird. Verizon seems to work. They need to add Haiti to their map commercial.

The crew is sleepless, all-out working, coping with very complex issues and needs protection from external expectations.

I met two girls who were sisters – both sponsored through Compassion. There are three girls in the family. They were home when the quake hit. One got out. The other two were trapped.

Mom was selling food on the street and ran home. Dad also ran home from his work at a wood-working shop. Mom and Dad and uncle dug out one girl after about eight hours and the second girl after about 11 hours. Both girls suffered injury.

The sisters came to our clinic and we dressed and cleaned their wounds – infection. I asked each of them afterward some questions, prayer requests, both independently said – pray that I will get back to school and do well in school, pray that we can have our house back.

I asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Doctor and Doctor.

Mom stood next to them as they shared, and she was crying. We prayed that someday when people are hurt it would be these two young ladies who offer healing.

Shaun captured this story on film and is editing it next to me in the muggy Haiti night under floodlights, a tarp-tent sitting in a sloped parking lot with one of my chair legs wobbling in a pot hole. Shaun is holding a flashlight in his mouth as he works his audio.

Three of our docs are just returning from Salvation Army’s site here; they were visiting a clinic in search of pediatric meds (we had a hard time finding and don’t have enough). They also wanted to review how the Salvation Army clinic is designed – to pick up ideas.

Dinner is arriving in black trash sacks – rice and beans and scrawny chicken (kinda cold, not sure where they get it), but purchased and delivered in love in a place where every kid I saw today was hungry.

Hungry. I felt shame as I hid in a room with the others to eat half a sandwich for my lunch. But I felt proud to be a part of it all and offer whatever I could to serve these kids. They deserve everything we can offer and more.

That comment on hunger might make you wonder about food distribution – we’re doing it but it is very complex and cannot be done simultaneously with our clinic. That would be a serious mistake. So I snuck a little to the sisters and gave my half empty water bottle to another boy but otherwise we really could not do anything resembling food distribution.

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That’s the answer 12-year old Robinson gave me when I asked him what he’s praying for this week.

It might sound like a sweet prayer from a 12-year old, until you realize that Robinson is living with his family in a tent city in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. And the reason for his prayer is that Robinson, like many others here in this quake-damaged country, believes the terrible disaster is the result of sin.

And he feels ashamed.

He thinks God shook the earth to destroy his poverty-stricken city, killing thousands of people—all because he did something bad; he pushed another boy on the playground. It’s heartbreaking.

This is a great example of why the help we bring to Haiti has to go beyond food, water and medicine. Yes, those things are vital. And they need them now. But if we are going to look past the short-term, to the future of Haiti, our relief efforts must include a spiritual component.

Long after the relief trucks are emptied and the search crews have gone home, Haitians will need someone who cares about more than their immediate physical needs. The number of relief organizations that will be here a year from now will seriously diminish. But we’re not going anywhere.

Compassion has been in Haiti for more than 40 years—teaching, feeding, educating, loving, mentoring, caring and perhaps most importantly, sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.

No one knows why this deadly earthquake hit Haiti. But it certainly wasn’t because Robinson pushed another boy on the playground. And we can help children like Robinson become leaders in this country, transforming it from devastated ruins into the country God wants it to be.

So while we’re ministering to Robinson’s physical and emotional needs in the years to come, we’re also going to be teaching him more about a merciful God who loves him. That’s the Compassion difference.

That’s what holistic child development is all about. Caring for the whole child.

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But Melicia is begging for the chance to do just that.

Her family was at home when the earthquake hit Port-au-Prince. In a panic, she gathered her children and rushed them toward the door. But her six-year old son Simon Peter got scared and ran the other direction, back into the house.

That’s when the cinder block construction gave way to the twisting and jolting. It collapsed.

Simon did not make it out. And now Melicia has to live with the horrifying reality that the body of her six-year old son is still trapped in the rubble of her home. Crews have not made it to her neighborhood to start digging bodies out of the debris. The recovery work is too dangerous at this time.

Melicia and her other children are living in a squatter’s tent camp at the Church of God headquarters just a few blocks away from her home. Just blocks away from her son’s body. But seemingly miles away from being able to give him what she wants so desperately: a proper burial.

And she can’t even afford to feed her surviving children. “We have nothing,” she says, her voice cracking with desperation, “I have nobody to rescue me.”

But amazingly, the one possession Melicia does have is her faith. And it’s an astounding faith at that.

She says, “The same Lord who provided for me before will do the same for me again.”

She’s right. God will provide. And he’s doing it with your help, generous donors who are stepping up in this time of need.

As the result of your donations, this weekend we are mobilizing 500,000 pounds of relief supplies to families like Melicia’s. A medical team will be on the ground in Port-au-Prince to help with injuries—both physical and emotional.

We’ll help Melicia feed her children…and counsel her through this difficult time. We’ll even provide counseling for her surviving children.

We can’t completely restore Melicia’s family. But we can provide rescue for those who have survived this terrible tragedy. Pray. Give. Tell someone else to do the same.

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