Haiti awaits

Sunday morning will see a team of five leaving Atlanta for Port-au-Prince to assist with medical care to Haitian earthquake survivors and logistics related to the Helping Hands Clinic outside the city. The team, part of Helping Hands Foreign Missions, has been assembled from different states and anticipates two days of traveling–including a 156 mile, 13 hour bus ride–just to arrive in the stricken area. Minuscule amounts of supplies will be taken in air travel-most will be purchased in the Dominican Republic. The goal of Helping Hands Missions is to sustain the ministry of the clinic through a continuous flow of teams into the country, at least until regular supply channels are re-opened. The teams will stay in tents they must pack in and pack out, as there are no hotels available, and, really, who would want to stay in one? There are still daily aftershocks.

A HHFM team member already in the country, Damon Whitlow, posted Monday on the Helping Hands Haiti blog,

This morning we awoke and began building our medical clinic. Within an hour we had 100 plus patients lined up waiting to see the doctors. People were patient. We moved thru 45 patients before lunch.

Awake in the morning with no clinic, build clinic, see 45 patients before lunch. Not a bad day’s work.

Helping Hands is an example of a number of small organizations who are able to respond quickly to massive needs not having a large, cumbersome bureaucracy through which it must work. While governments are able to move equipment to effect clean-up of rubble and burial of the deceased, flexible organizations like Helping Hands minister to the physical and spiritual needs of survivors. Already having working relationships with organizations in areas like Haiti and the Dominican Republic have expedited Helping Hands’ ability to put together a meaningful response. These are not a bunch of crazed Americans running around willy-nilly giving away flags and spreading good cheer, but laser focused followers of Jesus Christ who are taking his love to a desperate place.

I will be on this trip and I hope to post some updates while I’m gone, but there are no guarantees of internet availability for me or time to do updating. If you have not yet friended me on Facebook or would like to follow me on Twitter you may do both at the “Social and Online” widget in the right sidebar.