The Haitian Donkey is very Thankful for work done and praising God

Hi All:

The first thing I am very thankful for is that last Sunday, the 28th of January, marked the 5th anniversary of the diagnosis of my nasty cancer, so I am praising the Lord for His grace towards me. Of course, I am thankful for the fact that I can avail myself of the fantastic medical care provided in the USA, especially after treating several patients here since that time, all of which have passed away. But, although I certainly appreciate the great care available to me, I know that the Lord has honored the prayers of so many of you faithful folks who have been supporting us before the throne of grace. The 5 years have been, overall, still very good and productive years and I want to praise the Lord for His mercy for that blessing also. Even now, I have been running a fever for 3 weeks, have had elevated white counts but blood cultures were negative x 2 and then the 3rd was positive but dead organisms (anaerobic, so hard to grow, but it means we are guessing on my antibiotics, which I have been on for almost 2 weeks and still have fevers, a bit discouraging). However, with all my support staff on the team, I have been well cared for and have been able to keep up pretty much with the workload.

I mentioned in the last email that I thought the very optimistic Duane had outdone himself in giving my brother Butch a work list that no one could reasonably do in a couple weeks (and we only had one week). I am very impressed and thankful that the team has matched his enthusiasm and have slaved long hours to achieve plastering, painting and otherwise preparing the lower level of the hospital for the tiling process next week. As I have mentioned before, so many of the group are thrown together without having met each other before being here and, along with 7 of our Haitian brothers, and they work for hours without complaint. That can only be attributed to the handiwork of the Lord in our lives. They are actually looking for new projects for Friday as they figure they will have most things done by then.

Surgery has gone well, though we have had our challenges. We did the cleft lip, it was harder than most as the little 3 month old had some scar tissue in the middle of his lip. I was afraid to remove it, the treatment of choice, as I didn’t have enough skin to close it otherwise. Tomorrow, will take off the band aid dressing and see what we see below. We also did a resection of a 20 year old burn contracture, she developed it at age 4 and it only got tighter as time went on. We resected the scar as best we could (way too long to try a zplasty) and flipped a skin graft over the situation. Will uncover the dressing on Friday and see what we have, but praying it will take. We also have had a 58 yr old man fall out of a tree, break a bunch of ribs and collapse his lungs as well as a bunch blood in the chest cavity. Had another collapsed lung this morning, will do him tomorrow if he is agreeable (I would think so as he is quite short of breath), but all decisions are group decisions. We had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy this morning that the family does not want surgery, just meds, despite the fact she is very pale and struggling. Overall, I am very thankful for all that has been done in both the medical/surgical realm and in the construction. On the flip side, I have had a number of advanced cancer patients in the clinic that I cannot possibly hope to repair, thankfully the chaplains have been working with me to at least pray with them and explain the gospel to them.

I also am very happy as the spiritual interest level of the staff seems to have gone up a quantum leap, something we have been praying for and encouraging for several years now. Am praying that this will continue in the future, as it seems to have affected the working situation with much more graciousness towards the patients on the part of the staff, etc.

So, will get on the bus at 1 am on Saturday and pray we will not run into roadblocks on the way in. Hopefully, at that hour, the rabble rousers will still be asleep in their beds and not cause trouble for us. Duane and the crew will come in Friday night about 10 pm and so will cross paths for a few minutes.

Thank you for your prayers and support of us in our service at Centre de Sante Lumiere.

In His Service,

Bill, Bob, Brad, Brian, Butch, Craig, Gord, Heather, Ian, Julie, Kathy, Margie, Montana, Sarah, Sawyer, Terri, Theresa