YWAM St. Marc, Haiti

Inside the YWAM base in St. Marc, Haiti, it feels like any normal YWAM base. The staff are friendly and you can only just see the shadow of lack of sleep and being overworked, on their faces. Although being incredibly understaffed for the job at hand, they are excited about what God is saying and doing in Haiti. They are all running around with fifty different things to do, but with evident peace and joy in their hearts that can only come from the grace of God.

If you walk outside of the office, dorm and cafeteria area to the gymnasium, you find people standing and sitting everywhere in the shade. There is a long set of tables with around ten YWAM workers sitting on one side, and others filtering in people from the streets. This is where a registration process is taking place. YWAM St. Marc may be the only organization registering the victims of the earthquake. This is a huge job but incredibly important as many organizations and people are trying to get the victims aid. The people go through this process of getting registered, and then, as supplies arrive they get called via radio, to come pick up the supplies.

As you walk past the registration tables, you enter the larger part of the gymnasium which is curtained off. This is where many victims from the overflow from the hospitals are recovering from the earthquake. There is a second kitchen close by to feed the recovering victims from Port Au Prince and medical people walking around re bandaging and cleaning wounds, listening to heart beats and offering all sorts of medical care. The people recovering here are laying all around the gymnasium on straw mats and blankets.

Although there is a huge amount of things going on all over the base, it still does not feel as chaotic as it really should. If you step outside the gate, however you are bombarded with the hundreds of people lined up to enter the registration process. It is hot with a limited amount of shade. They will be lined up from six in the morning and wait for their turn. It is no wonder that fights and arguments are breaking out as people stand waiting in the hot sun for a hope of food and shelter for their families.

Smile, you’re in Haiti

Today our team of 8 went into Port Au Prince. We were not really sure what we would see or how we would feel, but we knew that if we were going to be a part of the long term work here in Haiti we needed to see not only the good, but the pain and the hardship as well. So at 7:00 we loaded into 3 vehicles and made the 2 hours trip into the city.

The closer we got to the city the more chaotic it got. The first thing that we noticed was that right outside the city there are acres and acres of concrete pieces that the city has removed from the wreckage of the earthquake. The more we drove the more we saw with our own eyes what we had been watching on the TV just day’s prior.

Massive buildings were toppled. Rubble, concrete and rebar were everywhere. There were some streets that just looked like you were in any typical 3^rd world country then you would turn down another street and it seemed like you were in a movie about the end of the world, it was intense.

The thing that we noticed though was that life kept going on in Port Au Prince, Haiti. On the news we saw pictures of broken, hurting and weeping people, but what we saw today were a people who decided to get up and move on. Now we understand that they are still broken and hurting, but they are not stopping. One of the Haitian men with us today told us that “the Haitian’s are a strong people, when we get knocked down we get back up and keep going.” This was very clear today.

At one point today we stopped at the palace, which is completely destroyed, and 6 boys walked up to us with smiles on their faces. There were excited to see us and they wanted pictures taken of them and pictures with us. For a moment it seemed like people had forgotten. People had forgotten about the death, the hurt and the pain and were just living again like God intended, with smiles on their faces and laughter in their hearts. Be strong Haiti, Jesus has not left you.