Chester Ramsey Trip Report

Haiti March 2010

From: Jill Ramsey
Sent: Mon, March 22, 2010
Subject: Haiti

Good Morning All,

Just wanted to touch base to tell you a little about Chester’s' experience. He is feeling well, not too terribly tired. He did get to do home inspections in Haiti as originally planned. He saw 25 -30 homes per day. He said the inspections were relatively easy. Either they were about to fall over or had minimum damage.

The ones that are minimally damaged and are habitable remained vacant because of the strong belief the Haitians have in Voodoo. They are afraid that evil spirits that caused the quake still remain in their homes. Hopefully (and prayerfully) after having "the Americans" tell them it is safe to go in and the Chaplains prayed with them, along with the Haitian Baptist ministers, they will make the decision to move back in.

Chester said they will stay during the daytime, but will not sleep in them for fear of being buried alive. Understandable, even if you don't believe in Voodoo. It would help to ease a lot of the chaos in the "tent cities" if the ones that can, would move back in.

The rainy season is starting and Chester says there will be many more deaths and sickness due to flooding and mudslides if those people can't get out of those tents. There have been over 60,000 professions of faith in Jesus Christ since the earthquake. That is a miracle in and of itself!

He inspected an orphanage or two and has pictures of the beautiful children. That is a very sad situation, as well. So many need homes and families. A lot of the children would point to their mouths or rub their tummies to communicate to the Americans that they were hungry. That is heartbreaking!

Chester said it is by far the poorest, nastiest place he's ever seen. Interestingly enough though, the people and their clothing was very clean. He said they work hard to keep themselves clean. Everyone he dealt with was very kind and very grateful to him. He never felt in danger except at the airport.

I think it was kind of intimidating and chaotic. They had a fence around the compound he stayed in with armed guards. I did not know (Thank Goodness) that the day before he left, two French relief workers had been kidnapped. They were cautioned heavily when they arrived to be very careful. Thank God I didn't know that... I would've been nuts!!

A guard also traveled with them, along with an interpreter, a Haitian minister and their driver. Hearing him talk about the way they drive over there is funny! It's a miracle he made it home alive! He tried to figure out all along why he felt led to go over there and he said finally one day it came to him. Very simple. "Because God loves me". "That's why I'm here".

He said it came to him one day as he was listening to the morning devotion before going out. Simply put, because God loves us, we have to share His love with the rest of the world. It may be the guy down the road that we really don't like all that well, the drug addict next door, the lonely widow we know, the guy that's a jerk at work or it maybe the people of Haiti. Pretty simple, yet profound. Very true.

He's very glad to be home. Will worry about the ones he met and worked with especially, for quite some time to come. His interpreter, Lucian tugged at his heart. A young kid about Ashley's age. He got up every morning at 4:00 AM, traveled two hours one way to get to the compound in a taxi, worked all day, then traveled back home in the evening. His stomach was really hurting him the last three days and the nurses with Chester thought that he had a bad case of worms.

I think they had some medicine left and doctored him so hopefully he's better. I cannot imagine the conditions these people live in. After hearing all the stories, once again I am reminded of how blessed we are here in America. I have no clue! It's so easy to take it all for granted. I hope this gives you an idea of what he did and of the situation over there. It's just one of many places in the world that needs help, but it will remain special to our family.

Our prayer is that they continue to get assistance and that many thousands more will come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior! Thanks again for all your prayers and thoughts. -- Jill

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