…is taking over the medical work of Rik & Sabine in Heart for Haiti, Port-au-Prince.

God called us to start and complete a specific task in Haiti… We knew, we needed to fill in a gap just a few days after the first big quake. It was a moment when there was no care for the deep wounds in body and soul of the children and people living in and around the orphanage project “Heart for Haiti” in Port-au-Prince. 

After 2 1/2 weeks intense work, a Dutch emergency team arrived. Together, we made extremely great advances in the past 72 hours by contacting them with B-fast and surgical teams of Puerto Rico, Holland and the US.

We could help establishing a connection in the worst part of the country (epicenter) – the town of Leogane – where we could witnesss an extra-ordinary job from Doctors without boarders, Switzerland who had set up an amazing field hospital in the gardens of a destroyed hospital (Hospital La Croix).

It is probably no secret that Sabine and I became very tired.  We heard and experienced now that the work of Medical Doctors in such a situations is indeed extremely demanding, stressful and exhausting; especially during the first 3 weeks after such a disaster. Most of the medical teams have a turnover of 5 (f.ex. Puerto Rico)) till 10 days (f.ex. Belgium).

We are but two of us and not part of a great team with nurses, assistants, logistics, coordinators, etc.. God knew that it became time to leave. Problem was that we could not establish contact with the mission (MFI) that flew us in. We waited for His intervention…

It was for us - although not expected that fast – quite an answer to our prayers that we suddenly got contact with a man of God we knew not.   He was an AA pilot living less then 10 miles away where we have our home-office in FL.  This man flew promptly in Port-au-Prince with just a small Cessna plane from Kings Wings to get only the two of us in PaP (and 3 people more from Cap Haitian). He was for us like an angel coming out of the sky telling us:”You need a break.”  He told us how all doctors he had flown out were exhausted of the work done.

Pilot Bruce was also excited about our work in Bolivia as he had found our website. It appeared that he had flown for many years the big AA-planes from US to Bolivia!

Some people on the ground didn’t agree with our sudden leave. Probably, they were focusing too much on us and didn’t see the team that had come down to take over…God gave us peace in the midst of all turmoil and confirmed that our mission in Haiti was completed…at least for now.. The wounded had been taken care for, a primary health structure had been set up and logistics had been worked out with the Dutch medical team.  Follow-up was assured. Of course, an extremely huge task in primary health care and reconstruction of this destroyed land remains. We have yet to see if God wants us to be part of this too…

We started to truly love this people and will miss them very much.  We ask your fervent prayers especially for the Haitian people but also for us.. May God give them and us His Divine peace. May He help us to put things together again after so many sudden changes and fast decisions we needed to make during the last weeks. 

Thank you for all your support we received through your donations and prayers.  We appreciate this greatly.  For now, we want to leave it completely open to God if He wants us to return or not to Haiti.

Rik & Sabine

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